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Body Text vs Normal
Hi,
My company has undergone a few mergers and I am now tasked with standardizing our style sheets across offices. I'd like some advice on this. The templates I have been using till now use "Normal" as body text rather than a specific style called "Body Text" or similar. (One of our offices uses "Body Text".) Most tech authors seem to advocate staying away from Normal, but I don't see any problem with it as long as you follow these simple rules: i. You base any styles you don't want to change if Normal changes on "no style" or another style. ii. If more than one person will work on the same master document, you EITHER give strict orders never to select "Automatically update document styles" in the Templates dialog box OR you make sure that everyone in the authoring team has the same definition of "Normal" in their "Normal" template OR you attach the document to a template on a shared network folder that you know will always be available, and in which the "Normal" style matches that of the document. I don't see any problem with copy/pasting from other documents or emails that use Normal, particularly with the latest versions of Word where you get a dropdown menu that allows you to choose whether to retain source or target formatting when you paste. To me this is easier than reformatting imported Normal text as Body Text. Even if somebody accidentally chooses "retain source formatting" when pasting, as far as I can see you can easily tidy this up by selecting "Automatically update document styles", saving, and then clearing this setting (or by selecting the offending text and clicking ctrl + space). Does this make sense? IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I don't think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of one and half a dozen of the other. In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base it on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Thanks, Adrian |
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