ABSTRACT
[…] While all of us use graphic language as originators and consumers, very few of us are aware of how it should be planned so that it can be most effective. In this respect, as in many others, graphic language differs from oral language, which is either not consciously planned at all – as in most conversational situations – or is planned by those who engage in public speaking with a reasonable understanding of what they are doing. Our experience of planning graphic language – unless we have special problems, such as those presented by the preparation of a table for a scientific paper or a hand-made notice for a jumble sale – probably ended at school when we learned how to organize a letter, address an envelope, or set out a sum in mathematics. Most of those who use graphic means of communication professionally in everyday situations involving continuous prose merely pass on their problems to their typist who does the planning for them. In more complex areas of graphic communication, particularly when messages are non-linear, originators have less control over the graphic presentation of their messages and frequently rely on specialist draughtsmen, cartographers, or typographers. Such situations have few parallels in oral language.
