[Daiya Mitchell]

A very strong DITTO! to Suzanne's post about process. I tried to say
this but could not articulate it so well.

Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
I would definitely start with a *manuscript* in a single file. In this
manuscript you do not worry about pagination or page layout. You do use
styles rigorously and create your references punctiliously, setting
everything up so that it will be possible to generate your TOC, TOF, etc.,
when you are done, but you don't do any of this as you are going along; you
concentrate on the content.

When editing is complete--and by this I mean, when the content of your
manuscript is satisfactory to you and your thesis committee--then you start
worrying about page layout. This is when you add section breaks, running
heads, TOC, TOF, etc.

It is necessary for your sanity that you concentrate on content while you
are in the writing phase, but it is equally vital that you pay moderate
attention to form (of the text itself) to spare yourself hair pulling when
you come down to the wire. This means that you apply the appropriate heading
styles, get any required numbering set up properly (see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numb...umbering.html), and so on.
Note that the actual formatting of styles is irrelevant. At this point,
every single style in your document can be 12-pt TNR, left-aligned,
double-spaced, etc. The beauty of styles is that you can modify them as
desired *after* editing is complete and you can start thinking about
appearance.