Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Using the Media Gallery

Clip art—reusable drawings, photos, and the like—derives its name from the not-so-distant past, when designers actually clipped images from a book and pasted them into documents. The electronic versions of these tools are easier to use, but the effect is the same: to enliven an informal document. Much depends on the audience you want to reach and the effect you want to achieve.

A dynamite piece of clip art can tell a story worth a thousand words. A really poor piece of clip art hinders communication, leaving people scratching their heads about the possible obtuse meaning of it all.

Gratuitous clip art—that is, clip art that doesn't relate to the topic at hand or otherwise impedes the flow of your documents—distracts your ...