Chapters 12, 13

Chapters 12 and 13 both focus on the visual aspects of writing reports from graphics implementation and design to the layout of the document itself. The goal is to create a document that draws people in and clearly shows the information you're presenting. I have often received emails where the authors forget about paragraphs or don't add an extra line in between their paragraphs. Each time I receive one of these I don't read through the message. I might scan it, but I won't take the time to sift through the entire message. It just look too daunting.

In writing scientific papers I have been required to use sans-serif fonts and for these papers all figures that are referenced must be near the reference point in the paper while tables are set in an 'appendix' of sorts in the back. Like chapter 12 states, presenting the figures (graphs) is not enough, an explanation of what the data indicates is highly important. Although there are guidelines for the ethical use of color and scale in figures, I've found many times that special interest groups will deliberately manipulate the color and/or scale as well as the interpretation of the data to mislead the readers.