By Jeff Rubin
The Newsletter Guy

Make your newsletter look like they were designed by a professional by avoiding these common design errors:

1. Too much white space on the page.
2. Too little white space on the page.
3. Inconsistent width of columns within a document.
4. Long lines of small type and short lines of large type.
5. Awkward word spacing.
6. Using two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence.
7. Starting columns of text at different distances from the top of the page.
8. Graphic accent overkill: too many boxes, rules and screens.
9. Excessive use of underlining.
10. Captions with long lines in small type.
11. Inappropriate hyphenation.
12. Headlines and subheads set at the bottom of a column.
13. Too many small photos.
14. Text and background that run together due to lack of contrast.
15. Mixing too many typefaces.

REPRINT POLICY: This article may be reprinted in your publication, company newsletter, etc., provided that you give a by-line (by Jeff Rubin) and print the following credit exactly as written. Please send a tear sheet or electronic copy:

Jeff Rubin, a former newspaper reporter and editor and instructor at The Learning Annex in San Francisco, is The Newsletter Guy, owner of the Pinole, California-based newsletter publishing firm of the same name (www.thenewsletterguy.com). He's written and designed more than 1,600 company newsletters since starting his business in 1981. He may be reached via e-mail at jeff@TheNewsletterGuy.com or by phone at (510) 724-9507.