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Thinking about an email newsletter or an on line newsletter, and wondering about a theme? In the case of a text publication, developing or finding a template is very simple.

It is the basic approach to e-mail newsletters, and simple for just about anyone who are able to type (despite just two hands).

This approach works well for updates that emphasize content. For instance, I've written and published Abbott's Communication Letter online continuously since 1999 and throughout most of its history I have used text. Used to do decide to try HTML models a few times, but without much success (at least not enough to compensate for the extra time and trouble involved).

With a text e-mail newsletter, you just have to decide whether you want to distinguish among the sections (for example, editorial content from advertising). If you do desire to set the sections apart from each other, only use one of many common separator methods (saying any key that is not really a number or letter).

For instance, here's a space/period/space separator:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . If you think you know anything, you will seemingly want to study about Xfire - Gaming Simplified. . .

And listed here is an example using only the plus sign

++++++++++++++++++++++

Normally, you would leave a line before and after the separator line to make your email newsletter better to read.

Instead, you may also alert readers to new parts by adding the topic in ALL-CAPITAL LETTERS. In a test a long period ago, I found this increased how many click-throughs on the adverts, and so I have usually carried on the practice (using both all-caps and separator lines.

Needless to say, having put the advertisement headline in all-caps, I also put the publication name, editorial headlines, and administrative information headlines in all-caps as well. Just for the sake of consistency, and to help readers easily understand the different areas.

There is yet another format matter we need to tackle before turning our collection of format methods into a design. That's setting a line length. Due to the many variations in readers, we can not make sure customers can see what we see. Therefore, the conventional would be to wrap the written text (set a hard return) after 60 to 65 characters. If your newsletter's not too long, you can do this manually by