Your own website making machine Powerful and simple cutting edge networks of websites for schools HomeHome pageThe front page, the diary, the jumping off point for everything StoriesMain list of pages All our main pages, jump into who, what and why DiscussJoin our discussion group Come on in and start communicating those ideas, just join up or log in MembersA list of all our site members If you want to be anonymous with-hold your name, use something like Mickey Mouse, or Anonymous Coward Email usNeed to tell the webmaster... Get in touch straight away! If we need to we'll pass on your comments to the right person About usEverything about us Read more about who we are, and why we're doing this
We build and run sites for schools. Killer, kicking sites. Sites you'll love.
Site structure
Home
Create About
How much? What users say Legal Legals 4 kids More Stats Educational uses of blogs Bloom's taxonomy & blogs Case Studies Supporting the curriculum
Lesson Plans
Using text Text and graphics Different audiences Further reading
Parts
How tos Resources Talk about Uses of effects Feedback Good & bad links
Link or quote Schools' banner ads Curriculum Online FAQs Thumbnail interface Group brains Don't do this on your website
News Departments
Members
About us
We want to and will make it easy for schools to keep their staff, pupils, parents, partners, other stake-holders and wider community informed, updated and engaged.
Now, by merely typing in the text you can do it too!
It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.
We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.
Our killer features are:
Superb content management and blog software. Excellent Google optimisation.
An email to weblog interface, making updating your school blog a doddle.
Top draw support and feedback.
Try a demo or build your
Now, by merely typing in the text you can do it too!
It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.
We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.
Our killer features are:
Superb content management and blog software. Excellent Google optimisation.
An email to weblog interface, making updating your school blog a doddle.
Top draw support and feedback.
Try a demo or build your
30 day free trial
school website yourself. What will you write today's school news to be?Discuss: uses of text effects
How to use
| Below are some ideas for discussion on the uses of text effects. There are age old conventions for their use and their mis-use. |
| The human eye is very receptive to differences in brightness within a text body or "blackness" of text. |
| Italic <i> |
| Italic is an emphasis. |
| Italics can be used for whole lines, paragraphs or individual words. Italics are harder to read than the normal, or roman typeface. Whole passages of italic text, therefore, should be avoided. |
| Single italicised words in a paragraph do not stand out so much, and are better for a context difference only while the text is being read. Italics are for words that whisper. Traditionally, italics are used for marking words or passages that have a different context, such as words from foreign languages or other new words, book titles or other words that carry a title or quotes or words that are personal, or maybe made up. |
| If a passage is entirely in italic and something needs to be italicised for emphasis, switch back to normal or roman. |
| Bold <b> |
| Bold is stronger emphasis. |
| Bold makes text much darker than the surrounding normal text. |
| Bold can be used for whole lines for subheadings when there is no size change, or in a large font size for main headings. |
| A single word in bold in a paragraph draws the eye, and is recommended for keywords the reader may be looking for. Boldface text strongly stands out and should be used for keywords that are important to the subject of the text—for easy visual scanning of the text. |
| Bold can be thought of as shouting. (Though this shouldn't be confused with the very bad netiquette of USING CAPITALS FOR LONG PASSAGES OF TEXT, WHICH IS ALSO SHOUTING.) |
| Don't use bold in small sized passages, as the bold text can merge together resulting in unreadable text. |
| Don't use it on words that have no meaning. |
| If a passage is entirely in bold and something needs to be bolder for emphasis, use normal or roman. |
| Underlining <u> |
| Underlining should be avoided, stylistically. It was thought as being the poor man's italics. These days an underlined word will look like a linked word, and will confuse the reader. |
| Underlining can be used on special occasions, but not very often. |
| Font face |
| It is also possible to highlight words by changing the typeface. For example, if the paragraph is in serif emphasising words or passages in sans serif. Though this is quite an archaic paractice. |
| Bold and italic together |
| For over-emphasis within a text, words can be both bold and italicised. Though this use should be very unusual. |
| Try to keep a whole webpage, weblog posting or anything and everything, in the same type face. Variation and contrast can be achieved through bold, italic, font size and/or heading. This avoids clashing visual styles. |
| It also saves time mucking around, and creates impact through simplicaity. |
| The HTML default size is 3. Font sizes 1 - 2 are smaller than normal while 4 - 7 are bigger. |
| For the semantic web, font sizes should be used within passages, when there is no meaning involved. Headings <h1> - <h6> should be used for exactly that—headings. Headings add a line break in any case and thus cannot be used in the middle of a passage. |
| Font size can be used for drawing the reader in further, just like in newspaper items. For example, a large headline, then an introductory passage in a larger font then the main body in a normal sized font. |
| Again font colour is not semanitc, it is purely visual. In other words, a computer or web robot would ignore font colour. It adds nothing to the meaning of text, just adds visual impact. |
| Use it for fun. Use it to make whole passages stand out. |
| Be careful to ensure that colours are strong enough to read. For example, yellow text on white is generally very bad for reading, unless the font size is very large. Also, avoid contrasting colours, this can be very jarring to the eye, and may force some readers to skip your text. |
| Wikipedia: emphasis in typography |
| About.com: Setting type in italics |
| About.com: Using bold type |
| The Chicago Manual of Style. For advanced, editors and writers. |
