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If your company standards permit, try going one size smaller on text size
(i.e., 12pt down to 11pt or 11pt down to 10pt). On a large document you
might be surprised how much space that saves. Also, reduce very slightly the
spacing between paragraphs, as well as spacing between headings and
paragraphs. You might also adjust your margins, even a text column increase
of 1/10 of an inch will help. I usually use a 1-inch (in very tight
situations a 0.9-inch) inside margin and a 0.7-inch outside margin
If you have any graphics that are not needed, remove them. If they are
definitely needed, see if you can reduce their size by a small percentage,
try a 5% to 10% reduction.
Shorten all sentences by rewriting to remove any unneeded words. My pet
peeve is usage of the word "the". I know I'll get arguments from journalism
majors (I'm a tech writer coming from an engineering background), but from a
technical viewpoint, if you can read the sentence without the word "the" and
the sentence still makes sense, take "the" out.
This may sound silly, but if you have a choice between a long word and a
short word, and the meaning is not changed, use the short word.
Hope this helps.
Nancy Kendall
Sr Documentation Analyst and Owner
Kendall Custom Documentation
