Question

As a business writer, how do you select when to use a visual and the type of visual to use?

Answer 1

Visual aids acts as a powerful tool in enhancing the impact of presentations. The images presented and words can directly appeal to the audience’s imagination, adding power to the written word. In business writing visual aids can be used to illustrate a point thus creating an appeal to an individual's sense of sight. The visual aids through props, models, flip charts, posters, graphs, and charts help to illustrate a point in an effective manner.

As a business writer, I often require graphics as visual representations to support my text in a proposal, report, or similar documents. As the old saying goes, the picture is worth a thousand words, therefore preference will be using the graphics in my work. The types of graphics I often include figures, graphs, maps, charts, diagrams, photographs, drawings, and tables. Graphics can be also be used for depicting the words in business reports. Graphics helps me to communicate steps in an order more effectively than alone the words; and can also save space and cost of documents. Moreover are indispensable in demonstrating numerical and logical relationships