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* '''White space''': White space is good. Unbroken tracts of unpunctuated text are bad. Unless you are using columns, ensure the margins are generous. | * '''White space''': White space is good. Unbroken tracts of unpunctuated text are bad. Unless you are using columns, ensure the margins are generous. | ||
* '''Font''': choose an easy-to-read font. | * '''Font''': choose an easy-to-read font. There are interesting arguments about whether serif or sans-serif are easier to read: it depends whether you are reading on screen or on a page. For our money Baskerville, Garamond and Georgia are lovely serif fonts, and Helvetica, Frutiger Light and Arial Narrow and lovely sans-serif fonts. | ||
* '''Paragraphs''': Format your paragraphs to have extra space at the end. 6pt is usually enough. | * '''Paragraphs''': Format your paragraphs to have extra space at the end. 6pt is usually enough. | ||
* '''Columns''': Consider putting longer standard terms documents into columns. Yes, that requires being a ninja at MS Word, but shorter lines of text are easier to read. It also forces you to keep paragraphs shorter. | * '''Columns''': Consider putting longer standard terms documents into columns. Yes, that requires being a ninja at MS Word, but shorter lines of text are easier to read. It also forces you to keep paragraphs shorter. | ||
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Don’t mix up the [[Boilerplate|dull stuff]] that you have to have because — well, everyone ''knows'' you have to have it — from the vital economic stuff that makes the contract tick, and over which prolonged jousting is inevitable. Why? Because if you don’t you can be guaranteed some dreary fusspot on the other side will launch into a broadside on your standard form custody terms to no obvious end other than his own parochial victory. Don’t invite him in to do that. | Don’t mix up the [[Boilerplate|dull stuff]] that you have to have because — well, everyone ''knows'' you have to have it — from the vital economic stuff that makes the contract tick, and over which prolonged jousting is inevitable. Why? Because if you don’t you can be guaranteed some dreary fusspot on the other side will launch into a broadside on your standard form custody terms to no obvious end other than his own parochial victory. Don’t invite him in to do that. | ||
For frequently-negotiated standard forms, consider putting your standard terms in an entirely different document from the frequently-negotiated economic and legal terms, and having the customer agreement as a termsheet style “Elections” document.<ref>For a good example of a “general terms” approach, see UBS’s [www.ubs.com/gfsterms GFS Suite]).</ref> This has a number of practical advantages once the document is in live: | For frequently-negotiated standard forms, consider putting your standard terms in an entirely different document from the frequently-negotiated economic and legal terms, and having the customer agreement as a termsheet style “Elections” document.<ref>For a good example of a “general terms” approach, see UBS’s [https://www.ubs.com/gfsterms GFS Suite]).</ref> This has a number of practical advantages once the document is in live: | ||
* It is simple to see a given customer’s deviations from the standard, because they are listed in the Elections document. There is no ploughing through a 60 page scanned .pdf from 2002 wondering what the standard was, and what bits of it were amended. | * It is simple to see a given customer’s deviations from the standard, because they are listed in the Elections document. There is no ploughing through a 60 page scanned .pdf from 2002 wondering what the standard was, and what bits of it were amended. | ||