• Organize ideas in a logical fashion, beginning with what is of most interest to the reader.
    Before:
    HALIFAX, May 5, 2001 — On behalf of Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps, Dr. Bridglal Pachai, President of the Celebrate Canada Committee for Nova Scotia, today announced that Stephanie Currie, 15, a student at Prince Arthur Junior High School in Dartmouth, has been chosen as the Nova Scotia finalist in the Canada Day Poster Challenge 2001 … All finalists and their guardians will be guests of Minister of Canadian Heritage, Sheila Copps, in Ottawa on July 1. They will join the Governor General, the Prime Minister and the thousands of Canadians who gather on Parliament Hill to take part in the Canada Day festivities.
    After:
    Canada Day was extra special this year for Stephanie Currie, Nova Scotia’s finalist in the Canada Day Poster Challenge 2001. Along with the other provincial and territorial finalists from across Canada, the 15-year-old student at Prince Arthur High School in Dartmouth was the guest of Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps at the Canada Day festivities in Ottawa.
  • When there is a change of idea in the course of a document, summarize or explain the idea.
    Before:
    Drug smuggling is an ongoing problem for us all. With over 27,000 kilometers of coastline to protect, the police need the public’s help. We need your eyes and ears. Be an active partner.
    After:
    Every year, large quantities of drugs come to Canada. Some drugs come by boat. Some drugs come by plane. This is drug smuggling. It is against the law.
    The Coastal Watch Program and the Airport Watch Program help stop illegal drugs from coming into the country. Nova Scotia has more than 27,000 kilometers of coastline. The police need the public’s help to protect our coastline from drug smuggling. We need your eyes and ears. We want you to be our partner in the fight against drug smuggling.
  • Choose appropriate visual and print techniques (font, colours, bold, italics, etc.) to emphasize subdivisions within the document and use them consistently.
    • All text is presented in an easy-to-read font (12-point Goudy for body text; 30-point Goudy Bold for headlines).
    • All text is left-justified (lined up to the left) to avoid irregular spaces in the body text.
    • There are no word-breaks or hyphenation (i.e. from the end of one line to the beginning of the next).
    • There is ample use of white space, with generous margins and room for notes.
    • An illustration or photo accompanies every story.
    • Additional information (such as detailed definitions, contact information, etc.) appears in a shaded box.
    • Colours, shading and borders are used to break up the text and separate stories that appear on the same page.
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