Chapter-page numbering, reasons for

[Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>]

Hi, all.

I have been updating inherited templates. All of them use chapter-page numbering (1-1, 2-1, 3-1, etc.)

I can think of only one reason for this technique, and it's outdated. When I was a wee temporary secretary putting myself through graduate school much too long ago, I sometimes was asked to insert change pages, which came through the US mail, into such industry publications as massive regulation documentation sets that were many volumes long with thousands of pages in three-ring binders. I physically tossed the old pages and stuck the new ones in. The chapnum-pagenum system made it possible to replace only the pages until the end of just that chapter and preserve correct page numbering. 

(Even then, the change pages sometimes were given alpha subnumbers. If, in an immense doc set, you replaced page 1,356 to 1,362 with 10 new pages, the new page numbers included 1,362a, 1,362b, 1,362c, and 1,362d.)

Now that we send out updated PDFs and nobody physically replaces pages, is there any compelling reason to keep using chapnum-pagenums? I know from experience is it a major source of grief for writers who are less skilled with FrameMaker (and I remember my own painful experiences vividly!) I have spent a lot of time coaching people, time I could have better spent on other tasks.

Is it worth doing? Do you do it? If you made the changeover in your company, did you get any objections?

Thanks!

--Nancy


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