Published articles on on-screen editing
(using Microsoft Word)
| Brett Lockwood (Word Bytes) Services 2011 |
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Published articles on on-screen editing
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Note: All articles conform to Word 97 (PC), 98 (Mac), 2000 (PC),and
2001 (Mac).
Later Word versions (2002 (PC), 2003 (PC and Mac)) will differ in certain
respects for some articles.
Articles that conform to all versions of Word are numbers 2, 3, 6, 8, 9,
10, 11, 12, 17.
This article was first published in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, Vol. 30, No. 6, March 2001
Deciding to work with styles in MS Word document editing is something of a false start. In Word you are always working with styles. If you open a new (empty) document using File, New… and begin keying text, Word automatically uses the Normal style (by default 10-point Times New Roman for Word 97/98 and 12-point Times New Roman for Word 2000) as its base style for text formatting, and any document you receive from elsewhere will almost certainly have the Normal style as its base style too. Insert an endnote, and Word uses the Endnote Reference style to format the superscript numeral denoting the endnote, and also the Endnote Text style to format the note text. Insert a Word comment and the same process occurs; the Comment Reference style and Comment Text style are automatically used. If you use headers and footers, the Header style and Footer style are used.
This type of 'automatic' style use makes sense. Text must be constructed from text attributes of one type or another, even if these attributes are only a font name and a point size. Such styling ensures formatting consistency for elements like endnotes, comments and so on. You can see the styles applied to a document by using Tools, Options… (Tools, Preferences, for Word 98 Mac; Edit, Preferences for Word 2001 Mac), View, and entering, say, 2 cm as the Style area width: setting. Scrolling through a document in this view mode is a valuable way of checking your styles and proofing them. You must be in Normal view or Outline view to do this.
You then realise that you cannot have text in Word that is not set in a style. So it makes more sense to say that when you decide to work with styles, what is really meant is controlling and exploiting them.
The particular style names mentioned above are some of Word's built-in styles. There are about 90 of them. If you open a new (empty) document and go to the 'All styles' list in the Styles dialog box, you are looking at a pristine listing of all the styles currently available for use, and they are all built-in styles. Built-in styles cannot be deleted from Word. This is one problem area, as editors are sometimes asked to delete unused styles when submitting a completed document. This is not possible. Also, it is commonly documented that built-in styles cannot be renamed. This is incorrect. It is true that built-in styles cannot be completely renamed, but their names can be added to (augmented) as an editorial aid.
Then there are user-defined styles. These we create, and we name and define them, and we can modify and delete them. Our user-defined styles are viewable as a subset by opening the Style dialog box and choosing 'User-defined styles' from the List: area. The other two options here are 'All styles' (all the styles available to the document: built-in styles and user-defined styles—if present—combined) and 'Styles in use'.
The 'Styles in use' list is also problematic. The label 'styles in use' does not accurately reflect the content of this subset. Choosing 'Styles in use' in the Style dialog box presents the following styles:
1 Built-in styles currently applied to text.
2 Built-in styles that have been modified (including only name modifications), regardless of whether they are currently applied to text.
3 All user-defined styles, regardless of whether they are currently applied to text.
4 Any style that has been applied to text and then removed (replaced or overwritten with another style).
The causes of the components of 2 and 3 where styles are not currently applied I can only guess at via interpolation: when you modify a built-in style or create a style, Word assumes you have not done this for nothing, that you are going to use it, and puts it in the 'Styles in use' group. The cause of 4 is probably a programming bug. I have not seen these issues documented anywhere but they apply to my installations of Word 97 and Word 2000, so I guess they apply to yours. (Also, I work on PCs, but I assume the same goes for Macintosh Word). So this means that what you see in the 'Styles in use' list may not be there in the text.
To move on, the content of the 'Styles in use' list in the Style dialog box corresponds to the content of the Style Preview drop-down list on the formatting toolbar. Well, almost. A new (empty) document contains the Heading 1 through to Heading 3 styles in the Style Preview list. This is Word's way of trying to get users off to a good start! However, aside from this anomaly the correspondence between these two listings is complete and is worth remembering. A lot of Word documentation states that Style Preview lists all styles available to the document. This is incorrect. The Style dialog box 'All styles' list is where you gaze upon every style available for your delectation.
A good way to start with a document, if you really want to identify the styles currently in use, is to use File, Print…, and in the Print what: (for Windows) drop-down list (the Mac sequence for print options varies according to the operating system version) choose 'Styles'. This prints the styles listed in 'Styles in use'. You could then check the document with Style area width: activated and see if there are styles in your print that are not on the screen (you can do this in Normal view but Outline view can be easier). If there are, and they are user-defined styles, you can delete them using the Delete button in the Styles dialog box. This will help clean up your 'Styles in use' list, but remember that these styles will have been deleted from the document too. If some of the styles that are in your print, but not on the screen, are built-in styles, you're stuck with them in the 'Styles in use' list. You cannot delete built-in styles. If the document is huge and scrolling appears ludicrous, use the Find function to search for all the styles you have printed out. This can be done quickly. The styles that aren't found are the ones to mark on your print. All the unmarked styles in your print then correspond accurately to the styles applied to the document text.
A technique used by some on-screen editors to remove bogus styles from received documents is to select and copy the content of the entire document and paste this into a new (empty) document. This technique will remove bogus styles. However, it can also, and probably will, result in automatic modifications to at least some of the remaining styles, because the Normal style in the originating document does not copy over. It is the Normal style in the new document that is used. Modifications to other styles can result if you use this copy and paste method because document styles are often based on the Normal style, that is, they draw some of their attributes from the Normal style. If the Normal style then changes, they change. Thus copying 10 or 15 or 20 styles across from one document to another document can result in extensive changes to these styles if the Normal style in the source document is different in any way from the Normal style in the target document. If you have a good understanding of style attributes and you can ensure that the Normal style in the target document has identical attributes to that in the source document, you should be able to use this copy and paste solution without error.
What happens, then, if the 'styles in use' list is important in your work and this problem hits you and you aren't aware of the issues involved? At a minimum it is likely to cause a loss of confidence, both in your document's contents and in how your document is being formatted. No desktop editor likes to be there. So it is handy to remember that 'styles in use' usually doesn't mean styles in use. The author has been tapping away, applying styles and then replacing them, and creating styles that aren't used. Phantom styles accumulate in the 'Styles in use' list, but these are ghosts who don't walk, so you might have to deal with them. This is one answer to the issue of deleting unused styles mentioned above. Deleting all unused styles is not possible. But a print of the document's styles, with the phantom styles struck out, can accompany your returned document. This print comprises a true listing of the styles in use.
Working with only user-defined styles is attractive. If you can do this, the 'User-defined styles' list in the Style dialog box comes into full swing, a lot easier than having to regularly scroll up and down the 'All styles' or 'Styles in use' listings, trying to identify the built-in styles you are using. These lists do not identify the built-in styles actually in use. The issue here, of course, is that built-in styles are so useful. For a start, documents styled using Heading 1 thru Heading 9 styles can fully exploit Word's Document Map, a great way to navigate around a document and become familiar with its content and heading structure. The Document Map looks for these styles and uses them very nicely. So how can you use built-in styles in a manner where you can easily distinguish the ones you are using from the ones you are not?
You are not supposed to be able to rename built-in styles, but if you go into the Style dialog box, click on the Heading 1 style to select it, then click the Modify button, the Modify Style dialog box opens with the style name (Heading 1) selected. Delete this name and key in the letter 'A'. Click the OK button, and you have renamed the Heading 1 style to 'Heading 1,A'. The 'A' you have keyed in has been appended to the end of this built-in style name, with a comma automatically placed as a separator, and it is now listed as 'Heading 1,A' in the style group listings (Style dialog box). It is also listed as 'Heading 1,A' in Style Preview, in the Style Area width: facility, and it prints as 'Heading 1,A' if you print out your styles. It is also used by the Document Map, which sees it as Heading 1, though if you add it to a toolbar it retains its unmodified name. You have given yourself the means of easily identifying a used built-in style from those 90 or more styles in the 'All styles' list, and also easily identifying a used built-in style in the 'Styles in use' list.
As far as I can determine, you can perform this renaming trick with any built-in style. The key is that Word, internally, sees the appended name component as the actual style name when you modify this name. Part of this procedure is keeping in mind that you cannot have two styles with the same name in Word (for obvious reasons). So Word won't allow you to rename 'Heading 1' as 'Heading 1,X' and 'Heading 2' as 'Heading 2,X'. It sees both these styles as having the name 'X'. But you can rename these built-in styles to 'Heading 1,A', 'Heading 2,B', 'Heading 3,C' and so on. This is not a problem for you as the user. After all, you are merely seeking to apply a unique identifier. If you try this, you may find that, when examining the 'All styles' list and 'Styles in use' list, you are happily identifying the built-in styles you are actually using.
So what happens if you use this renaming method to facilitate your work and then you want to revert to using the original style names. You simply apply what is almost the reverse procedure. Click, for example, 'Heading 5,E' in the Styles: list in the Style dialog box, click the Modify button, click inside the Name: text box, delete the appended characters ',E' and click the OK button. If you do something you didn't want to, click the Undo button on the standard toolbar. I love the Undo button.
While we're playing with all this styles stuff: if you are copying text from another document, select the paragraph text but not the paragraph mark. If you select the paragraph mark, the style of the paragraph gets copied into your document too.
I see styles as the Gollum of desktop editing. They are likeable, malleable and deceptive. They invoke suspicion and mistrust, arouse our ambivalence, give in when we get the jump on them, but we can't shake them. An indispensable part of the plot!
I would appreciate comments about all this. I am interested in understanding undocumented aspects of Word that might help editors and squeezing editing-related procedures to see what pops.
This article was first published in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, Vol. 30, No. 7, April 2001
Last month [see article above, Styles: the Gollum of on-screen editing], I spoke about Word styles, including two issues that on-screen editors face: firstly, that the Style dialog box 'Styles in use' list often contains styles not actually in use; and secondly, applying a workaround so this list contains only those styles actually used. Several members responded and perhaps further exploration will be found useful.
This article thus partly extends its predecessor [above]. It is partly a result of my own testing with styles, and comment is invited.
I said that built-in styles (as distinct from created or 'user-defined' styles) cannot be deleted from Word. These words were badly phrased. The three style listings in the Style box are 'User-defined styles', 'Styles in use', and 'All styles'. 'All styles' contains Word's 90 or more built-in styles, none of which are deletable from this list. However, once built-in styles enter the 'Styles in use' list, most can be deleted from it. The exceptions are the Heading 1 to Heading 9 styles. These cannot be deleted directly from the 'Styles in use' list.
More on deleting unused styles: Word's definition of 'styles in
use'
One issue I addressed was the request to editors to 'delete unused styles
from a document'. According to Microsoft documentation, the 'Styles in use'
list contains the following:
1 Built-in styles applied to text.
2 Modified built-in styles, applied to text or not.
3 User-defined styles, applied to text or not.
'Styles in use' thus presents a different picture to what you expect—a list containing only the styles actually applied. Consequently, if working with the 'Styles in use' list is important, remember that some entries are probably bogus. However, the logic of Word's definition also means that the 'Styles in use' list will contain all the styles actually applied to text, and in this respect it is reliable.
The fundamental problem with the 'Styles in use' list
Two of Word's styles are always in use in a document and can never be deleted.
These are the Normal style (Word's fundamental paragraph style) and the Default
Paragraph Font style (Word's fundamental character style). Hence these two
styles are always in the 'Styles in use' list. However, let's take the following
short sequence:
1 Choose Format, Style… to open the Style box.
2 Display the 'All styles' list.
3 Select any style other than the Normal style or Default Paragraph Font style.
4 Click Cancel to close the Style box.
The selected style is now in the 'Styles in use' list.
You can see that if you are creating or modifying styles, or intermittently examining style descriptions to familiarise yourself with them, unused or bogus styles will accumulate in the 'Styles in use' list, as the process of merely selecting a style in the 'All styles' list and then using the Cancel button (that is, choosing to do nothing) adds the style to this list.
I have only discovered this programming bug in Word in the last fortnight. I imagine that some of you reading this article may have already discovered it, though it is the sort of problem that is difficult to diagnose without using test techniques. It does a lot to explain why some documents I style end up with 40 or 50 styles in the 'Styles in use' list when I am only using about seven or eight.
Consequently, the label 'styles in use' rarely accurately describes the content of this subset, even as intended by Word (that is, according to what Words sees as 'styles in use'). And the longer a document is worked upon, the higher the number of bogus styles is likely to be. Maybe not a problem with certain projects, but you need to know the issues involved, if only to maintain confidence about interpreting the information Word is presenting to you on a document's styles.
It may help to know how to work around this problem, as the 'Styles in use' list is likely to become increasingly misleading as you style a document. Two workarounds, one involving printing your style descriptions, the other involving assigning substitute names to built-in styles to give them unique identifiers, were presented last month [see article above].
The pitfalls of basing styles on similar styles
An issue associated with deleting styles is that of style descriptions
automatically changing if you delete a style that provides attributes to
another style; that is, if you delete the base style for another style.
Let's take an example using Word's built-in heading styles. You have accepted
the default settings for the Heading 1 style and decide that using the Heading
2 and Heading 3 styles is appropriate, but with modifications. You only require
minimum changes. Heading 2 is to be two points smaller than Heading 1, and
Heading 3 two points smaller than Heading 2. All other attributes of Heading
1 are acceptable for Heading 2 and Heading 3. In the Modify Style
box you use the Based on: list to modify Heading 2 to base it on Heading
1, and change the point size through the Format, Font…
menu sequence in this dialog box. Likewise with the Heading 3 style: you
base this on Heading 2 but make the font size two points smaller.
The advantages of this exploitation of the Based on: list are significant. You are saved the time and trouble of rebuilding from scratch a style's attributes. With complex style descriptions, this 'manual' rebuilding not only requires considerable knowledge of style settings but involves the possibility of introducing errors into a style description.
The danger of basing a new or modified style on a similar style, is that if the first style is subsequently modified, these modifications automatically flow through to any styles based on this style. You may not even notice this happening if you are working with 10 or 15 styles or more, but the resulting changes can be extensive, and also time-consuming to rectify when you finally realise what has occurred. If the first style is not modified but deleted, even greater problems can arise.
Issues in identifying a style's attributes
Identifying the exact attributes of styles that have been based on similar
styles can be very difficult. What if you have based your Footnote style
on your Header style, which in turn has been based upon your Acknowledgements
style, and you then need to identify all the attributes of the Footnote style?
You select the Footnote style in the Style dialog box Styles:
listing, and the description reads 'Header + [other attributes]'. You
note what these 'other attributes' are, then scroll to the Header style,
select it, and see that the description reads 'Acknowledgements + [other
attributes]'. You again note what these 'other attributes' are, then scroll
to the Acknowledgements style and select it to read yet another description.
This is not an easy or efficient way to examine the attributes of styles,
but if you are working with styles based on one or more other styles it is
difficult to find a way around it, because there is no facility in the
Style dialog box for viewing multiple style descriptions simultaneously.
The problem of styles being based inappropriately on other styles is a common one. It is not unusual for on-screen editors to receive documents from elsewhere (publishers, authors and so on) where many of the styles draw attributes from multiple other styles in the manner described above. Such documents may not seem to present a problem if you are certain that the styles in them will be not be modified. Yet it is often the case that editors do, for good reason, modify styles in the course of their work. In addition, there is the circumstance, discussed above, where editors are sometimes asked to delete unused styles from a document before submitting it. This involves the possible scenario of styles drawing attributes from other styles that are then deleted.
The Normal and Default Paragraph Font as recommended base styles
A safe, reliable, and error-minimal way to use the Based on: list
in the New Style or Modify Style dialog boxes is, for your
paragraph styles taken as a group, and for your character styles taken as
a group, to:
Base all your styles for a group on no more than one other style.
Try to ensure that this style is the same base style for every other group member.
Build into this base style as many universal attributes as possible.
Choose as this base style a fundamental style, one least likely to change during your work.
Choose as this base style the style least likely to be a candidate for deletion.
For paragraph styles, whether built-in or user-defined, the best style to use as the base style is usually the Normal style. For character styles, whether built-in or user-defined, the best style to use is the Underlying Paragraph Font style (you cannot base a character style on the Normal style, as the latter is a paragraph style). A major safeguard here is that the Normal and Default Paragraph Font styles cannot be deleted from a document. Word follows this method with its built-in styles, which, for a new (empty) document, are all based on the Normal style in the case of paragraph styles, or the Default Paragraph Font style in the case of character styles.
If you follow these ideas when modifying or creating styles, you will have the best chance of knowing exactly where you are with your style descriptions, and you isolate your working styles from the influences of every other style except one, undeletable style. You will also have the confidence that basic text attributes, for example the font used, will apply to all the document text. If you want to apply a different font to particular document components, you can always depart from these guidelines and modify or create styles for this purpose.
An alternative to basing paragraph styles on the Normal style is to choose the 'no style' option from the Based on: list. However, unless you have good reason for doing this, it is best to stay with the Normal style. One reason is that the Normal style is where the default language setting for Word is stored, for example 'English (United Kingdom)'. Document text formatted with styles based on the Normal style is then automatically spell checked (and grammar checked) according to this language setting. If all styles are based on the Normal style, you can be confident that your entire document will be spell checked, as well as being confident that you only need to change your default language setting in one place (the Normal style) for your entire document to be prepared for spell checking in this changed language.
Word spell checks text set in a character style according to the language setting (if any) applied to the paragraph in which the character style appears.
Exploiting Word's Organizer facility to deconstruct multiple 'based on'
style descriptions
An example of a style which draws attributes from multiple other styles is
tabulated below.
| Style | Based On | Style Description |
| Author Address | Footnote | Footnote + Red, Indent: First 0 cm |
| Footnote | Fig. Caption | Fig. Caption + Dark Green, Indent: First 0.5 cm, Line spacing exactly 10 pt |
| Fig. Caption | First Line | First Line + Font: 8 pt, Blue, Line spacing exactly 11 pt, Tabs:Not at 0.42 cm |
| First Line | Body Text | Body Text + Indent: First 0 cm |
| Body Text | (no style) | Font: Times New Roman, 9.5 pt, English (United Kingdom), Char
scale 100%, ndent: First 0.42 cm Justified, Line spacing exactly 12 pt, Body text, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
If you needed to clearly identify the attributes of the Author Address style you would have to examine, in turn, the attributes of the Footnote style, then the Fig. Caption style, then the First Line style, and finally the Body Text style. This can become a huge task, greatly subject to error. Also, if you modify any style other than the Body Text style, at least one other style is modified.
The subject of next month's article will be how to exploit Word's Organizer function to reliably, quickly, and in a fully automated fashion, 'deconstruct' styles based on multiple other styles, eliminating these headaches, and end up with a document where every style is based on one of the two fundamental Word styles, the Normal style or the Default Paragraph Font style.
Styles (part 3): Deconstructing multiple 'based-on' styles
This article was first published in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, Vol. 30, No. 8, May 2001
Last month [see article above, Styles part 2: more on 'styles in use', and basing styles on other styles] I briefly discussed styling issues involved when, during construction, styles are based on similar styles to minimise the effort involved, and the problems encountered if you then delete, modify or add styles to such a document, particularly if you modify styles from which other styles draw attributes. A tabulation depicting a style based on multiple other styles and its associated style ancestry (its 'family tree') was presented.
I used this tabulation to illustrate how modifications to styles lower in a style's family tree automatically flow through to styles higher in the tree. Also, I wanted to illustrate how extraordinarily difficult it is to accurately identify the attributes of a style that is based on multiple other styles, because identification of the attributes of one style can require successive identification of the attributes of perhaps three or four other styles. In fact I would suggest that this task is at times impossible. For instance, in the data I presented, the description for the Fig. Caption style contained the setting 'Tabs: Not at 0.42 cm'. You cannot manually enter a negatively defined tab setting ('not at …'), so the Fig. Caption tabs description can only have originated by Word pooling and computing the meaning of the tab settings for the three other styles that the Fig. Caption style is based upon (its family tree), and deciding that a single phrase couched in negative terms comprises the most efficient (read 'shortest') text representation for this setting. But the phrase ''Tabs: Not at 0.42 cm' is not very informative. In its practical application it is probably quite important for the styling of the document, but if you wanted to rationalise (make more comprehensible) the setting for the Fig. Caption style, by basing it on only one other style, how would you manually implement an equivalent for this tab setting? This form of automatic computation by Word thus presents another problem associated with multiple 'based-on' style descriptions.
I also suggested that if alterations to styles or creating new styles forms part of your working scenario, style attribute identification problems can be avoided, and other advantages secured, by basing a document's working styles on only one other style, preferably one of Word's two fundamental styles: the Normal (the fundamental paragraph) style or the Default Paragraph Font (the fundamental character) style.
The question that follows is, how can this be done, considering that on-screen editors are almost always not creating new documents but editing documents from elsewhere, and so have little influence (probably none in freelancing) when it comes to document 'front-end' avoidance of styles based on similar styles? How can you reliably 'deconstruct' style settings to produce a document where each style is not based on any style other than the Normal style or the Default Paragraph Font style?
In considering the logic that Word employs to arrive at equivalent descriptions when style settings are amalgamated to produce the description for a style higher in the tree, it occurred to me that Word's Organizer facility might be used as a vehicle to deconstruct multiple 'based-on' style descriptions.
The deconstruction method presented below seems to work effectively. Comment is invited. The procedure is simple. You create an empty document and save and close it. You then open the (source) document containing the 'problem' styles, and use Organizer to copy across the problem styles to the new empty (target) document. If a simple methodology is observed, the styles in the 'target' document are automatically stripped of the problematic 'based on' style/s. You then copy the deconstructed styles back to the source document. The target document containing copies of the deconstructed styles can be retained.
1 Create a new empty document and save it. In the screen shot below this 'target' document is called Temporary Style Respository.doc.
2 Open the document (Working Doc - Source.doc in the screen shot below) containing the styles you want to deconstruct.
3 Choose Format, Style… to open the Style box.
4 Choose Organizer… to open the Organizer dialog box. (The styles displayed for the active (source) document in the Organizer dialog box are taken from the Style dialog box 'Styles in use' list, not the 'All styles' list. You can see the description for any style by single-clicking it.)
5 On the right side of the dialog box click Close File to close the Normal.dot (the default document). The button then toggles to Open File. Use it to open your new empty document. The Default Paragraph Font and the Normal style will be listed. These two styles are in every new document and cannot be deleted.
6 In the style list for your source document (the left side of the dialog box), scroll to the Normal style, click it to select it, and click Copy. Accept Word's invitation to overwrite the Normal style in the target document.
Note: It is important that the Normal style is the first style copied across.
.gif) |
Here are the actions and results for the process of copying to the target document the seven source document styles viewable in the graphic. I have deliberately arranged matters so that a range of commonly encountered variations are illustrated.
| Copy from source to target |
Target doc action |
Result | Redefined style description |
Final style description |
|
| 1 | Normal (Font: Times New Roman, 10 pt, English (United States), Char scale 100%, Flush left, Line spacing single, Widow/orphan control, Body text) |
|
Source Normal style replaces target Normal style, providing the correct Normal style for relevant deconstructed styles |
Normal style is unchanged | |
| 2 | Body text (First line + (no proofing), Indent: First 0 cm Justified, Tabs: 0.42 cm) |
Word can't find First line in target and defaults to basing Body text on Normal, adjusting description accordingly |
Body text Normal + Font: 11 pt, (no proofing), Justified, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
||
| 3 | Bullets (First line + Indent: Hanging 0.5 cm) |
Word can't find First line in target and defaults to basing Bullets on Normal, adjusting description accordingly |
Bullets Normal + Font: 11 pt, Indent: Hanging 0.5 cm |
||
| 4 | Caption - Table (Bullets + Font: 8 pt, Blue, Line spacing exactly 11 pt) |
Word finds Bullets in target and uses it. Description does not change. |
Caption - Table Bullets + Font: 8 pt, Blue, Line spacing exactly 11 pt |
||
| 5 | Delete Bullets from target |
Word can't find Bullets and defaults to basing Caption - Table on Normal, adjusting description accordingly |
Caption - Table Normal + Font: 8 pt, Blue, Indent: Hanging 0.5 cm, Line spacing exactly 11 pt |
||
| 6 | Copy Bullets from source to target again |
Word can't find First line in target and defaults to basing Bullets on Normal, adjusting description accordingly |
Bullets Normal + Font: 11 pt, Indent: Hanging 0.5 cm |
||
| 7 | Default Paragraph Font (The font of the underlying paragraph style +) |
Copying this style is optional. It contains no actual style attributes. |
The font of the underlying paragraph style + |
||
| 8 | Equation (Body text + Space before 6 pt after 6 pt, Tabs: 8.25 cm right flush) |
Word finds Body text style in target and uses it. Description does not change. |
Equation Body text + Space before 6 pt after 6 pt, Tabs: 8.25 cm right flush |
||
| 9 | Delete Body text from target |
Word can't find Body text and defaults to basing Equation on Normal, adjusting description accordingly |
Equation Normal + Font: 11 pt, (no proofing), Justified, Space before 6pt after 6 pt, Tabs: 0.42 cm, 8.25 cm right flush |
||
| 10 | Copy Body text from source to target again |
Word can't find First line in target and defaults to basing Body text on Normal, adjusting description accordingly |
Body text Normal + Font: 11 pt, (no proofing), Justified, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
||
| 11 | First line (Normal + Font: 11 pt, Indent: First 1.27 cm) |
Style is already based on Normal. No change. |
First line Normal + Font: 11 pt, Indent: First 1.27 cm |
||
| 12 | Heading 1 (Body text + Bold, All caps, Dark Red, Space before 12 pt after 6 pt, Not Widow/orphan control, Level 1) |
Word finds Body text in target and uses it. Description does not change. |
Heading 1 Body text + Bold, All caps, Dark Red, Space before 12 pt after 6 pt, Not Widow/ orphan control, Level 1 |
||
| 13 | Delete Body text from target. |
Word can't find Body text in target and defaults to basing Heading 1 on Normal, adjusting description accordingly. |
Heading 1 Normal + Font: 11 pt, Bold, All caps, Dark Red, no proofing), Justified, Space before 12 pt after 6 pt, Not Widow/orphan control, Level 1, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
||
| 14 | Copy Body text from source to target again |
Word finds First line in target and uses it. Description does not change. |
Body text First line + (no proofing), Indent: First 0 cm Justified, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
||
| 15 | Delete First line from target |
Word can't find First line in target and defaults to basing Body text on Normal, adjusting description accordingly. |
Body text Normal + Font: 11 pt, (no proofing), Justified, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
||
| 16 | Copy First line from source to target again |
Style is already based on Normal. No change. |
First line Normal + Font: 11 pt, Indent: First 1.27 cm |
17 Click on every processed style as a final check. Each style should not be based on any style other than the Normal style or the Default Paragraph Font style.
18 Copy every deconstructed style from the target doc back to the source doc.
The logic of this process is simple, and with Organizer you can click on source and target styles to rapidly survey descriptions. The sequence above took about ten minutes. This can be a great investment if you are styling a document and anticipate spending 30, 60 or 100 hours editing it. As the style description reformulations are determined automatically by Word, the process appears to me to be error-free. Also, the table above records a methodical observance of the rules. You will see 'shortcuts' if you practise this process with a few documents. What you are really looking for is a series of descriptions in the target document where each style is not based on any style other than the Normal style or the Default Paragraph Font style.
An associated advantage is that this process directly identifies styles marked as 'no proofing'. In step 12 the Heading 1 description does not directly state 'no proofing', though it is based on the Body text style, which is set to 'no proofing'. So 'no proofing' flows through into the final deconstructed description for Heading 1 (step 13), as it should. You are then directly informed that that text formatted in this style will not be spell checked.
Styles (part 4): Generating style reports with Word's SuperDocStatistics macro
This article was first published in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, Vol. 30, No. 9, June/July 2001
This is the fourth and final article dealing with a group of related problems that editors often encounter when working with styles in Word. One thread through these articles has been the issue of successfully identifying the styles actually in use in a given document. The March and April newsletter articles discussed this in detail, particularly the ambiguity of the term 'styles in use' and the inevitable accumulation of 'bogus' styles in the Styles dialog box 'Styles in use' list when a document is being styled. These articles presented a couple of procedures for identifying only those styles actually used in a document. This current article outlines a quite different and very efficient method of identifying these styles and which I have come across in the course of my recent work, and is presented as a way of rounding off this series of pieces on styles.
When Word is installed on a computer, a template containing a number of macros
is usually also installed. For PC installations the macro is named and located
as follows:
For Word 6, at C:\Winword\Macros\Macros6.dot
For Word 7 (95), at C:\Msoffice\Winword\Macros\Macros7.dot
For Word 8 (97), at C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\Macros\Macros8.dot
For Word 9 (2000), at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Macros [or
Samples]\Macros9.dot
If you can't find the template, you may need to install it.
This template contains a number of macros useful to editors, but I am interested here in the SuperDocStatistics macro only. This macro analyses information in documents and presents it in a manipulable form. One of the SuperDocStatistics functions generates information on the styles actually in use in a document. I have verified that the SuperDocStatistics macro is in the Word 97 macros template (Macros8.dot above) because I use Word 97, but I suggest that if you are interested in using this macro with another version of Word you check that it is contained in the relevant macro template as listed.
You open up the template as you would a standard document. When you do this the various macros are listed and described, along with simple instructions on how to copy these to your Normal.dot (global) template, so that they become available to all your documents. A toolbar containing a button listing the macros also appears when you open the template and this can be used as an initial check to ensure that the SuperDocStatistics function is included. After performing this check with my Word 97 installation I copied across the SuperDoc and SuperDocMain macros to my Normal.dot using the instructions. The SuperDocStatistics macro was then ready for use when I opened the Macros dialog box.
To use the SuperDocStatistics macro after the relevant macros have been copied
to your Normal.dot:
1 Open the document you want to examine.
2 Use Tools, Macro, Macros… to open
the Macros dialog box.
3 Click on 'SuperDocStatistics' in the macro list.
4 Click Run.
The SuperDocStatistics dialog box then appears. When you click on the Styles tab the document is analysed and the styles actually in use are listed. The graphic below shows how this dialog box works with styles.
6styles(caption-tablehighlighted)600gs(256).gif) |
The dialog box indicates that six styles are in use in the document in question (pcn 580 electronic edit.doc). The Caption - Table style is highlighted and information about the style is displayed to the right. At the bottom of the dialog box the number of the page containing the first instance of the style is displayed, as well as the related document section.
If the GoTo! button is clicked you will be taken to the first instance in the document of text set in the selected style. However, it is the Report function that is of real value for editors. If the Report button is clicked a Word table is generated as a separate document. This table contains all the information presented in the dialog box, but of course being in a table format the report contents are manipulable electronically. The table below shows this report data for three styles.
| Pg | Sec | Style | Type | Based On | Next Paragraph |
Auto- Update |
Description |
| 1 | 1 | Body text | Character | Normal | Body text | N/A | Normal + Font: 11 pt, (no proofing), Justified, Tabs: 0.42 cm |
| 1 | 1 | Default Paragraph Font |
Unknown | Default Paragraph Font |
N/A | The font of the underlying paragraph style + |
|
| 1 | 1 | Normal | Character | Normal | N/A | Font: Times New Roman, 10 pt, English (United States), Char scale 100%, Flush left, Line spacing single, Widow/orphan control, Body text |
The SuperDocStatistics function provides a fast solution to the two major problems associated with identifying and reporting the styles actually in use in a document that were discussed in the March and April editions of the newsletter. Firstly, the styles actually in use are correctly listed in the SuperDocStatistics dialog box without having to pursue a fairly lengthy and messy procedure to separate the styles 'actually in use' from the 'bogus' styles that have accumulated in the Style dialog box 'Styles in use' list. Secondly, this information can be placed in an editable Word table and so can easily be included in electronic form with the edited document as an accurate report on the styles actually in use.
I have identified two problems with using the SuperDocStatistics macro. The first is that paragraph styles are reported as character styles and character styles are reported as 'unknown' styles (see the sample table above). This is not a 'fatal' problem. The correct labels can be substituted manually by you if necessary in the report table. You just change 'character' to 'paragraph' and 'unknown' to 'character' in the 'Type' column.
The second is that after running (executing) the SuperDocStatistics macro on a document, all the styles in the document are placed in the Style dialog box 'Styles in use' list. Again, this is not a 'fatal' problem. A workaround to it is to open the document to be analysed, run the SuperDocStatistics macro and generate the report table if desired, then close the document without saving any changes. The report table will remain open as a separate document.
The SuperDocStatistics macro can also be used for other editing-related purposes. For example, the Hyperlinks function generates a listing of every hyperlink in the document (in the order in which they appear) and a report can be generated on these hyperlinks for editorial checking purposes. Also, clicking on any hyperlink in the SuperDocStatistics dialog box takes you to that hyperlink in the text.
Track Changes: The problem with reviewing revision marks in tables
This article was first published in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, Vol. 31, No. 7, March 2002
Track Changes works pretty well for a complex set of related Word procedures. There are a few issues to watch out for. In the area of software bugs (in Microsoft terminology, 'undocumented features'), probably the major issue with Track Changes is that revision markings (proposed edits) in tables are skipped during the reviewing process. If you work with Track Changes you will eventually come up against this problem.
What happens is this. You finish recording revision marks and you're ready for the reviewing process. You ensure that revision marks are displayed on the screen via Tools, Track Changes, Highlight Changes… and turning on the Highlight changes on screen option. You move to the top of the document and use the menu sequence of Tools, Track Changes to bring up the Accept or Reject Changes dialog box (see graphic), and you start using the Find button to move forward and review the revision markings.
(Reviewing a large number of proposed changes from the Accept or Reject Changes dialog box rather than the Reviewing toolbar (see fig. 1) has the advantage that when the Find (forward) or Find (backward) button is used, and an action to accept or reject the located revision mark is implemented, Word automatically moves to the next revision mark in the document and highlights it. The Reviewing toolbar does not have this 'auto-find' feature.)
600.gif) |
Fig. 1 You can process Track Changes reviewing marks using the Reviewing toolbar or the Accept or Reject Changes dialog box
When you get to a table that contains a proposed edit, the entire table is highlighted (selected), but use of the Accept or Reject Changes dialog box Accept and Reject buttons results in only one proposed edit being located and processed. The remainder of the table is completely skipped, and Word highlights the next revision mark (proposed edit) beyond the table.
The solution to this problem is to use the Reviewing toolbar instead of the Accept or Reject Changes dialog box to review changes in a table (on the View menu, point to Toolbars, and choose Reviewing). You click the toolbar Previous Change or Next Change button, then the Accept Change or Reject Change button. Then you move the mouse pointer back to the Previous Change or Next Change button again, and so on. Processing proposed edits using this method means that all revision marks in a table are found.
Remember to ensure that Track Changes is turned off when you are reviewing changes. The TRK button on the Word status bar (see bottom of graphic) tells you if Track Changes is on or off. If the button is greyed out, Track Changes is off. You can double-click on the status bar TRK button to turn Track Changes on and off. Very handy.
Copyright 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 by Brett Lockwood. You may manually forward any of these articles in their entirety (but not charge for this) and store them for your own use. Any other broadcast, publication, retransmission, copying, or storage without permission from the author is strictly prohibited.
The articles above are provided for informational purposes only and are not accompanied by a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and freedom from infringement. The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and use of these documents.
