The above slide is the example of the slide that required changes.
Good document acts like guiding lights that lighting the way for your users. People usually think that a document considered good when it is contain all the criteria needed which is the document contains complete information, easy to find, and is attractive. According to Putnis, Peter & Petelyn & Rosyln (1996) stated a good document which helps readers read efficiently and also enable to reader to point out the most important content of the document. However, to make a good document it is also supported by writers who design and write of their document. Unfortunately, many writers do not consider the design and many designers do not consider the verbal content of their documents. As cited in Putnis et.al (1996) that MacKenzie argued writers need to make appropriate and coherently integration between words and graphic in order to create information that is accessible and usable for readers.
Based on the above slide shows that there are two complicated pictures which make the readers difficult to understand what the picture tells about. In order to create a good document, graphics and text within the page must be balance and also balance the negative (white) space with the positive (text, title, and visual space) (Putnis et al, 1996, p.254). A good slide will have a graphics and content that supporting each other. Too much or too little space will upset the balance and the proportion of the page (Reep, 2006) Thus, text and images can be complementary for each other to help reader understand a document better (Shriver, 1997).
Moreover, the image that was given in the slides does not have caption and source citation. Nevertheless, it will help readers to know what the document is about and where the flow is if the slides provide the caption and source citation (Windschuttle, 1998). Citations play a central role in the process of writing a paper and as researchers must justify their paper to make a contribution the knowledge in their discipline (Teufel et al). In addition, the most important a good document is credibility for web users that can be increased by high-quality of graphics, good writing, and use of outbound hypertext links (Nielsen, 1997).
References list:
Nielsen, J 1997, How users read on the web, Alertbox, viewed 4 September 2009,
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn 1996, ‘Writing to communicate,’ in Professional communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney, pp.223-263
Reep,Diana C 2006, ‘ Principles of document design,’ in Technical Writing , Pearson Edu, Inc, New York ,pp.133-172
Schriver, K.A. 1997, ‘Chapter 6 : Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers’, pp. 361-441, Wiley Computer Pub,
Teufel,S , Siddharthan,A ,& Tidhar ,D , An annotation scheme for citation function, Natural Language and Infrormation Processing Group, Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University,viewed 4 September 2009,
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as372/sigdial-final.pdf
Windschuttle, K 1988, Report: Writing and Presentation, Writing, Researching and Communicating, Mc-Graw Hill, Sydney, viewed on 5th September 2009 http://catalogue.library.unisa.edu.au/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=2040&recCount=10&recPointer=1&bibId=1037496
