Formatting freaks?

["F. Marc de Piolenc" <piolenc -at- REPORTERS -dot- NET>]

From: Dianne Blake <write-it -at- HOME -dot- COM>

Am I the only one out there that gets in trouble when they receive
documents that are screaming for reformatting and clean-up (to something
more readable, something more aesthetically pleasing)?

Even when I am writing from scratch, I just can't sit at a blank piece
of paper for very long.  I have to work with a style guide.  If one
doesn't exist, I can sit for hours designing just the right styles,
fonts, and page layout. Once this is done, I can write for hours and
hours on end without annoying formatting distractions.

Creating the style guide usually gets my creative juices going so well
that I've written as many as 3 chapters in a day after a bout of
formatting.

Maybe I am missing my calling.  Does anyone know of a venue that is in
serious need of formatting freaks? Or, maybe I just needs a good
psychiatrist.
 ========================================================================

Dear Diane,

I found your post fascinating because, with me, the process works in
reverse: I organize my thoughts and write the text first. Only then does
an appropriate layout suggest itself. In other words, content first,
look and feel second.

Yet I attach as much importance as you evidently do to the page layout,
choice of fonts and so forth. That makes me a Type B format freak, the
converse of your Type A.

Things get complicated when I am doctoring a document prepared with a
full-featured word processor by an enthusiastic subject-matter expert
who has been making up his format as he goes. I have been known to lose
the formatting by "accidentally" converting the document to ASCII. I
then edit the plain text to coherence, afterwards formatting it ab
initio in Ventura.

Best,
Marc de Piolenc
Autodidactics
http://www89.pair.com/techinfo/

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