A good first impression makes the difference; a document that appears unreadable will probably not be read.

Just as your business attire makes a clear statement about your professionalism, the look of the material you write also makes a statement. If the page is sloppy or looks bad, you may be questioning your experience. If the content sounds arrogant, out of date, or unreadable, you may have inadvertently set up a negative response.

Before submitting your document, take a good look at it. Does it look tempting? Or is it unpleasant? The blank space you see is not simply an absence of print; draws the reader’s eye to the nearest black. If there is too much black, it looks too hard to read and readers are reluctant to dive in. They can set it aside, flip through it here and there, or just throw it away right away. Whatever they do, you haven’t impressed them.

So if there aren’t enough whitespace in your document, add some. How? Split any paragraph that is more than two and a half inches long. Use lists. Maintain good margins. Or create a wide column for the text and a narrower column for the “extracted quotes”. By the way, quotation marks are an ideal technique to use in dense documents because they lighten the overall look while repeating and drawing attention to an important phrase or sentence in the text.

Conversely, if there is too much white space, the material appears disorganized and unreadable. Of course, you may have a paragraph that is only one sentence long. But if all your paragraphs are single sentences, the document will look like the writer doesn’t really understand what a paragraph is. Fix it up.

Here’s how to improve the appearance of all your documents.

• Think of white space as an important component of the letter or document. The margins should frame the material, and the text should not appear too dense to read.
• Try to keep the letters to one or two pages. If you have a lot of information to convey, use a cover letter and enclose the information.
• Avoid loose things, like a single sentence on a second page.
• Use lists to efficiently move the reader’s eye through information and to add white space.
• Keep paragraphs to a maximum of four sentences. In a letter, remember to close with a separate “Call to Action” paragraph; don’t write a one paragraph letter.

What you say is important to the reader. only if they bother to read. When you make your material look easy to read,will actually read. When your document looks accessible, it is. The truth is, whether we like it or not, appearance counts.