Principle 1: Consistency Creates Safety
By allowing students to focus on what matters most, consistent alignment can reduce anxiety and decrease cognitive load by creating a clear visual path through the information.
Take a look at these two images. They present the same content, but the left maintains consistent alignment and the right does not. What do you feel like as you look at each of them? How might you feel at the end of reviewing a full slide deck?
The good news is, maintaining consistent alignment doesn't have to be difficult or time-consuming. After creating each resource, do a quick review and check that you have:
- The same margin and padding throughout your document
- Consistent spacing between elements
- Uniform heading styles across all materials, including font and font size
- The same alignment strategy throughout (e.g. always include a line break after a new section, use consistent indentation for nested information, etc.
- Left-align body text for easier reading in English, avoiding the use of center alignment for large chunks of text
