Improving Your MS Word Tables Part 2
Welcome to Improving Your MS Word Tables Part 2! In Part 1, we showed you how to make better borders for your tables.
Recap
We started with the default MS Word table settings.
The proximity of the borders to the data as well as their similar color makes the borders compete with the data for the viewer’s attention.
Tables Are All About the Data
Remove anything that competes with the data or hurts clarity.
Thus, we did the following:
- Reduced the font size of the headers to set them off from the data,
- Removed the outside border, and
- Softened the color of the interior borders.
This visually moves the data in front—where it belongs.
About Numbers
Note the numbers in the third column. Align numbers to the right to make comparisons easier and increase clarity. In effect, align according to the decimal point whether that point is visible or not.
Even Fewer Borders
You can often remove the column borders. The alignment of the text in the headers and dataset creates a visual column border and makes the lines redundant.
With a short table, the borders between data rows could be deleted with no loss of clarity.
Data-to-Ink Ratio
The goal is to maximize the data-to-ink ratio while retaining clarity. As much of the ink (or pixels) as possible goes to the data and as little as possible goes to elements such as borders, colors, effects, legends, labels, images, or annotations.
However, if removing an element will hurt clarity, then retain it.
With larger tables, a complete lack of row borders can be confusing—is Mungo Jerry in Verse 1 or 2?
Manually inserting a border separating the rows into sets of three solves this problem.
Or, if your table has two columns, aligning the first column right and the second left works as well.
Tell us how you maximize clarity in your tables!
Need Help With Your Tables?
PAI Consulting offers professional editing services to make your documents stand out.
Contact us today for a consultation and let our expert editors help you achieve clarity and impact.
Contact us for a consultationDo you have questions or concerns about editorial matters? Share them with us!
PAI Consulting | Helping you succeed. Learn more.
Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not the opinion of PAI Consulting. In addition, this article may contain links to third-party websites. PAI Consulting does not endorse or make any representations about them, or any information, software, or other products or materials found there, or any results that may be obtained from using them.