Re: Creating a consistent look and feel for docs

["Michele Marques" <mmarques -at- cms400 -dot- com>]

> I was hired to create the docs. My manager wants to have a 
consistent look
> and feel to all documents created by our department, which 
includes
> documents written by the software engineers and the managers. 
I am
> currently working on a style guide. I am also creating a Word 
template and
> sample documents that others can use. 

[snip]

> I don't want to have to spend hours fixing up others documents 
before they
> can be published, and we don't want to hire a word processing 
person to do
> it. Have any of you had any experience in getting people outside 
the
> Documentation group to create documents according to a 
standard? 
> 


I haven't done this myself, but I do have a few ideas. If you have not 
done so already, you might want to check out Woody's Office 
Watch (you can find it from http://www.wopr.com) for the "Word of 
Law" column, which deals with some of those issues.

My biggest suggestion is to have custom toolbar/menus with your 
templates, where you (1) remove anything that you don't want the 
users to do and (2) add buttons/menus for easy access to custom 
macros. 

For example, you could already have a table of contents in place (it 
just won't have much substance) and a toolbar button to "finish" a 
document that auto-applies styles, updates the table of contents, 
and does any other cleanup work that you can make routine.

Good luck!

    - Michele

----------------------------------------------
Michele Marques
Technical Writer, CMS Manufacturing Systems
mmarques -at- cms400 -dot- com        
905-477-4499 x280