[srd]

It surprises me that I find not a single MS Word newsgroup oriented toward
the composition process.

Question: What is the canonical method for altering the format of a
document between drafting and producing a finished document? I know about
the Draft font option and the Normal and Outline views. What if the user
prefers a different paragraph style, say single spacing for drafts (to see
as much as possible on the screen) and double for manuscripts; or maybe
the reverse, where the user wants al lot of blank space in the early draft.

I one accomplished this through a base Normal style. When I started
planning the relations among styles and templates, the downside of basing
everything on Normal became obvious. So now I have no base style
throughout a document. 'Body text' or a descendent thereto might be the
base text style; 'Heading 2' the base title, subtitle, heading, and
subheading style. I usually have at least one other base style in a
document besides those. Changing base styles would be excessively
inconvenient.

Having a Draft style would be the solution, except you want to avoid
reapplying the manuscript styles. A draft template might be the answer,
but I have never used templates to that end. I invoke a template at the
time of the document's inception. I don't know if you can modify a
document by applying a template after the fact and then removing the
template or reapplying the original template, getting the original
document back.
--
Stephen R. Diamond