Order of List Entries

You control the way tags are applied by adjusting two things:

1. The order of your list entries.

2. The formatting of your styles.

For example, let’s say that your Heading 1 paragraph style is defined as using bold formatting. If you put your list entries in this order—

bo|^&+F

Heading 1|@Heading 1:^&+P

—your tagged text will look like this:

@Heading1:Here’s My Heading.

That’s probably not what you want. But if you put your list entries in this order—

Heading 1|@Heading 1:^&+P

bo|^&+F

—then your tagged text will look like this:

@Heading1:Here’s My Heading.

This is true because RazzmaTag removes the specified formatting (paragraph style, character style, or character formatting) as it goes. (When tagging directly applied formatting, RazzmaTag sets the font to Times [on Macintosh] or Times New Roman [on PC], point size to 12, and alignment to Left.) So after RazzmaTagg tags your bold heading as a paragraph style, the heading will no longer be bold, which means that the next list entry won’t see it as bold and won’t enclose it with tags.

You could also keep your Heading 1 style from being enclosed with tags simply by making sure it’s not defined as being bold to begin with. In fact, let’s say that you’ve done that, and you have a heading that looks like this:

Here’s My Heading

Notice that the word “My” has been directly formatted with bold. Even if your list is in this order—

Heading 1|@Heading 1:^&+P

bo|^&+F

—your tagged text will look like this:

@Heading1:Here’s My Heading

Why? Because when RazzmaTag tags and removes the Heading 1 style, the bold formatting remains intact, just as it does if you remove the Heading 1 style manually. So, RazzmaTag is able to tag it.

Character Formatting over Character Styles

However, the fact that RazzmaTag removes formatting as it goes means that any formatting (such as italic or bold) applied over the top of a character style (not a paragraph style) will be removed if your list entries are in this order:

1. Character style.

2. Directly applied formatting (such as italic or bold).

That’s because Word has no way to remove the character style (from the selected text) without also removing directly applied formatting. For example, let’s say that you have italic formatting applied to some words that are otherwise formatted with a character style named “Heavy,” like this:

This is some document text with italic applied to a word formatted with a character style named “Heavy.”

Let’s also say that your master list includes two entries, in this order:

Heavy|<@Heavy>^&<@$p>+A

it|^&+F

Using your list, RazzmaTag will tag your text like this:

This is <@Heavy>some document text <@$p>with italic applied to a word formatted with a character style named “Heavy.”

Notice that the italicized word was not tagged, because RazzmaTag removed directly applied formatting from your text when it tagged the character style. So, if you need to tag directly applied formatting on top of a character style, you should tag the directly applied formatting first, like this:

it|^&+f

Heavy|<@Heavy>^&<@$p>+A

This is possible because Word does have a way to remove directly applied formatting without removing the character style. Hooray! So, the best order for tagging all kinds of formatting is probably this one:

1. Paragraph styles.

2. Directly applied formatting, such as bold and italic.

3. Character styles.

For example:

Heading 2|@Heading 2:^&+P

it|^&+F

Heavy|<@Heavy>^&<@$p>+A

Of course, that also means that if your character style is defined as italic, you’ll get tags on either side of the text formatted with the character style. So, you really have to think things through to get the tagging you want. I’d actually recommend not using directly applied formatting at all. Instead, use character styles defined and named as italic, bold, or whatever else you need. Another approach is not to use character styles at all. But to reiterate, you can control the way tags are applied by two things:

1. The order of your list entries.

2. The formatting of your styles.

Directly Applied Formatting

As mentioned above, if you tag directly applied formatting, such as font, point size, or paragraph format, RazzmaTag “removes” the formatting as it goes by setting the font to Times (on Macintosh) or Times New Roman (on PC), the point size to 12, and the paragraph format to Left. (After all, it can’t set them to nothing.) So, if you want to tag left-aligned 12-point Times New Roman (on PC) or Times (on Macintosh), you should do so before tagging any other directly applied formatting, because other formatting will become left-aligned 12-point Times New Roman (or Times) after it’s tagged.