Chapter 18: understanding design principles

Chapter 18 is all about understanding design principles. Using design effectively is the most important part in writing your research paper. It's important to understand the design principles. Balance, the vertical and horizontal alignment of elements on your page. Emphasis, the placement and formatting of elements, like headings and subheadings so they catch your readers attention. Repetition, the use of elements like headers, footers, navigation menus, and page numbers, across the pages in your document. Consistency, the extent to which you format and place text and illustrations in the same way throughout your document.
You also need to design for a purpose, presenting your information, ideas, and arguments in a way that helps accomplish your goals. Also, design for your readers so they understand your organization. Help readers locate info and ideas, and help readers recognize the function of parts of a document. Design to address genre conventions.
Elements you can use are fonts, line spacing, alignments, and page layouts. You can also use  color, shading, borders, and rules. Illustrations like photographs, charts, tables, and digital illustrations appeal to your readers and help them see your point of view.

Chapter 16: writing with style

Chapter 16 is about writing with style. You can begin writing with style by writing concisely, your readers will not read your paper if it is hard to follow so three techniques that help you write concisely are: 1) Remove unnecessary modifiers, words like fine, many, somewhat, great, quite, sort of, lots, really, and very because they provide little info to a reader. 

      2) Remove unnecessary introductory phrases, like there are, there is, these have, these are, here are, here is, it has been reported that, it has been said that,it is evident that, it is obvious that, etc. Instead use for example because it allows you to emphasize a point. 

     3) Eliminate stock phrases, search your document for phrases that can be replaced with one or two words.

You can also write with style by using an active and passive voice effectively. An active voice would be: Juan too an exam.

      The tornado leveled the town.

and a passive voice would be : The exam was taken

                                                  The town was leveled. 

understanding when to use active or passive will make all the difference in your paper. 

Adopting a consistent point of view is another way to write in style. First person would be I or we, second person would be you, third person would be she, he, it, one, they, or nouns. 

Choose your words carefully. There are two different types of formality, informal and formal these will be determined on issue and how you choose to write it. Specialized language allows readers to communicate effectively and efficiently, so word choice is very important!

How can you polish your style?

Vary your sentence structure, there are 4 types of sentences that can be used to vary your sentences : statements, questions, commands, and exclamations. 

You can also polish your style by creating effective transitions. Transitional words are first, second, third, finally, however, and nonetheless. Transitional phrases are on the other hand, as a result, and in turn. There are also transitional sentences and paragraphs that strengthen your paper.

Introduce other authors effectively while integrating others work into your paper by saying the author wrote or the author said. And avoid sexist language that will upset your readers, consult a good handbook and read widely.