Emphasis Example
This page overuses emphasis blocks on purpose. Use it with the Emphasizing Content task in the Advanced training.
This is a practice page. The fictional research section below uses five emphasis blocks in a row. Open the Advanced training’s Emphasizing Content task, decide which blocks you’d remove or consolidate, and then check your thinking against the answer key at the bottom of the page.
Research in the Example Department
Our faculty and students study how cities can adapt to a changing climate. Last year, our research teams worked with more than 30 communities across North Carolina.
“We are really proud of the research we do here, and we think you will love it too.”
Dr. Jordan Example
Department Head
$40 million
in research funding last year
$40 million
in research funding
30+
partner communities
12
research labs
Explore Graduate Research
Answer key
Show the answers
There’s more than one good answer, but here’s one way to fix this section. Video 6 puts it this way: “when everything is emphasized, nothing is.”
- Remove the Quote. It’s generic. Anyone could have said it, so it doesn’t add credibility. Save the Quote block for a short, specific line from a real person, and don’t use more than one per section.
- Remove the Big Fact. Its $40 million statistic already appears in the Fact Row. A Big Fact should be the one number that anchors the section, and a Fact Row builds a case with a few related data points. Here, the Fact Row does that job better.
- Keep the Fact Row. Its three related numbers back up the paragraph above it.
- Keep only one of the Spotlight and the Button Spotlight. Both are high-emphasis blocks pointing to the same place. Keep the Spotlight if you have a strong image and story to tell, or the Button Spotlight if you just need a clear call to action.
Try the test from the video: could this emphasis come from well-written body copy and a good heading instead? For the Quote here, the answer is yes.
After these changes, the section has one paragraph, a Fact Row and one call to action. That’s two emphasis blocks instead of five.