It's midnight at the publishing house. All the cubicles are dark--except one in the back corner, where a frazzled production editor struggles to finish formatting a 700-page book that's due at press in eight short hours. Can't we do something to help?<\/p>\n
As we've seen in our newsletters the past few weeks, Microsoft Word documents get their overall formatting from the templates attached to them. By changing a document's template, you automatically change the document's formatting. *Every* document is based on a template. If you don't attach one, Word uses the Normal template. The relationship looks like this:<\/p>\n
Template ---> Document<\/p>\n
Styles and paragraphs have the same kind of relationship as templates and documents. Paragraphs get their overall formatting from the styles applied to them. By changing a paragraph's style, you automatically change the paragraph's formatting. *Every* paragraph is based on a style. If you don't apply one, Word uses the Normal style. The relationship looks like this:<\/p>\n
Style ---> Paragraph<\/p>\n
Why does Word work like this? To give you greater and faster *control* over a document's formatting. Using templates and styles, you can instantly change the look of an entire document--or certain parts of a document, such as block quotations or headings.\n<\/p>\n
Many people never even think about this. They'll go through an entire manuscript, manually formatting every single heading as Arial, 14-point, bold, small caps, 1-point condensed, center justified, exact line spacing, keep with next. It makes me absolutely crazy!<\/p>\n
To get fast, consistent formatting throughout a manuscript, you'll need to do two things:<\/p>\n
1. Attach a template that includes the styles you need with the formatting you want them to have. To learn more about this, see Editorium Update for the past two weeks:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?sort=&mid=1704544112<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?sort=&mid=1704628448<\/p>\n
2. Consistently apply styles as needed. For example, you might use the Heading 1 style for part titles, Heading 2 for chapter titles, Heading 3 for subheads, and so on. You can read more about style levels in the documentation for our WordSetter program, here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/editorium.com\/Wordset.htm\/#_Toc500857368<\/p>\n
If parts of the manuscript still don't look right, they may have directly applied font and paragraph formatting (such as Arial, 14-point, bold, small caps, 1-point condensed, center justified, exact line spacing, keep with next). Directly applied paragraph formatting is easy to remove: just select the whole document (CTRL + a) and then press CTRL + q. Unfortunately, directly applied font formatting isn't so easy to get rid of. Yes, you can select the whole document and press CTRL + SPACEBAR, but that will also remove all character formatting, such as italic, presenting a serious problem. The only solution I know of is our FileCleaner program's Standardize Font Formatting feature, which you can learn more about here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/editorium.com\/Fileclnr.htm\/#_Toc500858918<\/p>\n
Using templates and styles is the key to formatting that looks good and doesn't take all night to finish.<\/p>\n