Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Word Styles and Making Your Life Easier

This is topic Word Styles and Making Your Life Easier in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Or more difficult now that you'll have time to think about your story instead of playing with under-documented functions in Word.

First off some useful websites:

http://www.windowatch.com/2000/october/passarella6_9.html

The above link is an article that teaches you how to make a manuscript template from scratch. It's simple, it's easy, everyone should try it... Except beware, this template you will make is not appropriate for your submissions. You will learn just enough to be dangerous with Styles, and trust me, that's more than enough to make your own template(s). Too much knowledge will cause heads to explode.

http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dec98/shunn.htm

This link [above] is a guideline to formatting your manuscripts. To the best of my knowledge, it is correct. If you decide to make your own template in Word, this wouldn't be a bad reference to have. It doesn't cover any particular software, it just outlines the formatting spec required by most editors. [If anyone has better links, by all means, please post them in this topic. Thanks.]

http://word.mvps.org/index.html

Just an all around good site with lots of useful tips. Start with the tutorial section of the site.

*******

Okay, I've made a manuscript template for those interested. You can do whatever you like with it; it's free and freely distributable. Use it as a learning tool, or just use it. Tweak it to your heart's content.

Note: It uses macros, so if those scare you, just disable them. You can still get most of the functionality from the template anyway. Styles do not rely on macros.

I've also got a "Help w/ Styles" document created by Microsoft. I will send this along, too -- free of charge.

Please keep your requests for the files out of this topic; email me privately for the files and I'll send them (likely in batches if the requests are fairly numerous). If you don't want your email known by anyone else, tell me and I'll BCC you the file.

Also: somewhere in your email subject you must add "hatrack" in there to bypass my spam filters. If you don't, there's no guarantee I'll see your request.

However, feel free to discuss anything about MS Styles here, including the files I've sent to you. The idea is to help you get a better grasp of your Word software, which can be frustrating at best. If those extra "features" annoy you, this is the place to learn why Word is so particularly unfriendly and annoying, and more importantly, how to beat it into submission.

Make your software work for you, not the other way around. A few minutes setup time using Styles will save hours, days, weeks, and years. And, when it's all about finding enough time to write, who wants to mess about with seemingly flaky software?

Remember, email me privately for the files. I suspect Kathleen will ask for them as well, so just in case I disappear, she'll have copies, too. They will be packaged in a zip file for ease in sending them out.

HSO

Posted by ambongan (Member # 2122) on :

Some of those things in the format article I suspect are more for short stories. I mean the heading stuff on the first page.

I knew most of the stuff in the article, but disagree on two points.

First, the font. I read in several of the writing books I have that Courier is not necesary. Though a couple books did say that it was good for short stories.

The second disagreement is the double spacing after periods. I read elsewhere that that is a sign of amitureism. If anyone has read differently, let me know.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

I did a bit of checking... Courier allows you to get a proper word count since it is a monospaced font. Some editors don't mind and some do. If you use Styles, you can completely change your font in a matter of seconds with out screwing anything up. Thus, the power of Styles. If one editor wants Courier, so be it. If another wants Times, you can do it in seconds.

EDIT: or if you want to write in Arial, but need to send it off in Courier, you can do that, too. There isn't any limit to what you can and cannot do if you learn Styles.

This is what I'm trying to help you guys with: Maximum flexibility with minimum effort. Sound good to you?

And yes, that article is more geared towards Shorts, but it applies equally well to novels, minus the cover page and chapter head issues.

I would greatly appreciate any links to formatting for Novels and/or Shorts and whatever you got.

EDIT: We old folks double space after periods. With a monospace font, you have to do it. With TrueType fonts it is automatically adjusted for you so one space after a period is okay. Neither choice is amateurish... Do what is best for the font you choose.

[This message has been edited by HSO (edited August 14, 2004).]

Posted by ambongan (Member # 2122) on :

If anyone wants a good book about being published (admittedly, it dosn't give all the details on format, but it does help a lot) than read [u]The First Five Pages[/u] by Noah Lukeman

Posted by ambongan (Member # 2122) on :

I checked just the first chapter of my story, and, based on the formula given for word count, got 600 extra words.

I'd actually been looking for that formula before.

Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :

I'm not sure I'm getting any of this. Don't take it the wrong way, but what's the point? I open a document, click on the double-space button, and start writing. If I need to change the font, I highlight the entire text and change it. It sounds like you're making things quite complicated.

Perhaps I'm primative.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Fair enough, Balthasar. If that works for you and you don't have any trouble with it, then do it that way. Millions of people around the world do it just like that.

However: Harnessing the power of Styles (the way Word was actually designed to be used -- they dumbed it down for the "common folk") will just simplify things in the long run.

It's a personal choice. Imagine not needing to worry about double-spacing... Automatically formatting your Chapter Headings... Line breaks... Tabbing your new paragraph... and the list goes on.

Still, if it's too much, then don't do it. But if it helps you, then that's great.

I've written scores of technical manuals and never used styles. Then, a change would come through and I needed to update thirty 200-page documents. Manual formatting of those documents took weeks. If had known Styles at the time, I could've done the changes in all 30 docs in less than an hour.

That's what I'm on about. Simplifying the time you spend at a computer worrying about formatting your documents...

Still, for a manuscript, there's not much to worry about. But... maybe for your "other" jobs you would like to know.

Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :

HSO -- That's a good point. Manuscripts are quite easy to produce, even novel-length manuscripts. Normally editors don't want anything fancy. Just a good clean copy of your story.

However, I can see where this might be useful if you regularly submit to an e-zine that wants you to send your manuscript via e-mail, and they have special guidelines they wish you to follow.

As for my "other" job . . . I'm a stay-at-home dad (with THREE kids now, as of August 2), so the only time I ever use my computer is for writing. If I knew my wife would suppot me on this, I'd probably buy a old-fashion Underwood typewriter to work on. (She'd think I'd have finally lost it!)

See how primative I am.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

There is something quite pleasing about a manual or electric typewriter clunking and whirring and making all sorts of noises. The plastic "tick-tack-tick" of a modern computer keyboard is sorely lacking any aesthetic value.

I guess there's always sounds you can install to make it sound like the old days...

I learned to type on an IMB Selectric... Looking back on it, I feel bad for my typing teacher... the noise of 30+ typewriters must've been unbearable.

Posted by TruHero (Member # 1766) on :

Balthasar,
As a side note, August 2nd is possibly the best day of the entire year. It is the birthday of... ME! (Now don't go changing that birth certificate). Congratulations! The world needs more egotisical LEO's hanging around. That new boy/girl will worm it's way into your heart and control you completely soon enough(if it hasn't already). It's what we LEO's do. Enjoy!

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

TruHero, you and Balthasar's baby share your birthday with me. Small world.

Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :

He's a boy, and his name is Paul. My dad's birthday is August 11, which means he's a Leo--and I'm an Aries--and we never got along that well. Maybe that's why we, TruHero, have butted heads before . . . though I can't say I've ever really disagreed with Doc Brown about anything.

That's not a good sign for me and my son, now is it?

Anyway, happy belated birthday to you both.

[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited August 14, 2004).]

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

My hubbie's birthday is the 11th as well. Mine is coming up on the 29th. There sure are a lot of August birthdays in this world; if you count back you notice that the holidays seem to be very productive for some families :-)

Posted by TruHero (Member # 1766) on :

I say happy birthday to us all!
Word Styles really do make my life easier.(just to put this somewhat back on topic)
Thanks.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

I was really annoyed when, between versions 2 and 6, MS redesigned the Word user interface to make it harder to use styles. In some ways, I think winword 2 was the best version of word. No autocorrect/autoformat rubbish, just a word processor that did what you wanted, only needed a couple of megabytes of memory (but boy did we think it was huge back then!) and was pretty fast as well.

If only I could get it to work on Windows XP.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

The auto-correct thing is a pain at times. But, if you've got the inclination, you can either completely disable it, or customize it considerably to meet your desires.

Just a few things Styles can do:

Writing one document in multiple languages and being able to auto-spell check all of those languages (provided you've got the languages installed in your Word Program).

Auto-centering text.

Auto-indenting paragraphs, left or right.

Nesting styles within styles -- like having a parent Style that all other styles are based on. Then, if you need to change the entire document in some particular way, but leave the manual formatting and various things intact, then you just update your parent Style.

For those that write screenplays, Styles are a godsend. The formatting for screenplays is quite involved and you must stick with it all times. You can setup your Styles to always make sure you do keep the proper format. A few macros wouldn't hurt either. For an example of this, download the ScreenForge template (Shareware). It's all Styles and just a few macros (or VB code) to change the functionality of certain keys (The tab key, for instance).

In the above screenplay example, how it works is that you set Style "B" (you can name your styles however you want to) to always follow Style "A". So, you're typing along in "A", you press return/enter and suddenly you're in Style "B". No hassel. Automatically done for you.

The list goes on and on.