Am I Obsessed With Document Design?

I never used to think that you could possibly go overboard when designing a document? I don't think it's too much to ask for a heading on page 3 to look the same as it does on page 26? Isn't it unacceptable to have a .25" top margin for a document that only takes up half a page? I always thought so; so when I see things that I feel are unexceptable, I feel it my duty to correct them ... everytime ... like clock work.

But an experience I had this morning makes me wonder when it become obsessive? In my company, I attend a developers meeting every week. One of my co-workers has created an agenda document that we've used the entire time that I've worked here. It is not an attractive agenda document at all; but since I wasn't in charge of it, I didn't worry about. Well, wouldn't you know it - he's on vacation for the next three weeks, and guess who got asked to be in charge of the agenda while he was gone?

I couldn't wait to open it! I changed the .25" top margin to 1" (yes, it was him!) I quickly removed the underline from the main title. Soon after, the font for the entire document was the same ... Arial - not Arial AND Times New Roman. I then proceeded to delete all the unnecessary spaces & returns, I fixed the table to look better, and I did a few other things to make the document look better. I spend about 5-7 minutes total on it. Once I was satisfied with the agenda document, I asked myself ... what all that really necessary? Is it going to make your developers meeting any better? Was that obsessive of me?

As I wrote previously, the important thing is that your collegues get the information that they need; but is that an excuse not to put forth a small amount of effort for a document? My mom always used to say "sometimes it's not value, it's the principle." The interesting thing about my co-worker is that he does the same thing with the applications; he's a good coder, but our testers always have to point out inconsistencies in his formatting. It's obviously not important to him; but that doesn't make him a bad person (the fact is that he's become a very good friend of mine). However it's important to me, and for now I consider it an asset.

So is it obsessive? Maybe, maybe not; but I don't think it ever hurts  anymore than someone who washes their hands over and over because of germs. I'm sure there's a technical term for it, a "phobia" for poorly designed documents even. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on what that word is; better yet, maybe we can come up with a new one!