Rip open your average electrical cable (having carefully ensured it is not
connected to anything!) and what do you see? You see a bunch of smaller wires,
each one with a different color used for its insulation. Inside each of these
is solid wire or possibly strands of copper. Electricity cannot see and it does
not respond to color. All the wires could have the same color for all it cares.
So why the color? Because it is a very useful way for humans to differentiate
the wires.
Obvious huh?
Indeed.
Rip open your average electronic manuscript (having carefully ensured that
nobody minds!) and what do you see? You see a bunch of files, most of which
contain words and paragraphs and text of all sorts. It is almost certainly a
black and white world in which black text sits against a white background. Why
should it be any different? After all, computers cannot see. They do not respond
to color (generally). Why would we possibly want to add color? Well, for the
same reason we add color to electrical wires. It is a very intuitive and simple
way to differentiate different types of content.
Imagine you are working on a long document. It contains quotations, rough notes,
comments aimed at your collaborators, content that still needs to be verified.
It is split into 6 hierarchical levels. It has tables, graphics, footnotes,
end-notes, cross-references, company names, bibliographic references, procedure
recipes, FAQ's...
At one level of course, it is all just words. Black words on a white background.
However, at another level, all these different types of things are different.
While working on a long document it is very useful to be able to quickly, visually
differentiate these different types. The distinctions may fade to black for
final production but on the way there...why not use color to help you do your
work?
Most word processors these days have the concept of "styles". Most
style systems let you control both the foreground and background colors of your
documents. It is a simple matter to set up your styles to make the various semantic
distinctions in your documents jump off the page. The louder, the more garish
the contrasts the better!
I find that the color coding makes it much easier for me to flick rapidly through
a big document online and understand its component parts. I find wholesale rearrangements
of color-coded documents much easier than when I work in black and white. Great
for work-in-progress of all kinds. When my work is done and my document is nearing
final production state - I simply revert to black text on a white background.
I do not need to modify the document to do this. I just change the style sheet
and poof! A 350 page manuscript is now black and white.
A simple but extremely effective technique. I also recommend this technique
to organizations that have "house style sheets" but are having difficulty
getting authors to use them. Because the garish colors leap off the page at
you, it is easy to see where they are being used and where they are not being
used.
