| Home |
| Search |
| Today's Posts |
|
#1
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
Simple styles for complex documents?
I work in a law firm. We make really complicated documents. Accordingly, we
have a very complicated Normal.dot default style sheet. It has pretty much every paragraph numbering system you could ever want and it has them in both 12 pt and 9 pt (the fine print). It also has them in bold and with underlining. It has a couple in red, a few in blue, one in 4 pt (ultra fine print). And then there are titles, paragraph styles for every possible indent, styles for signature lines and web links. We have one called We have the authority which is only used wherever that phrase occurs. We have 70-something styles that are included in every document. Its a huge and confusing mess and because of this almost no one uses styles in simple documents. In complicated documents, where the value of using styles is much more apparent, no one uses them consistently. In a really complicated document that I was working with on Friday I counted 30 styles in use. That is, 30 of our built-in styles. On top of that the document had 75 pseudo-styles. These are styles with names like List Paragraph + 9pt, Bold, First line: 0.5 - in other words, built-in styles that had been modified with manual application of styling. To me, and to most of the people in the office, its clear that were not using styles properly. We spend almost as much time troubleshooting strange style behavior as we would spend manually formatting documents were we not using styles at all. What does a best-practice implementation of styles looks like for a case like ours? |
|
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
It's a law firm. That means that you're dealing with legal documents. Many
have to meet the requirements of specific courts. That is going to cause severe limitations at the outset. I don't work in this kind of environment, so I won't presume to offer more than a couple of very general recommendations: 1. Define styles based on purpose rather than formatting: Body Text, Block Text, etc. When you're not bound by formatting, you can modify a style within a document as needed rather than feel the need to create a new one. 2. Create specific templates with the specific styles needed for specific types of documents; don't try to come up with a single template that contains all the styles needed for every possible kind of document. If a given document really needs 30 styles, then the template needs that many styles; otherwise not. 3. But does the document really need 30 styles? It might be time to step back and analyze them and figure out what is the minimum number of styles (types of formatting) it could use. Designers say you should never use more than three fonts on a page; anything more looks busy and confusing and just plain tacky. The same might apply to styles in a document. If there are really that many different kinds of formatting, then perhaps someone needs to analyze the logical structure of the document to see if it could be simplified. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA "Fraser Page" wrote in message ... I work in a law firm. We make really complicated documents. Accordingly, we have a very complicated Normal.dot default style sheet. It has pretty much every paragraph numbering system you could ever want and it has them in both 12 pt and 9 pt (the fine print). It also has them in bold and with underlining. It has a couple in red, a few in blue, one in 4 pt (ultra fine print). And then there are titles, paragraph styles for every possible indent, styles for signature lines and web links. We have one called "We have the authority." which is only used wherever that phrase occurs. We have 70-something styles that are included in every document. It's a huge and confusing mess and because of this almost no one uses styles in simple documents. In complicated documents, where the value of using styles is much more apparent, no one uses them consistently. In a really complicated document that I was working with on Friday I counted 30 styles in use. That is, 30 of our built-in styles. On top of that the document had 75 pseudo-styles. These are 'styles' with names like "List Paragraph + 9pt, Bold, First line: 0.5"" - in other words, built-in styles that had been modified with manual application of styling. To me, and to most of the people in the office, it's clear that we're not using styles properly. We spend almost as much time troubleshooting strange style behavior as we would spend manually formatting documents were we not using styles at all. What does a best-practice implementation of styles looks like for a case like ours? |
|
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
Sigh. Indeed it is a problem. I hate those List
Paragraph + 9pt, Bold, First line: 0.5 things. I will not tolerate ANY in my documents. It is both a design issue, and a training issue. The design issue takes time, but is possible. I have taken two different approaches. The first was to remove ALL formatting buttons. No Bold, no Underline etc. Plus, I removed the Format menu and anything else that can change things. I built a new toolbar with the major styles as text buttons. Users just click on the style name. The second was to keep the buttons, but re-write the code behind them. For example, the Bold button does NOT toggle Bold. It applies a bold character style. The first approach annoyed the heck out of people for a long time, but now they love it. They find it faster, and all their documents are consistent, which was the desired idea. Word is designed around styles. That is a fact. People generally get confused about them, but training helps. But also management direction helps. We want consistent documents. Period. Thou shalt not decide on a whim you want to make a certain element bold. No.. .you will not. On long complicated documents 30 styles is not out of line. Proper use of them can be difficult. I empathize. Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote: It's a law firm. That means that you're dealing with legal documents. Many have to meet the requirements of specific courts. That is going to cause severe limitations at the outset. I don't work in this kind of environment, so I won't presume to offer more than a couple of very general recommendations: 1. Define styles based on purpose rather than formatting: Body Text, Block Text, etc. When you're not bound by formatting, you can modify a style within a document as needed rather than feel the need to create a new one. 2. Create specific templates with the specific styles needed for specific types of documents; don't try to come up with a single template that contains all the styles needed for every possible kind of document. If a given document really needs 30 styles, then the template needs that many styles; otherwise not. 3. But does the document really need 30 styles? It might be time to step back and analyze them and figure out what is the minimum number of styles (types of formatting) it could use. Designers say you should never use more than three fonts on a page; anything more looks busy and confusing and just plain tacky. The same might apply to styles in a document. If there are really that many different kinds of formatting, then perhaps someone needs to analyze the logical structure of the document to see if it could be simplified. I work in a law firm. We make really complicated documents. Accordingly, we have a very complicated Normal.dot default style sheet. It has pretty much [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] What does a best-practice implementation of styles looks like for a case like ours? -- Message posted via http://www.officekb.com |
|
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
Excellent advice... Some "smaller" tips:
-- Take care to specify the "Style for following paragraph" in each paragraph style carefully. The more often the right style is applied automatically as uers type, the less often they'll apply the wrong style or manual formatting. -- Group styles according to use (in older versions by giving them names that list nicely alpabetically, in Word 2007 through their priority setting). If the styles that are likely to be used in close proximity in the document are in close proximity in the styles pane, users will have less trouble to find them. -- In Word 2007, you can hide styles until they are first used. That may come in handy say if your users are expected to apply heading or list styles or bold/italic through buttons or keyboard shortcuts anyway: These styles won't clutter the styles list then unless they have actually been applied somewhere. -- On trick I use ... though I'm not sure if it would be practical for your use: I do make use of color a lot... Say Headings in dark blue and text in black, quotes in dark green... Users quickly find that applying these from the styles pane is quicker than trying to use manual formatting, the styles are easier to find in the styles pane, and it's more obvious if a wrong style has been applied. Chosen with a bit of good taste, it looks great too, on both b/w and color printers. Regards, Klaus "fumei via OfficeKB.com" u37563@uwe wrote: Sigh. Indeed it is a problem. I hate those List Paragraph + 9pt, Bold, First line: 0.5 things. I will not tolerate ANY in my documents. It is both a design issue, and a training issue. The design issue takes time, but is possible. I have taken two different approaches. The first was to remove ALL formatting buttons. No Bold, no Underline etc. Plus, I removed the Format menu and anything else that can change things. I built a new toolbar with the major styles as text buttons. Users just click on the style name. The second was to keep the buttons, but re-write the code behind them. For example, the Bold button does NOT toggle Bold. It applies a bold character style. The first approach annoyed the heck out of people for a long time, but now they love it. They find it faster, and all their documents are consistent, which was the desired idea. Word is designed around styles. That is a fact. People generally get confused about them, but training helps. But also management direction helps. We want consistent documents. Period. Thou shalt not decide on a whim you want to make a certain element bold. No.. you will not. On long complicated documents 30 styles is not out of line. Proper use of them can be difficult. I empathize. Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote: It's a law firm. That means that you're dealing with legal documents. Many have to meet the requirements of specific courts. That is going to cause severe limitations at the outset. I don't work in this kind of environment, so I won't presume to offer more than a couple of very general recommendations: 1. Define styles based on purpose rather than formatting: Body Text, Block Text, etc. When you're not bound by formatting, you can modify a style within a document as needed rather than feel the need to create a new one. 2. Create specific templates with the specific styles needed for specific types of documents; don't try to come up with a single template that contains all the styles needed for every possible kind of document. If a given document really needs 30 styles, then the template needs that many styles; otherwise not. 3. But does the document really need 30 styles? It might be time to step back and analyze them and figure out what is the minimum number of styles (types of formatting) it could use. Designers say you should never use more than three fonts on a page; anything more looks busy and confusing and just plain tacky. The same might apply to styles in a document. If there are really that many different kinds of formatting, then perhaps someone needs to analyze the logical structure of the document to see if it could be simplified. I work in a law firm. We make really complicated documents. Accordingly, we have a very complicated Normal.dot default style sheet. It has pretty much [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] What does a best-practice implementation of styles looks like for a case like ours? -- Message posted via http://www.officekb.com |
|
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
Thanks for your replies everyone. Theres a lot of very useful advice in your
responses. (I don't understand how my initial post was made 'unknown' on the microsoft.com version of this thread -- very confusing. It looks fine over at www.officekb.com. I'm reposting it again just for reference.) fumei, I'm really interested to hear that disallowing all manual formatting is working for you. I've actually been trying this out with documents I create for myself for the last little while. It's wonderful how clean the documents end up coming out, but pretty frustrating when there isnt a style set up that does what you want to do. Your reprogramming of Font formatting buttons is a really interesting hack. Id be interested in learning how to do this. However, it seems to me that this is only a partial fix. It solves some of the problems with all of the List Paragraph + Bold things but doesnt contribute anything to styles role as formatting guidance. You just end up with a bunch of styles named Bold, Bold + Italic, Italic + Underline right? Is there any consensus on this? Is it fine to use formatting-specific character styles while keeping your main paragraph styles use-specific? I could try to make these character specific styles use-specific but I feel that that might lead to considerable confusion and push people back to manual formatting. Mind you, it certainly proved an effective fix for my 30+ 70 style document. By reassigning all those List Paragraph + Bold styles (is there a name for these?) to the List Paragraph paragraph style and Bold character style I was able to get rid of about half of my 70 pseudo-styles. Of the remaining half most of them were either assigned to the wrong style and had formatting added to make them look like another style or shouldnt have had extra formatting added at all. Using this method, my document went from 30 styles and 70 pseudo-styles to about 30 styles and 8 pseudo-styles a pretty significant improvement. I also took a look at places where a table would serve the job of a style with a bit more elegance. This let me trim my document of a bunch of styles that were just indented versions of my main styles. I added these newly formatted tables to the Quick Parts gallery so that I could use them elsewhere in this document and others. (These were things like signature and date lines which to my only half-surprise were formatted totally differently throughout the document.) Suzanne, youre absolutely right. Theres lots of room for simplification. There are 6 different numbering styles (with different sublevels, making 11 styles in total) used in just this one document. In some cases the different numbering makes sense its an easy way to differentiate one list from another but most of the time I cant find any rhyme or reason to it. Klaus, Ive found the hide until used feature both very handy and occasionally irritating. I dont know why, but sometimes a style just refuses to show up in my styles pallet despite the fact that its being used. Usually this style that wont show up is one set as the style for following paragraph. "Klaus Linke" wrote: Excellent advice... Some "smaller" tips: -- Take care to specify the "Style for following paragraph" in each paragraph style carefully. The more often the right style is applied automatically as uers type, the less often they'll apply the wrong style or manual formatting. -- Group styles according to use (in older versions by giving them names that list nicely alpabetically, in Word 2007 through their priority setting). If the styles that are likely to be used in close proximity in the document are in close proximity in the styles pane, users will have less trouble to find them. -- In Word 2007, you can hide styles until they are first used. That may come in handy say if your users are expected to apply heading or list styles or bold/italic through buttons or keyboard shortcuts anyway: These styles won't clutter the styles list then unless they have actually been applied somewhere. -- On trick I use ... though I'm not sure if it would be practical for your use: I do make use of color a lot... Say Headings in dark blue and text in black, quotes in dark green... Users quickly find that applying these from the styles pane is quicker than trying to use manual formatting, the styles are easier to find in the styles pane, and it's more obvious if a wrong style has been applied. Chosen with a bit of good taste, it looks great too, on both b/w and color printers. Regards, Klaus "fumei via OfficeKB.com" u37563@uwe wrote: Sigh. Indeed it is a problem. I hate those List Paragraph + 9pt, Bold, First line: 0.5 things. I will not tolerate ANY in my documents. It is both a design issue, and a training issue. The design issue takes time, but is possible. I have taken two different approaches. The first was to remove ALL formatting buttons. No Bold, no Underline etc. Plus, I removed the Format menu and anything else that can change things. I built a new toolbar with the major styles as text buttons. Users just click on the style name. The second was to keep the buttons, but re-write the code behind them. For example, the Bold button does NOT toggle Bold. It applies a bold character style. The first approach annoyed the heck out of people for a long time, but now they love it. They find it faster, and all their documents are consistent, which was the desired idea. Word is designed around styles. That is a fact. People generally get confused about them, but training helps. But also management direction helps. We want consistent documents. Period. Thou shalt not decide on a whim you want to make a certain element bold. No.. you will not. On long complicated documents 30 styles is not out of line. Proper use of them can be difficult. I empathize. Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote: It's a law firm. That means that you're dealing with legal documents. Many have to meet the requirements of specific courts. That is going to cause severe limitations at the outset. I don't work in this kind of environment, so I won't presume to offer more than a couple of very general recommendations: 1. Define styles based on purpose rather than formatting: Body Text, Block Text, etc. When you're not bound by formatting, you can modify a style within a document as needed rather than feel the need to create a new one. 2. Create specific templates with the specific styles needed for specific types of documents; don't try to come up with a single template that contains all the styles needed for every possible kind of document. If a given document really needs 30 styles, then the template needs that many styles; otherwise not. 3. But does the document really need 30 styles? It might be time to step back and analyze them and figure out what is the minimum number of styles (types of formatting) it could use. Designers say you should never use more than three fonts on a page; anything more looks busy and confusing and just plain tacky. The same might apply to styles in a document. If there are really that many different kinds of formatting, then perhaps someone needs to analyze the logical structure of the document to see if it could be simplified. I work in a law firm. We make really complicated documents. Accordingly, we have a very complicated Normal.dot default style sheet. It has pretty much [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] What does a best-practice implementation of styles looks like for a case like ours? -- Message posted via http://www.officekb.com |
|
#6
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
This is a repost of my original question to this forum. On microsoft.com it's
showing up as 'unknown'. I work in a law firm. We make really complicated documents. Accordingly, we have a very complicated Normal.dot default style sheet. It has pretty much every paragraph numbering system you could ever want and it has them in both 12 pt and 9 pt (the fine print). It also has them in bold and with underlining. It has a couple in red, a few in blue, one in 4 pt (ultra fine print). And then there are titles, paragraph styles for every possible indent, styles for signature lines and web links. We have one called We have the authority which is only used wherever that phrase occurs. We have 70-something styles that are included in every document. Its a huge and confusing mess and because of this almost no one uses styles in simple documents. In complicated documents, where the value of using styles is much more apparent, no one uses them consistently. In a really complicated document that I was working with on Friday I counted 30 styles in use. That is, 30 of our built-in styles. On top of that the document had 75 pseudo-styles. These are styles with names like List Paragraph + 9pt, Bold, First line: 0.5 - in other words, built-in styles that had been modified with manual application of styling. To me, and to most of the people in the office, its clear that were not using styles properly. We spend almost as much time troubleshooting strange style behavior as we would spend manually formatting documents were we not using styles at all. What does a best-practice implementation of styles look like for a case like ours? |
|
#7
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
Further to my thoughts on using character styles (eg bold, italic) rather
than formatting buttons for these same functions, does anybody have a workaround for the problem of toggling these styles on and off? Is it really impossible to remove a character style while leaving the paragraph style in place? An example here, just to make sure I'm being clear: if I have piece of text that is formatted with the Bullet linked/paragraph style and the Bold character style and I want to un-bold that bolded text it appears to me that my only valid option is to hit the Clear All button and then reapply my Bullet style. Clicking on the Bold style will not toggle the style off as you hope it might. Toggling the Bold button in the font formatting palette will un-bold the text but it will do so by creating one of those crazy auto-generated style things called gasp Bold + Not Bold. Is there another option that Im missing that doesnt involve the frustrating step of having to reapply my paragraph styling? |
|
#8
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
|
|||
|
|||
|
Simple styles for complex documents?
Ctrl+Spacebar clears direct font formatting (including character styles).
Ctrl+Q restores paragraph formatting to the style definition. In Word 2007 you have a little more control through the Style Inspector, which allows you to clear direct font formatting without clearing character styles. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA "Fraser Page" wrote in message ... Further to my thoughts on using character styles (eg bold, italic) rather than formatting buttons for these same functions, does anybody have a workaround for the problem of toggling these styles on and off? Is it really impossible to remove a character style while leaving the paragraph style in place? An example here, just to make sure I'm being clear: if I have piece of text that is formatted with the 'Bullet' linked/paragraph style and the 'Bold' character style and I want to un-bold that bolded text it appears to me that my only valid option is to hit the 'Clear All' button and then reapply my 'Bullet' style. Clicking on the 'Bold' style will not toggle the style off as you hope it might. Toggling the Bold button in the font formatting palette will un-bold the text but it will do so by creating one of those crazy auto-generated style things called - gasp - "Bold + Not Bold." Is there another option that I'm missing that doesn't involve the frustrating step of having to reapply my paragraph styling? |
| Reply |
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads
|
||||
| Thread | Forum | |||
| Set up of complex, multi-part documents? WORD 2007 | New Users | |||
| Form: Once simple now too complex | Microsoft Word Help | |||
| Word 2007 Simple (Or not so simple) List Numbering | Microsoft Word Help | |||
| Defining Format Styles for complex formats | Microsoft Word Help | |||
| Need help using merge function for complex documents. | Mailmerge | |||
![Fraser Page[_2_] is offline](images/SultanThemeVB3R/statusicon/user_offline.gif)
Linear Mode
