Re: Need opinions on policies for working with Word

["Mike Starr" <mikestarr-techwr-l -at- writestarr -dot- com>]

I'm not quite sure what the relationships are here... is avraham working for 
you? Is it your customer? Is it avraham's customer? Who's authoring the 
documents in question? Who's creating the template? If avraham is working 
for you, you should be setting the policies.

In general, if the customer is originating documents, I don't worry about 
how they go about it. It takes me about five minutes to take an engineer 
document, clean it up and pour it into my template, no matter how clumsy 
they are with the tools.

More specific responses inline below.

Mike

From: "SB " <sylvia -dot- braunstein -at- gmail -dot- com>
Subject: Need opinions on policies for working with Word

>I am working with a freelancer who suggests the following. What do you 
>think
> of it?
>
> __,_._,___
>
> Hi all,
>
> RE: Need opinions on policies for working with Word
>
> I am submitting to a customer my policies for a new Word template. The
> policy statements reflect the way I like to work with Word, which allows 
> me
> to exert maximum and reliable control over document appearance.
>
> I am interested in hearing from professional technical writers, who have
> worked with Word for a number of years, their opinions about these 
> policies.
> The responses are primarily of interest to the customer.
>
> The list below comprises my actual policies for working with Word. Please
> respond to any or all of the policies.
>
>
> Tia
>
> avraham
>
> 1. *Vertical spacing:* Implement using a set of predefined "spacers",
> i.e., carriage returns. Use is not made of Paragraph Before/After 
> settings.
> This is in order to avoid combinations causing spacing of inappropriate
> size.
> => Obvious disadvantage: although this is great for me, others may have a
> hard time.
> => Note: this is not just a Word issue; this is a fundamental issue of
> methodology when working with any DTP.

This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Learn how to use proper 
formatting and application of styles and you'll never have a problem with 
paragraph spacing. With your methodology, you're forcing yourself to deal 
with reflow problems every time you add a single line of text to your 
document.


>
> 2. *Numbered lists: * Implement using SEQ fields and hanging
> indentation styles to indent the numbering levels N=1, 2, and 3, including
> "List Continue N" type styles.
>
> 3. *Bullet lists: *Implement using bullet symbols manually inserted
> using (Insert|Symbol) and -- as for the previous item -- hanging 
> indentation
> styles to indent the bullet levels N=1, 2, and 3, including "List Continue
> N" type styles.
>
> 4. *Style set for above: *For* *list indentation and "continue"
> styles, the same style set is used for both numbered lists and bullet 
> lists.
> => Obvious disadvantage: although implementing lists manually (in the 
> above
> two items) is great for me, others may have a hard time.

As with the paragraph spacing comment above, these three items are 
needlessly adding steps to accomplish what's already built in. Bullets and 
numbering work well in newer versions of Word. Use the built-in styles and 
modify them to format as specified in your style guide. It makes a whole lot 
less work.

>
> 5. *Chapter and section heading dot numbers: *Recently a proposal was
> made to also use SEQ fields instead of Word outline auto-numbering for
> outline numbered chapter and section heading dot numbers. This is the only
> Word outline auto-list feature I have been using since it seems relatively
> stable, although every now and again it starts to dance...
> => Disadvantage: Maybe it becomes more difficult to implement chapter and
> section data in headers and footers.

I have no problem with this if you absolutely must have numbered chapters 
and sections but to me, it's old-school and no longer necessary. YMMV.

>
> 6. *Same styles for body and tables: * Indentation (Paragraph | Before
> text) of all types of styles (e.g., body text, lists, code blocks, figure)
> is set to *zero* (instead of typically ~2cm) so that where appropriate the
> same styles can be used inside tables. In accordance, the page margin is 
> set
> that much wider (typically ~5cm, instead of typically ~3cm). Numbered
> chapter and section titles therefore start at typically minus 2cm (-2cm).

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here (especially since I'm not 
used to thinking in metric units) but I've defined paragraph styles 
specifically for tables. I can't quite figure out why that would be a 
problem for you. I'm confused at what you're trying to say about tables with 
respect to page margins.

>
> 7. *Style families: * All styles are defined as families, where all
> styles in each family are 'based on' a single common "group" style, e.g.,
> e.g., all table styles are 'based on' a style named style Table_Group.

If you use the default styles, there are already family relationships... 
adapt them to your needs once in your template and you're all set.

>
> 8. *Outside table spacing:* Spacing between the table text and the
> table borders should be implemented using the cell margins, and not by 
> using
> special paragraph styles with Before and After spacing.

This is one of those "there are several ways of doing things and none is 
more wrong or more right than any other" things. I prefer to use a special 
paragraph style after tables when necessary. If you're using cell margins to 
accomplish this and you have borders on the tables then the bottom cells 
have a distinctly different appearance that I prefer to avoid.

>
> 9. *Minimum number of styles:* Effort should be made to keep to a
> minimum the total number of used styles. Famous last words...

Why? Create as many styles as you need to accomplish your task. Make sure 
you know what they're for, when to use them and when not to use them. Make a 
spreadsheet to track them if it's really necessary but in most cases, 
creative style naming makes that unnecessary. Having a few extra styles 
doesn't cost anything and if you follow a consistent naming structure 
they'll be easy to use.

>
> 10. *Cross-references 1:* Keep the number of cross-references
> (non-bookmark) to a minimum - the less there are, less there are to break.

Cross-references break if you don't know how they work or why they break. 
Spend some time studying them and learning what happened when they break and 
they'll not be a problem. In most cases, cross-references "break" when you 
move text within your document without paying attention to what you're 
doing. I use hundreds of cross-references in my documents and almost never 
have a problem. If one breaks, it's because I didn't take the time to move 
some text properly. When that happens, I realize what I've done wrong and 
know how to fix it in a matter of a couple seconds.

>
> 11. *Cross-references 2 - and this one is just an idea:* wrt the above:
> implement code to convert all standard cross-references to bookmarks, 
> since
> maybe links to bookmarks are more stable. Anybody got any VBA code to do
> this...?

Bad idea... there are times when you want to use a bookmark and times when 
you want to use a cross-reference. Converting all of one to the other is not 
the right thing to do.

>
> Btw, any more suggestions?
>
> avraham

--
Mike Starr                            WriteStarr Information Services
Technical Writer   -   Online Help Developer   -    Website developer
Graphic Designer    -    Desktop Publisher   -       MS Office Expert
Phone: (262) 694-1028 - Tollfree: (877) 892-1028 - Fax:(262) 697-6334
Email: mike -at- writestarr -dot- com      -      Web: http://www.writestarr.com

 

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