How your content looks is just as important as what it says

For the classes I teach on business writing at the University of Maryland, the first presentation I deliver each semester is short and simple. (The whole deck is 11 slides.)

What can I convey in such limited space? It’s a mantra I repeat throughout the course, which I suspect that most of my students can recall well afterward: How your work looks can be as important as what it says.

In other words: To excel at writing, you need to master both form and function, both style and substance. You need to think visually.

As I explain in my larger workshop on visual aids, “Smart writers know a secret. They know that what you write—your choice of words—is only half of any project. The other half is how those words look, everything from your font size to your margin widths. Packaging and presentation matter more than most people appreciate.”