The Characteristics of Documents Flashcards
What are the 8 main characteristics of a document?
Characters, paragraphs, sections, frames, headers, footers, footnotes and pages.
What is a character?
A character is any letter, number or symbol used in a document.
What is a paragraph?
Generally used when a long document is being created. Generally defined by the use of a carriage return at the end of text.
What is a section?
A section is a portion of a document in which page formatting options can be set. Section breaks are used to divide them apart. They are used to allow the layout of a document to be varied within a page between pages.
What is a frame?
An area of the page which can contain text or graphics. Their content can be changed without affecting the content of another. DTP’s tend to use them.
Are word processors frame based?
No. The position of each object on the page of a word processor depends on the position of everything else.
What are the header and footer?
A header is text which appears in the top margin of every page. Footer appears in the bottom margin of every page. (Although they don’t have to be the same/present on every page).
Generally, what would a header include?
The creators name, the title and/or the date.
Generally, what a footer include?
Page numbering, data or file name.
What is a footnote?
A footnote is used to briefly explain a word or phase by having a number next to the word of phrase which is then placed at the ‘foot’ (bottom) of the page.
Describe a page.
Pages are each printed side of paper containing the components of a document. May include text, graphics, tables or the contents page. Pages are also used to break a long document into chapters with each page being numbered.
What two documents do you combine in a mail merge?
Documents created in a word processor or DTP and a spreadsheet or a database.
What does mail merging do?
Mail merging allows the user to create and send a personalised version of the same document to many different recipients.
How do you create a mail merge?
The standard document is produced including merge fields. These are based on the fields that would be used as the data source. (Dear ). The data source and standard document are then merged.
How many documents are created each mail merge?
If there are 100 customer records held in the data source, the mail merge process would produce 100 documents.
What are the 4 main advantages of mail merging?
Documents can be produced very quickly, only one copy of the document needs to be proofread to ensure that all the others are correct, the data source can be used for many different mail merge processes and the standard letter/template can be saved and reused.
Describe the page size, settings and orientation.
The size of the page and the paper to be printed on can be selected by the user. The orientation is whether it’s portrait/landscape.
What are page margins?
The blank space around the edges of the page. Text and graphics are positioned in the printable area surrounded by the margins.
Describe text position/alignment.
The user can select the most appropriate alignment to meet their needs. Headings are often centred, but the user may also choose left, right or justified alignment.
Describe text font/size.
The user can also select one of many fonts for their text. They can emphasise words with the use of bold, italic or underline features. They will want to choose something appropriate. They also want appropriate font size.
Advantages of using clip art images?
Images are readily available, immediately. The use of clip art can reduce the cost of the design progress. You don’t need to purchase extra equipment such as scanners, or digital cameras.
