4   Standard Contents

Title Page / Home Page

The first page in a print manual is always the title page. The title page should carry the following information:

• manual title
• your organization’s name
• your organization’s logo

Some organizations put this information on the cover and don’t bother with a title page. However, if someone photocopies the manual, this important information may be lost since the cover cannot usually be copied easily.

It’s a good idea to offset print the title page onto cardstock. If you photocopied or laser printed the title page, the toner would transfer to the inside of the vinyl binder cover, leaving a messy introduction to your manual. The heavy cardstock also helps ensure that the first few pages, which receive the most wear, don’t tear out. Alternatively, you can use sheet lifters at the front and back.

Instead of offset printing the title page, you can enclose it in a clear plastic sheet protector. While a sheet protector looks a little less professional, it will prevent the title page from sticking to the inside of the binder and is strong enough to protect the front pages from tearing out.

While the cover is considered to be the first page of the manual, it never has a page number.

In an online manual, the title page is replaced with the homepage, and is often used differently. While it should show the manual title and your organization’s name and logo, it often includes links to the chapters of the manual, navigational buttons, and the copyright notice.

Home pages should also be colourful. Unlike print manuals, which are expensive to reproduce in colour, online manuals can use a variety of colours to make them visually more interesting or identify key features. Background ‘wallpaper,’ banners, navigational buttons, and other icons and graphics are available inexpensively from various online clip-art sources (sometimes called click-art). If used well, they can add to the visual appeal of your manual and help users find information. See Figure 4-1.

Figure 4-1: Home page of a sample online policy manual