In the early days of printing, the "source" for the words on a printed page was the metal type used in the press. Once the pages had been printed, the type was removed from the printing forms and resorted into bins, completely destroying the source text. Producing a new edition of the book meant setting, proofreading, and correcting the type all over again--an enormous investment of time and money.
Too often people still do essentially the same thing today, even though we now have the technology (and the necessity!) to preserve source text (which is now electronic) and create new editions from it in a variety of forms:
* Printed books.
* Web pages.
* Electronic reference libraries.
* PDF (Adobe Acrobat) documents.
* Palm and PocketPC documents.
* Dedicated e-book reader documents.
And so on.
FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION
Because people often need to produce a document (or parts of a document) in a variety of forms, a document's structure is far more important than its appearance--and in fact, its appearance should be derived from its structure. This is true because a document's appearance will change depending on the form in which it is presented. For example, a document presented on the printed page may look very different from the same document presented on a Web site.
In traditional typesetting, a chapter heading might be designed and typeset as 24-point Palatino. However beautiful that may be, it gives us no clue that the type is a chapter heading--information that would be crucial on a Web page or in an electronic reference library, where chapter headings might be used for linking, navigation, and so on. In other words, the heading's *function* is much more important than its *form.* Even in a particular printed book, if one chapter heading is set in 24-point Palatino, *all* of the book's chapter headings should be set in 24-point Palatino, because that signals the reader that any type so displayed *is,* in fact, a chapter heading. In type design, as in all other kinds of design, form should *follow* function.
Now consider what would happen if you had to put 300 different books together for an electronic reference library or Web site and needed to display all of the chapter headings for navigational purposes in a single table of contents. If chapter headings were electronically marked *as* chapter headings, it would be a piece of cake. If not, it would be a nightmare.
That's why it's no longer adequate to simply set type as 24-point Palatino. Instead, the type's *function* needs to be designated in a consistent, standardized way. Fortunately, that is not hard to do. In Microsoft Word, it's done with styles.
USING STYLES
Paragraph styles are a way to specify the function of a block of type and then assign a form (the type's appearance) to that function. As an example, consider the subheading above, "Using Styles." In a book, it might be formatted with a paragraph style named Heading 3, designating the line as a subheading. Heading 3 might format the line as 16-point Verdana type. However, it would be easy to redefine Heading 3 as 28-point Garamond, which would completely change its look. Nevertheless, it would *still* be styled as Heading 3--a subhead--and that can be useful in many ways.
For one thing, it would allow you to *change your mind* about a document's appearance. Let's say you've directly formatted (without styles) all of your main headings--102 of them, to be exact--as 24-point Arial, but the managing editor now thinks they should be bigger--28 points instead of 24. Let's also say you've used 24-point Arial elsewhere in your document, so you can't just find and replace the formatting you need to change. What does that mean? It means you now have the painful task of selecting and reformatting every single one of those 102 headings--unless, of course, you've used styles, in which case you can adjust the heading style with a few clicks of the mouse, *automatically* changing all 102 headings at once.
Using styles has other advantages, too:
* You can easily find one style and replace it with another. This is much simpler than having to search for directly applied formatting, such as 24-point Arial bold no indent.
* You can see and change the structure of your document in Outline view and Document Map.
* You can use the styles to automatically generate (or--after the author has added a new chapter--regenerate) a table of contents.
* You can use the styles to create automatic headers, footers, and cross-references.
If you're not using styles, you're spending a lot more time on formatting than you need to, and you're missing much of the power of Microsoft Word. In addition, you're making it difficult to reuse electronic text for other purposes--something we will all increasingly need to do.
STANDARD STYLE LIST
Because of this problem, you should consider marking type levels using a standard list of styles that will work well in your publishing environment. That doesn't mean every publication needs to *look* the same, since designers can *define* the styles any way they want. It does mean:
* Every publication should use styles from a standard list.
* No other styles should be used. In other words, don't just make up new ones as you go along. If you *need* a new one for a certain function not covered by the standard list, consult with others in your organization (such as typesetters and designers) so that everyone can be consistent.
* Styles should be used consistently from document to document. For example, you might always have Heading 1 be a part title, no matter what publication you are working on. Heading 2 could always be a chapter title. Heading 3 could always be a first-level subhead. And so on. If you then used the Heading 1 style for a chapter title or the Heading 2 style for a subhead, you would be at variance with the standard list, and that could cause problems in the future. Try not to think of a book as a single publication. Each book may eventually be part of a larger electronic *library* of books; if so, those books will need to be consistently produced.
* Text should not have directly applied formatting. For example, don't just select a heading and format it as 20-point Helvetica. Instead, apply the correct style for that heading and then *define* the style as 20-point Helvetica. In the short run, this may be a pain. In the long run, it will save enormous amounts of time, money, and frustration.
Stand by; next week I'll share my standard list of styles.
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READERS WRITE
David O. Taber wrote:
I'm looking for a MSWord add-in that supplements the spell/grammar checker functionality, to add extra rules of style. The idea is to catch hackneyed/overused words, expressions, or constructions automatically. For example, it would be cool to automatically flag the passive voice, incorrect capitalization, split infinitives. The usage mode is for a writer (me) to copy edit his own work for his own peculiar foibles.
I responded:
You might be interested in our MegaReplacer program, which allows you to customize your own list of such things. It also comes with some (free) lists of common corrections. You can learn more here:
http://www.editorium.com/14843.htm
In addition, you might want to make an "exclude dictionary" to take care of such things. You can learn more here:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1709082320
Word's grammar checker will, to some extent, check passive voice, incorrect capitalization, and split infinitives, as well as overused words, etc. You may already know this, but you can set many such options under Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar/Settings.
If those options aren't enough, you might be interested in Grammar Expert Plus, which looks more sophisticated than Microsoft's offering. You can learn more here:
http://www.wintertree-software.com/app/gramxp/index.html
Thanks to David for his message.
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RESOURCES
You'll find helpful tutorials on using styles at the following places:
Microsoft Word Legal User's Guide
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/legal/styles.asp
Computer Tutor of San Francisco
http://www.geocities.com/w2css/styles/
Charles Kenyon's ADD Balance site
http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm
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