Formatting-centric

Formatting-centric describes an approach, mindset, or activity that places primary importance on the visual arrangement, structure, and presentation of data, text, or content, often to the detriment of substance, functionality, or accessibility. It prioritizes aesthetics and the adherence to specific style guidelines, templates, or design elements over the underlying information being conveyed or the user experience. While formatting is undoubtedly important for readability and comprehension, a formatting-centric perspective tends to overemphasize superficial aspects, potentially leading to information that's difficult to navigate, lacks sufficient context, or caters to a narrow audience based on its prescribed structure. This can manifest in areas such as document creation, website design, data visualization, and presentation development.

Formatting-centric meaning with examples

• The marketing team's new website design was undeniably beautiful, showcasing stunning animations and a sleek layout. However, the final product was criticized as formatting-centric, because usability testing revealed significant navigation issues and critical information that was buried in visually appealing but obscure layouts. Customers struggled to find basic product details, leading to frustration and lost sales, illustrating how excessive emphasis on aesthetics hindered functionality.
• During the project's initial phases, the developers adopted a formatting-centric approach to their code, spending countless hours ensuring perfect indentation and commenting styles, while neglecting the fundamental logic and efficient algorithms. Consequently, the project experienced significant delays and the codebase, though visually tidy, was prone to bugs and hard to maintain, due to poor underlying architectural foundations as all the effort was focused in its look and feel.
• The presenter delivered a PowerPoint presentation that wowed the audience with its custom animations and elaborate transitions. However, the substance was superficial, consisting of few in-depth points and much more screen real estate dedicated to fancy images and fonts. Many attendees described the presentation as formatting-centric, as the focus had clearly been on entertainment, sacrificing the depth of information that could have been shared.
• The academic journal rejected the submitted manuscript, citing a formatting-centric review process. The editor focused primarily on rigid adherence to pre-defined style guides and the layout of the document (margins, font, footnotes) and, ultimately, overlooked the originality and importance of the research findings, the content being relegated to an afterthought in favour of compliance.