07-24-2014, 04:19 PM
quote:Hi Alan, thanks for the response. I understand your dilemma, although I would have not published without the formatting myself. My approach would have been to require a common format in the submission, but my background is in teaching college. "Hand your paper in using this format or it won't be either read or graded."
Originally posted by Alan McNarie
KathyH: good point. Basically, I had to make a logistical decision: I needed to get a huge number of questionnaires online, and decided that getting them up took priority over making them pretty. Even so, since the answers came back in a large variety of formats, from Yahoo Mail to HTML to PDF, I had to do a whole lot of cleanup and reformatting just to get them online at all. I'm still wrestling with some of them. If there's time later, I'll go back and put them all into a format that's easier on the eyes.
Alan D. McNarie
I learned the hard way reading batches of 500 essays on the same topic that readability makes all the difference in whether an idea comes across.
I understand that the look of BIC online font is erratic (one reason I quit reading it regularly), but there is a difference between an editor or guest-generated post and a solicited questionnaire from a field of candidates. I would think it is very important to be consistent.
As I said though, I would have aimed to control the labor on the front end by specifying a format. [] I think if a person wants to hold public office, asking them to do what is required of any college freshman is not too rigorous.
I honestly couldn't read any of the questionnaires other than Tiffany's and Karen's.
I've read all of Finnegans Wake and read Ulysses numerous times, so I can definitely read difficult text and formatting, but undifferentiated white font defeats me.
Take care, hope the editorial assignment is rewarding for you.