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Description
Anyone who's spent any time reading text on a computer screen can tell you that things such as font, spacing, formatting, and size all play a role in how well a text is received.  Often times people make comments that disregard the importance of formatting a text.  What these people fail to realize is that many people find it difficult to read certain things, not because they're lazy, old, or uncool, but because they have vision problems that prevent them from digesting entire blocks of text with no clear paragraph breaks or focusing on more than a line or two of bold/italic writing.  In fact, even people with 20/20 vision have a difficult time maintaining focus if text is improperly formatted.  That's why we have proper formatting guidelines to begin with!  With that in mind, WordCount is offering this quick guide to making your prose more appealing to the general public.

Quick Reference List

1.  Do not use subscript or superscript unless you are trying to indicate footnotes or endnotes.  Standard text size is standard for a reason.

2.  When you are unable to use an indent to indicate a new paragraph (or even when you are, if you know the text is meant for a computer screen and not print), it's best to put an extra space between paragraphs.  For example:

Pretend that this is a paragraph.  It's ending soon because we're moving on to a new thought or there's some crazy dialogue coming up.  Okay, so now what?

Now, since we are moving on to the new paragraph, we're indicating that with a line break between each row of text instead of bunching the text up to create a hard-to-read block of characters.

3.  Only underline hyperlinks.

4.  Only use bold to show emphasis, indicate subtitles or separate sections, or aid a reader (in nonfiction and informative pieces) in skimming your text.

5.  The italics should not be abused.  Please only italicize text if you are trying to emphasize a word or phrase (not a paragraph or whole text), mark a title, express a person's thoughts, indicate dialogue that's not separated by quotation marks (" "), or use words and phrases from a language other than the one you're primarily writing in, capisce?

6.  WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE (and neither is writing in all lowercase); reduce everything to Title Case where appropriate.  Please try to respect common rules for capitalization unless you are using ALL CAPS or lowercase for satirical purposes.  All caps and all lowercase really is more difficult to read.

7.  Unless you're being satirical, there is no need for more than one question mark or exclamation point!

8.  No one should need more than three . . . to make their point.  Three ". . ." represent an ellipsis.  You don't have to combine several ellipses "............" to create an effect.

9.  Quotation marks should be used to indicate dialogue (unless you are using the em dash or italics).  They are also used to show direct words or phrases that you have taken from another source.

10. Double emphasis (such as quotation marks and italics, or bold and italics, or underline and bold) is not necessary and, in all honesty, look ridiculous.  Have more confidence in your words, alone, and stop putting faith in formatting tricks to get your point across.

A More In-Depth Explanation

1.  Size

When formatting prose for someone to read, whether it's on a screen on elsewhere, size is definitely something to keep in mind.  deviantART doesn't permit very many size changes, but the major formatting options it does allow, namely superscript and subscript, can often make comments and parts of journal entries stand out; it has a real effect.  However, those same effects have no place in regular prose outside of endnotes and footnotes (and a few other, very specific circumstances that you are not likely to run into on this site).

Standard text size, which deviantART thankfully defaults to, is all that's necessary (and all that you should be using) for your deviations.  When you format something in subscript or superscript it actually makes it more difficult for a person to read.  Considering prose is already a chore to read for a good number of people, why go out of your way to make it that much harder?

Bottom line: don't mess with text size.

2.  Spacing

The internet is a funny thing.  The classic "indent" that normally marks the beginning of new paragraphs is often overlooked or, thanks to formatting issues, is entirely impossible to create.  With that in mind, there are other, better ways to format a text so that it shows clear paragraph breaks (which are very important, especially in longer prose) and cleaner formatting.  The easiest and most popular way (and the way that requires very little effort) is to simply add a line break between paragraphs.

That doesn't mean starting a new line right under the old line, it means making sure there is an entirely blank line between the old paragraph and the new paragraph--just as you see here.

With that in mind, please do not "double space" your text on the computer screen. Just as too few lines in between the text can be difficult to read, too many lines in between the text can also be hard on the eyes.  Double spacing texts works wonders in print, but it's hell on the computer's scroll feature--especially when a person is spending much of his/her time reading things off a computer screen.

Bottom line: add an extra space between each paragraph so that your reader is clear about where one thought ends and a new thought begins.

3.  Special Text

Special text commands include bold, italics, and underline (etc.); as with all things, these should be used sparingly.  Believe it or not, larger fonts do not make things easier for the average person to read (they actually are rougher on the eyes), and the same goes for bold text.  Bold-faced text should be used very little; it should rarely encompass an entire line or paragraph of text, and it should never be used for an entire deviation.  You might think that you're helping your reader by making everything bold and beautiful, but really all that bold is just giving that reader a headache.  Bold text should only be used to show emphasis on certain words or phrases and to separate sections and subtitles (or, if you're in the habit, for marking things like your full name or the title of your text.  Keep in mind deviantART now includes your text title, in bold, at the beginning of your work).  This can also come in handy with "skimming" if you are writing a nonfiction or informative piece, as bold words and phrases can help a "skimmer" get the general idea of what you are trying to say without having to read the entire piece (but, since we all want our readers to read the entire thing, you might want to skip that concept).

Underlined words and phrases, especially on the internet, are a tricky business.  Generally, underlined phrases mean that phrase or word is going to be a hyperlink --something the reader can click on to get additional information or to check out another website.  In print, underlined text is used for titles of books and not much else (which is why it lent itself so well to being used as a hyperlink on the internet).  Our suggestion would be to avoid underlined text unless you are including a hyperlink (or a title to something, though italics works just as well to differentiate titles from links).

Now we come to italics.  There are so many reasons to italicize text, but that's no reason to abuse the feature.  Italicizing usually occurs to show emphasis, to indicate a title or proper name, or to indicate a person's thoughts.  There are other times when the italics can show and separate dialogue (depending on other formatting options), and it is often used to show phrases that are written in another language so that the reader can differentiate between the base language and the language you are referencing.  For example, people complain ad infinitum about too much italicizing in text, and we're here to help lessen that problem.

Bottom line: use everything sparingly and with discretion.

4.  Punctuation and Capitalization

It will probably draw a groan from quite a few of you, but proper punctuation and capitalization really do make a text look more appealing on a computer screen.  Some effects that translate well in print simply do not have the same effect on a screen (and some of those effects don't even look that great in print).  With that in mind, it's best if you try to follow the common rules of punctuation and capitalization when formatting your text.  Of course there are exceptions, but those exceptions should be few and far between.  Where possible, avoid all lowercase letters or multiple punctuation marks like "!!!!!!!!!!!" or ".............".  Honestly, there is too much of a good thing.  The most ". . ." you should have in a row should be three (it's called an ellipsis), and there is never cause (unless you're being satirical or funny) to include more than one exclamation point or question mark.  With that in mind, capitalizing EVERY WORD is just as bad as using too much bold.  You are not trying to shout your text at your reader, and all capital letters are actually very difficult to read.  These are tools that should be used sparingly, as said before--especially if you want people to take you seriously.

Bottom line: follow the common rules of punctuation and capitalization.