atw: Re: Tell the U.S. Marines to Getz Tuft

Intelligent response, Michael.  

I was trying to imply in my previous email, that "training" the eye does
come into it, but I also agree with the cultural aspects - and dare I
suggest, gender aspects, and personality type aspects as well. 

I live in a world where I discriminate between emotional and mental, and
they have two very specific and different meanings to me.  Anyone who does
not differentiate between them will dismiss what I am saying as twaddle, and
anyone who does differentiate will get my drift.

For me, my world must be aesthetically pleasing - no ifs or buts.  I shrivel
up and die in ugliness - or least become angry and antagonistic.  I find
Arial/Times profoundly ugly, always have, and so my emotional response to
seeing large fonts, overcrowding and too much black is to turn off. If I
turn off, there is little chance I will actually read what is in front of me
unless I am forced to, and then my comprehension will be low because I am
feeling antagonised emotionally.

On the other hand, if I find something aesthetically pleasing, I relax
emotionally and am open to what the text is trying to communicate.  So that
is what I work to achieve with my professional writing, to keep the reader
emotionally available so that they want to hear what I am saying.

As an ex teacher, and an ex remedial teacher at that, we know that emotions
come first when trying to teach damaged children.  Get the emotions right
and the rest will follow. The same applies to the rest of us, just to a
lesser degree.  

Getting the emotions right involves aesthetics and layout - it is the "art"
of what I do. You hard boiled military types might want to think of it as
the foreplay.  After that comes the craft of writing. My writing must be
good enough. Consider that the sex.  They exist in partnership if either is
to be any good.  (But perhaps not all of you agree with that assertion
either.)

Then, at the end of the day, it is the outcome that actually matters, they
were in the right mood to learn, they had the right resources to learn
through, and now have achieved a changed state as a result of that learning
experience - you can consider that to be...well...let's not challenge the
spam filters too much.

Now fancy bringing sex into technical writing. ;-)  There is a first for
everything I suppose! 

christine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-
> bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Lewis
> Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 4:37 PM
> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: atw: Re: Tell the U.S. Marines to Getz Tuft
> 
> Peter Martin:
> 
> > Every time this topic comes up, (as it does regularly) I run a pile
> of Google and other
> > searches looking for something that updates Wheildon.   I've yet to
> find anything
> > that approaches his work.   But <sigh>  here goes again...    Anyone
> got an alternative
> > yet ?
> 
> Not me. In fact, even Karen Schriver (_Dynamics in Document Design_,
> Wiley, 1997) relies chiefly on readers' aesthetic preferences. She does
> indicate that serif body text "may" be more "readable", but -- quite
> legitimately -- suggests that cultural and other factors might be at
> work. I've often wondered whether the typography of the books children
> use while learning to read might influence the outcome.
> 
> David Whitbread (_The Design Manual_, UNSW Press, 2001) suggests that
> serif/sans-serif is the wrong question -- different typefaces of
> different styles excel at different applications.
> 
> Coincidentally, I'll be using passages on precisely this issue from
> precisely these books (and others) as illustrations in my presentation
> at the ASTC (NSW) conference on Friday.
> 
> - Michael Lewis
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Michael Lewis
> ------------------------
> Department of Linguistics
> Macquarie University
> 
> Tel (02) 9850 7856
> mailto:michael.lewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ------------------------
> 
> 

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7:53 PM
 

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