Oh! I should add, though, if you do color the field titles, make sure they're all
one color, and not a bunch of different colors. Trying to give each field title a different color will hurt much more than it will help. @_@ Picking just
one color, though -- now that can add just the right amount of visual flair to tie the thing together. It's what I usually do when I can think of a color that I can associate with my character.
But uh, yeah, just look at the difference!
Name: Bobbie
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Appearance: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Personality: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
History: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
vs
Name: Bobbie
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Appearance: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Personality: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
History: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
I didn't
at all change the length of the placeholder text here, but, just a little bit of polish like this just makes it look so much...
neater. And it isn't very difficult to do. Beyond that, it also shows that you put a bit more thought into your CS than the first example would -- so you don't have to fluff up your writing to show that you care about what goes into the CS. But if you
do include lengthier content -- really anything more than a few lines -- then, adding that space and bolding the field titles also definitely helps with readability, more clearly separating one field from the next.
On a similar note, be sure to remove anything in parenthesis that clearly doesn't need to be in the actual CS.
For example, if your GM posts a CS skeleton that looks like this:
Name: (only need first names)
Age: (think high school age)
Appearance: (no anime pics)
Then
remove the parts in parenthesis before editing in your actual content. Keeping them in not only comes off as lazy but it can also make your CS look more cluttered and harder to read.
On a similar note,
don't align center. It does
not improve the look of your CS, and, again, can make it look more cluttered/hard to read.
You can
maybe get away with using center align if you have an image or line of text at the top of your CS (like if you want to include a meaningful quote or something), but, if so,
only center that opening bit. As for the actual content? Keep it aligned left. It will look
much more organized.
Oh! And, this is another small thing that's easy to fix and really helps a lot. If you do plan on including any images -- especially if it's, say, under the appearance field, and not placed above the CS as a whole, make sure that the image is set on the line
below the field title,
not on the same line as it.
When you're on the same line as the field title, you look like this,
Appearance:
Which just looks really weird. But when you remember to hit enter and go to the line below, you get
this,
Appearance:
Which looks
much better, especially when it's put within the context of the rest of the CS.
If you want your CS's to look better, well, these small tips are probably the best ways to go about doing it. You don't have to feel like you're "flowering" up your CS just by doing a few tiny things to make it look nicer. And, you don't have to fluff up the actual content, either. These are all just easy ways to show the GM that you've put at least a little thought into making your CS presentable, readable, and aesthetically pleasing. And they definitely help you avoid that bare-bones feeling of a scrunched-up, non-formatted CS.
As a GM, I don't really feel like I can
punish players for not following these rules, but, I do kind of groan when I see centered text or awkwardly-formatted images. And I tend to be a lot more eager to read a CS that's well-formatted than one that isn't. Of course I do try to actually focus on the content of the CS and judge it based on that, but, I gotta admit -- a CS with that little bit of polish just makes a good first impression on me.