Design Principles

Time and time again, questions come up about the design of a research paper. Of course, the first thing to check is whether the department or professor in question has published any guidelines. But there are some things that never make it into these guidelines because they are either too general – i.e. they apply not only to research papers, but have to be learned, anyway – or too specific – i.e. the people writing the guidelines didn't think of this particular scenario. In these cases, it is good to have some general design principles to stick to.

In her book The Non-Designer’s Design Book, Robin Williams formulates four such principles, which can be applied to a very wide range of design problems. The book does not make a very good first impression – the cover (imho) looks quite cheap, the contents seem to consist of a collection of examples, and even the principles seem to be just common sense. And in a way they are, because if they are not applied, you can see that something doesn't look good; but you can't quite put your finger on it. This is where it helps to consciously go over these four simple priciples. And it is a good idea to keep them in mind every time you do any formatting.

The principles are easily remembered with the help of an acronym which, unfortunately, means exactly the opposite of what you want to get at the end: CRAP.

Keep in mind that I only give a few very specific examples below, but that the principles can be applied in many more situations. And also that the principles are interconnected and need to be well balanced.

Contrast

Don't use similar elements. Either they are the same and they should look the same, or they are different, in which case the reader should be able to see the difference.

A very simple example: Headings should be recognisable as such on first sight; don't just make them one point bigger than the body text. Make them bold and at least two points bigger. And mark different things in different ways; don't use italics to mean both “important” and “linguistic example”.

A problem that often arises when using phonetic or other special symbols: The font you use for your body text does not provide these symbols. What a lot of people do is to take these and only these symbols from another font, which results in weird-looking text. So why not set all the phonetic examples (or formulas or whatever you are typing) in that special font? That makes much more sense than having only all schwas or all Greek letters etc. in a different typeface.

Repetition

Repeating elements shows the reader that they are still reading the same work.

For example, if you use graphics and only some of them have borders, you should either remove those borders or add borders to the other graphics. If you have to adjust the spacing of a list, for instance, because you want to fit it on the page, consider adjusting all other lists in the same way, so the one list doesn't look out of place. And, again, be consistent with how you mark different things: if you choose to print the stressed syllable in an example in boldface, stick to it; don't mark the stressed syllable in another example with an accent (I've seen people do that).

Alignment

Don't put anything on the page arbitrarily. Everything should be aligned with something else.

If your paper has a header or a footer, they should be aligned with the main text area. If you use figures or tables, their horizontal alignment shouldn't be whatever the software chooses to do. Make sure they are all aligned with the text in the same way.

Proximity

Related items should be closer to each other on the page.

Don't leave less space before a new heading than after it; the heading belongs to the following text. Make sure captions are closer to their figures or tables than to the body text, so they can immediately be associated with them.

Avoid so-called orphans, i.e. isolated lines created when paragraphs begin on the last line of a page, and widows, i.e. isolated lines created when paragraphs end on the first line of a new page.

Reference Works

When writing any scholarly text, good language reference is indispensable. In this article, I want to present a few such works some of which you might not have felt the need to use (probably because you never bothered to check what it's for) or you might even never have come across.

• Spelling/Meaning:
  Of course, a good general dictionary is essential. Not only does it help you with the spelling, but you should also consult it if you are unsure about the precise meaning of a word. And it will also give you somme essential grammatical information (inflexion, gender).
  • English: Personally, I like to use the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, although I couldn't say why it's better than any other dictionary out there. The information it provides includes spelling, grammar, basic collocations, idioms, register and differences between British and American English
  • German: Usually, a good spelling dictionary (e.g. Duden – Die deutsche Rechtschreibung) will do. It will help you with spelling, grammar and usually with meaning. Sometimes, though, this needs to be complemented by a dictionary of foreign words (e.g. Duden – Das Fremdwörterbuch). And especially non-native speaker might want to use a meaning dictionary (like Duden – Das Bedeutungswörterbuch or Deutsches Universalwörterbuch), because the spelling dictionary only provides meanings for less common words, and these tend to be quite brief.
• Synonyms:
  Another work I consult very often is a thesaurus. The thesaurus is sometimes said to produce bad or pretentious writing, but of course you are not supposed to use it to look for fancier-sounding equivalents of the word you were going to use. It often helps me find a more suitable word than the one I first thought of, and I would never use a word I don't know without at least looking up its precise meaning in another dictionary first.
  • English: I use Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus. It's the only one I know, and probably the most widely used.
  • German: I use Duden – Das Synonymwörterbuch; I have never tried any other.
• Word combinations:
  A  type of dictionary I discovered quite late and that is suitable especially for non-native speakers is the collocations dictionary. It tells you how words can be combined. What do you do with a survey? Oh, yes conduct or just carry out. What preposition goes after indication? Oh yes, it's of, and for goes after indicator. What do you call it when there is a lot of traffic? Is it strong? Ooops, no, it can be busy, congested, heavy or thick.
  • English: I like  the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (the BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations is supposed to be equally good, but I've never used it). 
  • German: Duden – Das Stilwörterbuch is the only one I know. It also gives you information on idioms and register.
• Usage:
  Also aimed mainly at non-native speakers, usage dictionaries will give you advice on all sorts of problems that might come up, especially with commonly made mistakes.
  • English: I recently bought Practical English Usage. I can't tell you is it's useful, because I haven't actually used it yet, just browsing in it is quite interesting. Beside entries for single words, it has grammar-related entries, entries comparing similar expressions (e.g. thankful and grateful, whether and if), entries on expressing certain things (e.g. telling the time) and many others.
  • German: Duden – Richtiges und gutes Deutsch provides similar information. The entries tend to be shorter and to concentrate on single words, but there are also some articles on grammar and special topics like the usage of numbers or names.
• Grammar:
  A work I don't use quite as often but like to have at hand is a grammar.
  • English: I use the Longman English Grammar; it's concise, and I usually find what I'm looking for.
  • German: I use Duden – Die Grammatik, which is very comprehensive. Schülerduden Grammatik is more accessible and supposed to be sufficient for everyday writing needs.

Stapling

Sadly enough, most students' (and some instructors') presentations are accompanied by loose collections of handout pages (OK, maybe not most, maybe that's just my distorted perception, but certainly a lot). Sometimes these are collated ("Take n pages from the top of the pile and hand it to the next person"), sometimes they're not ("There are n piles of pages. Make sure you get one page from each pile") — mostly depending on how the pages happen to come out of the photocopier.

The result, however, is always the same: The supposed listeners spend half of the presentation, or at least the introduction, trading, comparing and sorting handout pages, so by the time they're done, most of them have no idea what the presenters are talking about; and at this point, it doesn't really matter how well the presentation was prepared. So, people, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE staple your handouts as soon as they comprise more than one sheet!

One could, of course, suspect that people deliberately don't staple their handouts to distract the audience from the presentation's poor quality, but I rather suspect that it is just a problem of poor planning: The handouts are photocopied last minute, which leaves no time to staple them; and who thinks of bringing a stapler, anyway!

To be honest, most of the time I myself photocopy my handouts only shortly before my presentations. I only have one decisive advantage: I know about the photocopiers' stapling function.

This function, which most modern photocopiers have, should be easy to locate and operate:

• On all photocopiers I know it's either on the main display or in a menu called Finishing. The section is titled Staple and consists of icons showing pages — often with an R on them — with tiny lines showing where the sheets will be stapled, looking something like this:
   
• Choose your preferred option.
• Put your original in the feeder.
• Type in the desired number of copies
• Press the Start Key.
• If, for some reason, you cannot use the feeder, place your originals on the exposure glass one after another, pressing the Start key each time; the copier will scan these pages to its memory, and it should say on its display which key to press after all pages are scanned (in my experience, this is always the # key).

Japanese text input

sudo apt-get install uim-applet-gnome uim-xim uim-anthy uim-gtk2.0 im-switch

im-switch -s uim