Yep, I've just been working on documents with titles centered using spaces,
first-line indents created using tabs, and of course the ubiquitous double
paragraph breaks to create "blank lines."

Perhaps the worst (because of the level of circulation it reached) was the
book published by a local writers' group, an anthology of their work. One
member of the group who supposedly "knows something about computers" had
compiled the document, and they'd sent it off to a POD printer. It has a
running head on every page (including the title page and pages that should
otherwise be blank) and every paragraph in the thing has a first-line
indent, which means that the "centered" titles are off-center. It really is
god-awful. They gave me a complimentary copy when I spoke at one of their
meetings, so there wasn't much I could say.

Actually, I suspect the typography was not much worse than the content, but
you *can* make a silk purse out of a sow's ear to some extent: I've seen
some very attractive-looking books (well laid out, appealing type design)
that turned out to be total garbazh to read (indeed, I've typeset some of
them!).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"JoAnn Paules [MVP]" wrote in message
...
I have seen some of the UGLIEST ways to format documents because I always
keep the non-printing characters turned on. I swear that most people don't
know how to properly center a heading!

And you are right when you say that the people who don't see the NPCs
don't
appreciate having the work done correctly. They only care about the paper
copy. And sometimes it seems that they really don't look too closely at
that.

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]



"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
FWIW, I can tell you that this ability is not appreciated. As long as a
document looks good when printed out, users don't care what the actual
file
looks like. It's obvious to me that most users do not operate with
nonprinting characters displayed. If they did, surely they would be
embarrassed by the number of empty paragraphs, extra spaces and tabs,
etc.
No doubt that's why it's so traumatic to most users when they
accidentally
do turn on display of NPC. I can spend hours cleaning up a manuscript
and
applying styles (which, incidentally, will significantly reduce the file
size), but, because it does not look appreciably different when printed
out,
the client does not value the effort.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

"Beth Brooks" wrote in message
...
Hi!

It seems that no matter where I work, I always end up as the onsite MS
Word
expert, especially when it comes to cleaningup Word files that have
been
created/modified by author's with very little knowledge of how Word
usually
works. I'm also being asked to create templates and forms, both of
which
tasks are helping me to learn even more. I don't claim to be anywhere
near
the MVP level but I aspire to it!

I was wondering whether there is anyone out there who makes a living
cleaning up other people's MS Word messes and whether you might have
any
advice for me on how to turn that skill into a career.

Thanks!

Beth