Page Design

What follows are a series of design guidelines from: Pauley & Riordan's Report Writing Today:

Use larger to smaller Organization. Use the big headers first. Put key terms in Bold (and larger) type
Use left-to-right orientation to lead your readers through the text. Put larger or key items to the left and allow them to extend to the right.
Place visuals such that they move the reader's attention from left to right. The key is to "anchor" visuals by always having one edge relate to the same edge of text.
Chunk white space to group items into visually coherent units.
Use format elements to indicate the hierarchy. This is called queing your text.
Mix visual and verbal.
Align the edges of all page components to create a coherent unity.
Keep margins consistent in multiple page documents.
Arrange the material to take advantage of the way we scan pages. Research shows we scan a page in a Z pattern unless some strong component interrupts.
Develop a style sheet for each type of document you will have to write. It should cover : the multi-level head system, page numbering, margin rules, rules for visuals, rules for captions for visuals, rules for headers and footers, and rules for list formatting.