Tips and Techniques for Publishing Professionals

In this final installment of how to set up book pages for publishing, we look at section breaks in Microsoft Word. Section breaks let you do a number of things. The most important ones for our purposes are:

* Restart page numbers from section to section--between front matter and chapters, for example.

* Restart footnote and endnote numbers from chapter to chapter.

* Use different running heads from chapter to chapter.

Let's say you've got your whole book in one giant document. (Yes, that's how I like to work.) You'll now want to separate your chapters with section breaks. To do so:

1. If you're not already in Normal view, switch to it by clicking View > Normal. That will allow you to see the breaks you're going to insert.

2. Go to the first place you want to change page numbers, note numbers, and running heads. The first page of your preface will do nicely.

3. At the top of the page, insert a section break by clicking Insert > Break > Page break. Under "Section break types," select "Odd page" (if you want to go the traditional book-publishing route). Then click the OK button. Your document should now include a double-lined section break labeled "Section Break (Odd Page)." If you already had a manual page break there, get rid of it.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 at the beginning of each chapter in your book.

Microsoft, catering as usual to office workers rather than publishing professionals, has set up Word by default to have headers and footers from section to section be the "same as previous." That is, if you set up running heads in one section, they'll automatically continue into the next. But in book publishing you don't want them to be the same; you want them to be different.

One way to "unlink" them is to go to your second section (your preface, for example), click View > Header and Footer, and then click the "Same as previous" button on the Header and Footer toolbar. (To see which button is which, rest your mouse cursor over each button for a few seconds until the ToolTip appears.) Then repeat the procedure for each chapter (section) of your book. Failure to unlink headers and footers will eventually drive you mad.

An easier way to unlink them is to use the following macro:

Sub UnlinkHeadersFooters()
Dim curSection As Section, curHeader As HeaderFooter
For Each curSection In ActiveDocument.Sections
For Each curHeader In curSection.Headers
curHeader.LinkToPrevious = False
Next curHeader
For Each curHeader In curSection.Footers
curHeader.LinkToPrevious = False
Next curHeader
Next curSection
End Sub

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can find out here:

Once the headers and footers are unlinked, you can set up headers, footers, and page numbers for *each section* as explained in last week's newsletter:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1716147063

While you've got the Header and Footer toolbar available, click the Format Page Number button and tell Word how you want page numbering to work from the previous section to the current one. You can "continue from previous section" or "start at" a number you specify. If you're going from front matter (with Roman numerals) to a chapter (with Arabic numerals), "Start at" is the option you want to use.

And now for those note numbers:

1. Click Insert > Reference (in Word 2002+) > Footnote.

2. Select Footnote or Endnote as appropriate.

3. Click the Options button.

If you're using Footnotes, you can set note numbers to:

* Continuous (throughout the book--not recommended).

* Restart each section (chapter, that is; the traditional method).

* Restart each page (unorthodox but elegant).

With endnotes, only the first two options are available, since endnotes don't appear on each page.

Click the OK button to finish up.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Hilary Powers wrote:

Jack, is there any chance of making MegaReplacer see Language settings? My latest oops is in U.K. English throughout, and it'd have been pleasant to use MegaReplace to fix the files in one fell swoop. (It turns out that AutoCorrect, where a lot of my shortcuts lurk, is language specific, so I can't wait to find out--but it'd be a real enhancement.)

I replied:

How about using MultiMacro to do this? You could record a macro that:

1. Selects all.

2. Sets language.

Then have MultiMacro run the macro on your files.

Hilary responded:

I recorded the guts of the macro you described, which turned out to be

Selection.WholeStory

Selection.LanguageID = wdEnglishUS

Application.CheckLanguage = True

and stuffed it into the macros I use (via MultiMacro, of course) to set the working template for each job at the beginning. Hey presto! No more need to think about language settings.

You can learn about MultiMacro here:

http://www.editorium.com/14844.htm

____________________

John Eagleson wrote:

I'm trying to do something that is a kind of variation on MegaReplacer, but I haven't yet found a tool in your arsenal that does it.

A simple example:

I want to search for "January," and when I find it I want to be able to stop and edit the term. Depending on the context I may want to precede it with a nonbreaking space (20 January), follow it with a nonbreaking space (January 21), abbreviate it, or leave it as is.

When I'm finished I want to then hit or some other key and find the next instance of January.

When I'm finished January I want the macro to do the same with February, and so on.

Do you have a way to do that?

I replied:

My Go2Text macro will kind of do what you need. You can use it to find a word, such as "January," and all succeeding instances of "January," but once the word was found, you'd have to make the changes manually.

http://www.editorium.com/freebies.htm (scroll to the bottom of the page)

You wrote that the replacement would depend on the context, so one way to approach the problem is to figure out what the context is in each case. For example, one context would be "January" preceded by a space and one or more numbers. Another context would be "January" *followed* by a space and one or more numbers. In wildcard terms:

Find what:

([0-9]{1,2}) (January)

Replace with:

12

Find what:

(January) ([0-9]{1,2})

Replace with:

12

And so on.

Then, once you've identified the various contexts, it's a fairly simple matter to set up the wildcard Find and Replace strings (with February, March, etc.) to feed to MegaReplacer.

If you need more information on Find and Replace with wildcards, see the paper on advanced searching that came with MegaReplacer.

You might also be able to use some of the information in this newsletter article:

John responded:

I think I found one way to do what I'm trying to do with MegaReplacer.

In my example of finding all the names of the months and pausing at each one to allow editing, I want to be able to do this without typing the names of the months each time.

Solution:

1. Set up a file with the names of the months:

January|

February| etc.

Only the pipe is needed here since I'm not going to be replacing anything yet.

2. Run MegaReplacer with Mark Automatically checked. Now all the months are marked.

3. Search for the CheckMe character style. I use CTRL+PGDN to move from one month to the next (aka BrowseNext).

Thanks for your help--and your marvelous macros!

You can learn about MegaReplacer here:

http://www.editorium.com/14843.htm

Many thanks to Hilary and John for their questions and solutions.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Steve Hudson's Indexing Add-in

Steve Hudson, the Word Heretic, has done it again, with his Indexing add-in for Microsoft Word. If you're creating indexes in Word, you know about the difficulties involved, not the least of which is having no way to jump from an index entry to the text it refers to. Steve has solved that problem; his indexing add-in creates *clickable hyperlinks* from index page numbers to the pages they refer to. Click on a hyperlink and jump to the text, where you can tweak and twiddle to your heart's content. In addition, the add-in highlights the entries so you can actually *see* them for a change. You can learn more--and download the complete documentation--here:

http://www.geocities.com/word_heretic/Indexing.html

If you're indexing in Word, you owe it to yourself to try this excellent new product. And while you're at Steve's website, be sure to check out his other products (notably his books) and his programming and writing services:

http://www.wordheretic.com

After you've set up the pages of your book (as explained in the last newsletter), you'll need to set up headers and footers. Using Microsoft Word, you might think you'd find headers and footers under the Insert menu. Not so; they're under View. Why? Because your document *already* includes headers and footers. Every Word document does. But they're empty until you put something in them. Here's how:

1. Click View > Header and Footer. You'll now find your cursor in the Header pane, with a nice little toolbar that lets you do various things:

Insert Page Number

Insert Number of Pages (so you can create a footer like "Page 7 of 123")

Format Page Number (1, 2, 3; a, b, c; i, ii, iii; and so on. Include chapter number [1-1; 1-A]. Continue from previous section [neat!] or specify a starting number.)

Insert Date (useful for creating slug lines)

Insert Time (ditto)

[Activate] Page Setup (handy!)

Show/Hide Document Text (to keep things uncluttered while creating headers and footers)

[Set header and footer to] Same as Previous [section] (in case you're using columns, for example, in one of your chapters; I almost always turn this off)

Switch between Header and Footer

Show Previous [header or footer]

Show Next [header or footer]

Close Header and Footer

2. Skip the header of your first page (labeled "First Page Header"), which will be the opening page of your chapter and thus doesn't need a running head. To do so, click the button to Switch between Header and Footer.

3. You're now in the footer (labeled "First Page Footer") of your chapter's opening page. Do you want a page number? I do. To get one, click the Insert Page Number button. (If this were front matter, you could click the Format Page Number button and set your numbering to use Roman numerals.) I *don't* recommend creating a page number with Insert > Page Number, because it puts the page number into a frame.

4. Decide whether you want the page number on the left, center, or right of your page and make it so. The easiest way to do this--and the most heretical, since it doesn't use styles--is to click Format > Paragraph > Alignment and pick your pleasure.

5. Move to the next page by clicking the Show Next button. This will take you to the next page's footer (labeled "Even Page Footer"). Since we previously set up our document to have different first, left, and right pages, you'll need to insert another page number here; it won't just continue the numbering from the first page. Again, format the number as left, center, or right. Since this is an even (and therefore left, or verso) page, you may want to put the page number on the left.

6. Repeat step 5 for the footer on the next page, which will be a right-hand (recto) page. You may want to put the page number on the right.

7. Move to the previous page's header (verso; labeled "Even Page Header") by clicking the Show Previous button and then the button to Switch between Header and Footer. Type the text of your header into the Header pane. In book publishing, items that are more inclusive go on the left; items that are less inclusive go on the right. A few options:

LEFT RIGHT

Author Name Book Title

Author Name Part Title

Author Name Chapter Title

Book Title Part Title

Book Title Chapter Title

Part Title Chapter Title

8. Again, the easiest way to put the running head on the left, center, or right of the page is to click Format > Paragraph > Alignment. Since this is an even page, you may want to put the running head on the left.

9. Move to the next page's header (recto) by clicking the Show Next button. Type the text of your header into the Header pane. Since this is an odd page, you may want to put the running head on the right.

10. Set the font and point size for your running heads and page numbers by modifying their styles under Format > Style. You want them to match the rest of your text, right? While you're in there, make sure they're not set up with an automatic first-line paragraph indent, which will make them look funny on the page.

11. Adjust the space between headers, text blocks, and footers by clicking the Page Setup button and the Margins tab. Then set the distance "From edge" (of the paper) of the header and footer. This may take some experimentation to get right, but when you're finished, your pages should look pretty good.

12. Click the Close button to get back to your document text.

To see your handiwork, click View > Print Layout and set View > Zoom to Whole Page. Wow! (Note that your folios [page numbers] and running heads are automatically repeated on successive pages.)

You'll need to repeat this whole procedure for each succeeding chapter, and if all of your chapters are in one document, you'll need to separate them with section breaks. More on that next week.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Thomas C Dixon wrote:

I edited a book recently that showed two book pages per screen, with the pages numbered consecutively. I've read your article on page sizing, etc., but can't get this effect. How is it achieved?

I responded:

You can achieve what you're describing like this:

1. Click File > Page Setup.

2. Click the Margins tab.

3. Set Orientation to Landscape.

4. Set your document (under Multiple Pages in Word 2002) to 2 pages per sheet.

5. Apply to whole document.

6. Click OK.

7. Click View > Zoom.

8. Click Many Pages.

9. Select two pages.

10. Click OK.

Thanks, Thomas!

Dan A. Wilson wrote:

I think your position is the right one: it isn't a matter of TELLING people HOW TO ADJUST, but of REMINDING them TO REMEMBER to resize or zoom, or both. I, too, have seen countless cases of tennis-match-spectator neck syndrome caused by the use of a newly purchased monitor at full display max. Especially now that LCDs are so widely in use, it's important that users learn to adjust window sizes.

Almost all of my programs except Word and my browsers now run in windows that show my desktop wallpaper behind them on all four sides, because running them any larger than that on a 19" LCD is just plain silly unless you're viewing them from across the room. In Word, I either run single document pages at 80 to 90 percent zoom, or side-by-side pages at 75 percent, and the displays of the latter are STILL larger than those of pages at maximized display and 100 percent zoom on my 17" CRT on the other desk.

The advantage of the larger monitors today is that you can display MORE; using them to display the same old stuff LARGER is pointless for most programs, and an invitation to whiplash injuries.

Large LCD monitors have very high native resolution settings, and are optimized for those settings. Running a 17" LCD monitor at a resolution of 800 x 600 is not only bad for the monitor but bad for the eyes: even the best image available at that resolution on such a monitor will be fuzzy.

I use a 19" LCD with Word windows maximized but with my zoom set to 90% normally. Gives me a slightly larger-than-lifesize view of the page.

Most of the time, though, I use the taskbar right-click control to Tile Windows Vertically, so that I can have two different docs or two different views (or versions) of the same doc open side-by-side, each with its own toolbar. I set the zoom for each doc to 75% then, and the page on the screen is still about the size of an 8.5 x 11 sheet. This is great when I want to check text against the Biblio for presence and identity of entry info, for instance.

Thanks, Dan!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Ed Millis wrote:

Your readers might be interested in the Google search add-in. Previously only for Excel, it has now been updated in a Word form also [for both PC and Mac]. This is great! I use it all the time to search newsgroups for information on specific issues. You can find it here:

http://www.rondebruin.nl/Google.htm.

I must confess that, although I've used Word for many years, I've never really used all it could do. I love macros for doing repetitive stuff, but templates? styles? and all the other neat things? Never touched them. Your newsletter, I believe, is going to help me tremendously! Again, many thanks.

Thanks, Ed!

Two weeks ago, I explained how to calculate page margins when typesetting a book in Microsoft Word. I neglected, however, to explain how to set up the pages themselves. So here goes.

For most books, you'll need three different page layouts:

1. The first page of a chapter.

2. A left (verso) page.

3. A right (recto) page.

Dedicated typesetting programs allow you to set these up using "master pages" that act as page templates. Word lacks such a feature but still makes it possible to set up different kinds of pages. Here's how:

1. Create a new Word document.

2. Click File > Page Setup. On a Macintosh, click the "Margins" button.

3. Click the Layout tab. Notice that the preview shows only one page.

4. Under "Section start," select "Odd page" if you want every chapter to start on the traditional odd page, or "New page" if you want to let the chapters fall where they may. Yes, you can start chapters on even pages if you insist.

5. Under "Headers and footers," put a checkmark in the boxes labeled "Different odd and even" and "Different first page." The preview now shows two pages. Hey, this is starting to look like a page layout!

6. Go back to the Margins tab.

7. Notice that you can set margin size for top and bottom, left and right. In Word 2002 or later, under "Pages," select "Mirror margins" from the dropdown list. In Word 97, 98, 2000, or 2001, put a checkmark in the box labeled "Mirror margins." Notice that "Left" and "Right" have become "Inside" and "Outside."

8. Set the margins for your pages. (You can include extra for the gutter if your printing needs require it, but I try to avoid this.) See the newsletter for January 28 for more information:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1715887587

9. Click the OK button to put your decisions into effect.

Next week: Setting up headers and footers.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

I had some interesting responses to last week's feature article, "Size and Zoom." Some readers misunderstood (or I miscommunicated). The point of the article wasn't "Here's how to size your Word window." It was "Hey! Size your Word window!" Apologies to those who thought the article was too elementary.

And many thanks to Dan A. Wilson and Eric Fletcher, expert editors both, who sent the following useful messages:

Dan wrote:

I think your position is the right one: it isn't a matter of TELLING people HOW TO ADJUST, but of REMINDING them TO REMEMBER to resize or zoom, or both. I, too, have seen countless cases of tennis-match-spectator neck syndrome caused by the use of a newly purchased monitor at full display max. Especially now that LCDs are so widely in use, it's important that users learn to adjust window sizes.

Almost all of my programs except Word and my browsers now run in windows that show my desktop wallpaper behind them on all four sides, because running them any larger than that on a 19" LCD is just plain silly unless you're viewing them from across the room. In Word, I either run single document pages at 80 to 90 percent zoom, or side-by-side pages at 75 percent, and the displays of the latter are STILL larger than those of pages at maximized display and 100 percent zoom on my 17" CRT on the other desk.

The advantage of the larger monitors today is that you can display MORE; using them to display the same old stuff LARGER is pointless for most programs, and an invitation to whiplash injuries.

Large LCD monitors have very high native resolution settings, and are optimized for those settings. Running a 17" LCD monitor at a resolution of 800 x 600 is not only bad for the monitor but bad for the eyes: even the best image available at that resolution on such a monitor will be fuzzy.

I use a 19" LCD with Word windows maximized but with my zoom set to 90% normally. Gives me a slightly larger-than-lifesize view of the page.

Most of the time, though, I use the taskbar right-click control to Tile Windows Vertically, so that I can have two different docs or two different views (or versions) of the same doc open side-by-side, each with its own toolbar. I set the zoom for each doc to 75% then, and the page on the screen is still about the size of an 8.5 x 11 sheet. This is great when I want to check text against the Biblio for presence and identity of entry info, for instance.

Eric Fletcher wrote:

One of my favorite techniques to pass on to friends with similarly-aging eyes is to use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out. Most Microsoft applications will zoom in and out when the CTRL button is pressed while rolling the wheel. I'm not sure what the Mac equivalent is but I assume there would be one.

In "Normal" view with wrap to window on, zooming in increases the font size and wraps the text in whatever size window you have available. Zooming to a much larger size temporarily is great to be able to differentiate between accents or footnote numbers.

In "Print" view, zooming way out to 10% lets you see thumbnails of many pages at once (15x7 with my current monitor settings). You can't read anything of course, but you can get somewhere within the document very quickly if you recognize the structure (say for chapter starts, tables of contents, tables, or graphics): just click in the page and zoom in.

The other use I've found for this capability recently is in conjunction with the "find all" capability for either Find or select all in the style task pane. When elements are selected--and therefore highlighted--many will be off the current screen. If you zoom out, you can see more selections at once. Of course, clicking to be able to zoom in removes the selection highlight but since both the Find dialog and task pane are modal, it is easy to reinstate the highlights to see any local to where you clicked.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Want to more about book design and page layout? Here are a couple of good places to get started:

Jacci Howard Bear's graphic design tutorials and procedures:

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/graphicdesign/

John Magnik's typography and page layout tutorials:

http://www.typography-1st.com/typo/txt-lay.htm

In past newsletters, I've sometimes discussed aspects of typesetting in Microsoft Word:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708754845

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708956278

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711888513

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711932079

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1712050217

One item I haven't addressed is how to calculate page margins *for publication,* which is not the same as just clicking File > Page Setup and putting in some numbers. If you needed to set up page margins for a printed book, for example, you'd need to set your margins to accommodate the size of your page and the text block on your page. This is not the same as *paper* size, which we'll say is 8.5 by 11 inches, a U.S. standard.

Let's say you want your *page* size (the size of your book) to be 7.5 by 9 inches. Here's what you'd do:

1. Calculate the margins you'd need to set to obtain the trimmed page size. (If you were using crop marks, this would be the measurement between them and the edge of the paper.)

- For the side margins, 8.5 minus 7.5 equals 1 inch. Divide that inch in half because, by golly, you have two side margins. That gives you a margin of .5 inch on each side of the page.

- For the top and bottom margins, 11 minus 9 equals 2 inches, divided in half equals a 1-inch margin for top and bottom.

2. Calculate the space from the edges of your *text block* to the top, bottom, and sides of your page. For convenience, let's say you're going to have 1 inch all around, but you could make those measurements anything you wanted. If it's 1 inch, then you'd just add 1 inch to the side margins, making 1.5 inches for each, and 1 inch to the top and bottom margins, making 2 inches for each.

4. Finally, click File > Page Setup and set your margins according to your calculations: side margins should be 1.5 inches, and top and bottom margins should be 2 inches.

Now when you type in your text, you'll get a text block of, let's see, 8.5 - (1.5 + 1.5) = 5.5 inches wide, and 11 - (2 + 2) = 7 inches high.

Depicted graphically (sort of), here's what we've created:

-----------------

| ------------- |

| | --------- | |

| | | xxx xxxx| | |

| | |xx xxx xx| | |

| | |xxx x xxx| | |

| | |x xx xxxx| | |

| | | xxxx xxx| | |

| | |xx xxx xx| | |

| | |xxx x xxx| | |

| | --------- | |

| ------------- |

-----------------

The smallest box, in the middle, is the text block, 5.5 by 7 inches.

Out from that is the trim size (page size), 7.5 by 9 inches.

And the outside border, of course, is the paper size, 8.5 by 11 inches.

You can adjust the position of header and footer on the page by modifying their paragraph style to include space before and after as needed.

If you need to add crop marks, you should check out our WordSetter program, which will create them for you--yes, even in Microsoft Word:

http://www.editorium.com/14000.htm

http://www.editorium.com/wordsetter/TH_10.htm

Thanks to Dorian Cougias for suggesting this topic.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Autoformatting in Tables

Steve Hudson wrote:

You cannot add new table types to the Table Autoformat list, nor can you edit existing ones.

HOWEVER, you *can* get many more autoformat layouts by setting various properties of the autoformat to FALSE. For example, setting them all to false for table style normal gives you an invisible (borderless) table. By using grid with no first column, font changes, or first row, you get a nice boxed grid. You can also set the default line width for tables as well.

Anything more complex has to be handled by first inserting a table and then styling it up via macro. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, this is accomplished by styling the table, then styling the first row, then styling the first column.

In Word XP we get table styles (they are making styles even more abominable by giving us different flavours), so I am guessing it MAY be possible to set autoformats of your own to a greater degree. Until they work properly however, I ain't investigating them.

An extract from my Word Spellbook (available from http://www.wordheretic.com):

Auto-formatting or custom default tables (Word 2000)

Highly specialized custom formats are difficult (when not impossible) to do. Very simple formats are somewhat easier and more likely to succeed. If you are prepared to bend your style guide to what is possible and what is not, you can get some satisfactory automatic results without having to resort to macros.

You can also just use Autotext entries to store a pre-formatted table in--you can drag these Autotext entries onto a menu if required.

As a quick aside, when dealing programmatically with tables, there are two subtle tricks. One is the .range.cells(n) object that serializes all the cells in the selected range. This tables(1).range.cells(k) is an easier way to address the collection. Secondly, you can do groovy table stuff via the selection object that you can't via a range . . .

Back to the plot. Inspect the Insert Table > AutoFormat dialog. To get all your tables inserted with invisible borders, select the simple 1 format and CLEAR all the little checkboxes. Viola! Problem solved.

Whatever rows and columns I give it will be the default that is used from there on in when I tick "Use this as the default style."

To extend this concept, you are NOT limited to JUST the formats presented. You can also use just parts of them! We did this above and used NO PARTS to give us NO styling--or an auto-invisible table.

For example, many people could get away with Grid 5 with the font option cleared to make themselves a nice grid.

________________________

Rob Little wrote:

First, in 2002, any new table style becomes a table autoformat (it shows up in the table autoformat dialog).

Second, as for basing your table style on an empty style, use "Table Normal." Table normal is statically defined (like "Default Paragraph Font" for character styles) and cannot be changed by any user. (This is different than the "Normal" paragraph style which can be edited by users). "Table Grid" is the default table style because it includes a Grid border (among other things).

Here are a couple of things to know about table styles:

* Table styles cannot define "structural" elements of a table (merging of cells, etc). This means they cannot define the width of cells or the height of rows (changing the width of cells from row to row implicitly merges cells, for example).

* All table autoformats in Word 2002 are Table Styles and can be customized by the user. (New styles can be based on them, too.) Conversely, this means that anything you see done in the table autoformats can be built from scratch through the table styles user interface.

* Table styles define character, paragraph, and table/cell/row properties. These properties are evaluated *before* the paragraph style's properties (order of calculation is TableStyle + ParaStyle + CharStyle + DirectFormatting = Calculated Properties). For example: If your table style defines the "Whole Table" as being "Arial," then you'll see "Arial." If you apply a paragraph style that applies "Courier," then "Arial" + "Courier" = "Courier" (because the paragraph style wins).

* When you apply a table style, the character and paragraph properties of the table are *not* reset. This is different than paragraph styles, which reset the character properties of the paragraph before applying the paragraph (with some exceptions). So, if you have a table which has a lot of direct character/paragraph formatting (for example, fonts, sizes, justification, and so on), and you apply a Table Style (or Table Autoformat), that direct formatting will still be there (and will beat any table style properties). If you want to get rid of that direct formatting, select the table and choose Edit/Clear/Formats (or click Clear Formatting on the Styles and Formatting taskpane). This will reset the table contents to just the table style. (You can clear formatting before or after applying the table style; it makes no difference.)

* When you use the "Applies to" part of table styles (this is used in almost all autoformats), you are telling Word to run a set of rules against your table when it applies formatting. For example, if you tell it to format the "First Row" with bold text, then every time the table changes, Word makes sure to format the first row with bold text--even if a new first row is inserted. In Word 2000 and before, the table autoformats were "static"--once the last row (for example) was formatted, if you inserted a new last row, you would end up with 2 rows looking like the last row. In 2002, the last row recalculates, and you get just one last row. This allows things like banding (every other row shaded, for example).

* There is a delicate interaction between table styles and the Normal style. Recall that the paragraph style is applied on top of the table style. This means that any formatting you have in your Normal style will almost always override your table style formatting (I say almost because not *all* styles are based on "Normal"). For example: If your Normal style has "Arial" in it, and you apply a table style that defines "Courier," you will see Arial. The paragraph style wins. There is a way around this, but it would take some space to explain, so I'll provide the solution if people ask for it (or I could leave it as an exercise for the reader). Are there really people still reading at this point?

* Because of the interaction between the Normal style and table styles, there is an even more delicate interaction with font sizes. First, you just plain can't force the table to use 10-point text. If you set the table style to 10 points, it won't apply it. I really don't want to try to explain why.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I think everything above is accurate, but it's late and its entirely possible that I flubbed something up. Feel free to send me comments or corrections and I'll incorporate them.

Thanks to Steve and Rob for all of this useful information.

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RESOURCES

I recently changed my Web browser's home page from Google to Refdesk.com. Why? Because Refdesk includes a Google search box *and* a bunch of useful references that I've already had occasion to use in editing. Maybe you'll find it helpful too:

http://www.refdesk.com/instant.html