Visual and Verbal

The connection between the visual and verbal is crucial. Visuals without context can be meaningless. Charts, graphs and pictures unlabeled do not add anything to a document. They have to be put into context by adding the verbal description. The visual must be accompanied by the verbal. Kostelnick said, "By establishing correlations between the visual and the verbal, these approaches provide a theoretical background for understanding the rhetoric of design" (56). The verbal aspect to a visual changes the meaning of the visual and aids comprehension.

Visual aspects of a document can also include enlarging text, italicizing, underlining, etc. Enlarging text or making it bold can draw necessary attention to the text. But not all changes to text are necessary. It is important to interpret what the changes to do the intended message. "A cursory analysis of the context, then, tells us that visual heightening is not an appropriate rhetorical strategy here" (59). The changes can draw unnecessary attention to an aspect of the message that the author did not intend to highlight and take the attention from the point of the text.

Another aspect of the visual part of the document is style or supra-textual structuring. "Supra-textual cues create visual coherence among units of a document and, occasionally, among documents in a series" (61). Supra-textual structuring can be lines, page numbers, titles, etc. This signals the reader that new sections are coming, or that changes are occurring in the structure and direction of the document. In my project I am using supra-textual elements extensively. The guidebook has many sections and I signal each new segment with a heading and a line to signal to the reader that a new subject is going to be discussed.