Mini-cases and boxes

1
Mini-cases and boxes

• Examples to illustrate your point

2
What is a mini-case?

• Short example to illustrate your point
• 1-3 paras, in a box
• Self-contained
• Can be understood by itself
• Drawn from real world

3
Make it interesting

• Give it a catchy title
• Use boldface and bullets if needed
• Include an illustration or photo
• If useful and if space
• Cite the source if needed

4
Make it interesting

• Tell a story about real people, project or event
• Use human interest
• Eg, story of farmer give her name and village
• Show links to policy
• How policy affects or benefits people
• How it supports the need for policy change
• Show why it is important
• Think like a news editor So what?

5
Other boxes

• Information that stands by itself
• Difficult to fit into text without disrupting
  flow
• Good for lists

6
More on boxes

• Important design element
• Break up the sea of text on page
• Refer to them in the text
• See Box 1
• But dont have too many boxes
• Average of 1 per page is enough
• If too many boxes
• Ask if all are needed
• Try to integrate into text

7
Still more on boxes

• Dont use Word Text Boxes
• They get deleted easily
• Some desktop publishing programs ignore them
• Put contents of each box in a single-cell Word
  table
• Or mark with BEGIN BOX and END BOX