2.4: How to Tell a Good Story

Polish Your Work

In this section, our goals are to:

  • Apply skills in effective document design to finalize the policy brief.

  • Apply skills in revision to ensure a polished final product.

In the previous section, skills in organizing the policy brief were covered to support the drafting of a brief for the course project. Now, in this final section of Unit 2, skills in document design and revision will be covered, ready to apply in the polishing of your draft project into an effective policy brief.

Effective Document Design

READ

  1. Read and complete the exercises in “Effective Document Design” in Communication@Work (Smith, 2019).

    This reading covers a wide range of skills needed to ensure the presentation of a professional, polished, and effective report.

  2. Read “Integrate Visuals and Apply Design Principles” (Schaller & Wolf, 2020).

    This reading will supplement your knowledge of document design with more depth about how to incorporate visuals into the document.

  3. If you haven’t already, go back and review the tips on How to Write a Policy Brief in the IDRC toolkit.

THINK and ENGAGE

Complete these activities as you work through the readings; this will help ensure you can apply these skills to your own work.

  1. Complete the tables to capture and best practise techniques to apply to your own writing. List at least 10 key principles of effective document design—any 10 that you think are relevant to the success of your policy brief. For each principle, write a brief statement of how and why it’s essential.

    Page Design

    Principles of Document Design

    Explanation

    Page Layout

    Principles of Document Design

    Explanation

    Visuals

    Principles of Document Design

    Explanation

    Print Activity

  2. Once you’ve completed the readings and thought about all the tools you have available for document design, make a simple “design guide” for your policy brief.

    In this guide, make choices about your design. You can present this as a list of features or as a page mock-up. It’s up to you (and how far along you are in the process). Include decisions on at least the following elements:

    1. Page design—spacing, margins, font, headings

    2. Page layout—configuration, text columns, quote design, pullout design, style emphasis

    This kind of design guide will help you ensure the consistency and control over your final communication project. It will also be useful as you develop the materials in the final unit of the course.

LESSON

The readings, practice activities, and engagement questions provide a comprehensive account of the principles of effective document design. In this section, we will just itemize the most salient of principles to keep them top of mind as you finalize your writing.

Drawing from the works in the readings, we can assert the following four essential principles:

  1. Audience-Focused Visual Story

    • At the end of the day, the visual story of your policy brief should be designed with audience in mind.

    • Readers will scan the document first, looking for a sense of what they are reading and why they should keep reading it; the core message and main points should be easy to find visually. Reluctant readers will need early and consistent incentive to keep engaged.

    • A consistency between content, tone, and style is important to reinforce rather than disrupt meaning.

  2. Clear, Concise, and Coherent Expression

    • From the headings to the call-out boxes, to the individual paragraphs and sentences, the writing should be clear, concise, and coherent. Expression should never be an impediment to understanding, but rather a supplement to the goals of the communication, whether persuasive or informative.

  3. Consistent and Accessible Layout

    • Page design should be consistent and accessible, making effective use of margins, spacing, colour, and font.

    • Headings and other forms of emphasis should be consistently applied, using font size and colour, as well as content.

    • Accessibility strategies should be applied to the document.

    • Text boxes, quotes, sidebars, visuals, and the like should be consistently formatted in a style suitable to the goals of the document and located logically in the page layout to create a coherent “look” for the document.

  4. Strategic Visuals

    • The policy brief is a short document and a visual may or may not be relevant. Avoid gratuitous visuals, but if you have one that contributes to the meaning of your work, go ahead and use it.

Skills and Motivation for Revision and Proofreading

It’s worth it. It really is worth the time to go back and revise and proofread your work. Many students often complete their assignments just at the due date, leaving off this final element of professionalization. However, strong attention to the finer details of the document design and writing will ensure you secure the authority and persuasiveness of the work. Great ideas are not great if they cannot mobilize engagement and action. Poor writing will devalue your great ideas.

READ

  1. Read the handout Revising Drafts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  2. Read the handout Editing and Proofreading from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

EXAM PREPARATION

Students in CMNS 3241 will have a final exam for this course. Information from Unit 2 that will be covered on the final exam:

  • Exercises related to the refresher on clear and concise writing, along with coherence and cohesion

  • Exercises related to using source material in your writing, including paraphrase

Unit Tasks 3, 4, and 5 (9% of course grade), and Assignment 2: Policy Brief (25% of course grade)

ASSIGNMENT TIME

Once you have completed Unit 2, you have the tools you need to complete Assignment 2: Policy Brief.

CMNS 3241 students, please log into TRU Moodle for assignment instructions.

  • Unit Tasks 3, 4, and 5 (9%) – please submit as one document

    • Unit Task 3: Determine your Discourse Community (3%)

    • Unit Task 4: Produce a Research Strategy and Annotated Bibliography (3%)

    • Unit Task 5: Produce a Storyboard for Your Policy Brief (3%)

  • Assignment 2: Policy Brief (25%)