New Guidelines For Spreadsheets

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a new spreadsheet style focused on readability, emphasizing text, graphics, and mathematics, contrasting with traditional programming-inspired styles and providing detailed guidelines and examples.

Contribution

It introduces a novel style for spreadsheets prioritizing readability, challenging existing programming-based conventions, and offers detailed rules and an illustrative example.

Findings

Proposes a readability-focused spreadsheet style

Contrasts new style with traditional programming style

Provides detailed guidelines and an example

Abstract

Current prescriptions for spreadsheet style specify modular separation of data, calcu1ation and output, based on the notion that writing a spreadsheet is like writing a computer program. Instead of a computer programming style, this article examines rules of style for text, graphics, and mathematics. Much 'common wisdom' in spreadsheets contradicts rules for these well-developed arts. A case is made here for a new style for spreadsheets that emphasises readability. The new style is described in detail with an example, and contrasted with the programming style.