Yesterday, I gave an STC Web seminar on using quick reference guides as part of a documentation set. (I’ve included a picture of how I used my wife’s earwarmer to work around the fact that the speakerphone feature on my new phones is less than desirable.) I answered a number of questions that participants typed into the meeting’s chat box and would like to pass them on. However, I ran into some technical difficulty when I tried to save the chat transcript, so I’m going from memory when writing these questions. These aren’t in any particular order other than the order in which I remembered them. I’ll also do my best to answer, especially now that I’m not on the spot.

What’s your favorite typeface for quick reference guides?

Given the audiences I write for, I anticipate that most of my guides are going to be printed, so I use a serif typeface for body text. I’ve gotten somewhat weary of Times New Roman—so little personality to go along with its readability—so I’ve gone to Cambria. (I know that Word 2007 has heading styles pre-programmed using Cambria, but I usually use sans serif typefaces for headings.) I think Cambria makes a good body typeface.

For headings, I may use Arial, Lucida Sans Unicode, or something similar. I don’t really care for Verdana because it’s so wide. And when you bold Verdana text, it blows up like a balloon.

How do you estimate how long it takes to create a quick reference guide?

That’s a tough question because it varies. How long a guide will take depends on how much of the content is text or images, how much of the content you can use from an existing help system, and so on. If you’re just starting to create quick reference guides, they may take you longer, but as you do more, you’ll probably get faster at them. But each one can take its own tender loving care, so it’s hard to say for sure.

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