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#1
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How important are Word's default styles?
I'm moving to Word 2002 from FrameMaker, and I find Word's default paragraph
style names unintuitive. I'm used to choosing my own names for paragraph styles. I don't know much about Word yet, but I assume I can ignore Word's default styles, and perhaps I can get rid of them entirely by replacing or modifying normal.dot. However, I recently also started using PowerPoint 2002, and in migrating some materials from FrameMaker to PowerPoint via Word, I found that PowerPoint correctly formatted the material only if it used the default Word style names. There also seem to be predefined keyboard shortcuts for five of the default Word styles. These two things suggest that Word's default paragraph styles are "special" and that trying to avoid them is likely to lead to trouble down the road. Should I force myself to live with Word's default styles (or at least default style names), or would it be equally reasonable to get rid of them and use my own style names? Thanks, Scott |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.newusers
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How important are Word's default styles?
Scott,
I would advise to have a look here, it will be hard to find anything better on the web, believe me. http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styl...sOnStyles.html -- Luc Sanders (MVP - PowerPoint) "Scott Meyers" schreef in bericht ... I'm moving to Word 2002 from FrameMaker, and I find Word's default paragraph style names unintuitive. I'm used to choosing my own names for paragraph styles. I don't know much about Word yet, but I assume I can ignore Word's default styles, and perhaps I can get rid of them entirely by replacing or modifying normal.dot. However, I recently also started using PowerPoint 2002, and in migrating some materials from FrameMaker to PowerPoint via Word, I found that PowerPoint correctly formatted the material only if it used the default Word style names. There also seem to be predefined keyboard shortcuts for five of the default Word styles. These two things suggest that Word's default paragraph styles are "special" and that trying to avoid them is likely to lead to trouble down the road. Should I force myself to live with Word's default styles (or at least default style names), or would it be equally reasonable to get rid of them and use my own style names? Thanks, Scott |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.newusers
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How important are Word's default styles?
I'd say that there are two categories of built-in styles. Some are
automatically applied by Word in specific circumstances. For example, when you create a table of contents, Word uses the TOC series of styles for the various TOC levels. Similarly, when you insert a footnote, Word applies the Footnote Text paragraph style to the footnote text, and formats the footnote number with the Footnote Reference character style. These automatically applied built-in styles are quite useful. Note that you can modify them to suit your needs. The other category of built-in styles include styles that you can choose to make use of. By default, the Normal style is applied to the empty paragraph in a blank document. Note that since this style is the "parent" style for most other styles in Word, modifying it may cause unwanted side-effects. I'd say: Don't use the Normal style. You can use it to change properties that should be changed in all (or almost all) other styles; for example, the font name and size, but there is usually no need to actually apply it to document text. In contrast, the built-in headings should be used. For reasons why, see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numb...ingStyles.html. The other built-in styles (Body Text, Body Text 2, First Line Indent, etc.) in this category can be used -- or not. It is completely up to you. -- Stefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP "Scott Meyers" wrote in message ... I'm moving to Word 2002 from FrameMaker, and I find Word's default paragraph style names unintuitive. I'm used to choosing my own names for paragraph styles. I don't know much about Word yet, but I assume I can ignore Word's default styles, and perhaps I can get rid of them entirely by replacing or modifying normal.dot. However, I recently also started using PowerPoint 2002, and in migrating some materials from FrameMaker to PowerPoint via Word, I found that PowerPoint correctly formatted the material only if it used the default Word style names. There also seem to be predefined keyboard shortcuts for five of the default Word styles. These two things suggest that Word's default paragraph styles are "special" and that trying to avoid them is likely to lead to trouble down the road. Should I force myself to live with Word's default styles (or at least default style names), or would it be equally reasonable to get rid of them and use my own style names? Thanks, Scott |
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.word.newusers
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How important are Word's default styles?
Stefan has pretty much summed it up (and I also recommend Shauna's article
on heading styles). One further note, however: you can add your own name to a style as an "alias." For example, you can't change the name of Heading 1 to "Chapter Title," but you can change it to "Heading 1, Chapter Title." -- 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. "Stefan Blom" wrote in message ... I'd say that there are two categories of built-in styles. Some are automatically applied by Word in specific circumstances. For example, when you create a table of contents, Word uses the TOC series of styles for the various TOC levels. Similarly, when you insert a footnote, Word applies the Footnote Text paragraph style to the footnote text, and formats the footnote number with the Footnote Reference character style. These automatically applied built-in styles are quite useful. Note that you can modify them to suit your needs. The other category of built-in styles include styles that you can choose to make use of. By default, the Normal style is applied to the empty paragraph in a blank document. Note that since this style is the "parent" style for most other styles in Word, modifying it may cause unwanted side-effects. I'd say: Don't use the Normal style. You can use it to change properties that should be changed in all (or almost all) other styles; for example, the font name and size, but there is usually no need to actually apply it to document text. In contrast, the built-in headings should be used. For reasons why, see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numb...ingStyles.html. The other built-in styles (Body Text, Body Text 2, First Line Indent, etc.) in this category can be used -- or not. It is completely up to you. -- Stefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP "Scott Meyers" wrote in message ... I'm moving to Word 2002 from FrameMaker, and I find Word's default paragraph style names unintuitive. I'm used to choosing my own names for paragraph styles. I don't know much about Word yet, but I assume I can ignore Word's default styles, and perhaps I can get rid of them entirely by replacing or modifying normal.dot. However, I recently also started using PowerPoint 2002, and in migrating some materials from FrameMaker to PowerPoint via Word, I found that PowerPoint correctly formatted the material only if it used the default Word style names. There also seem to be predefined keyboard shortcuts for five of the default Word styles. These two things suggest that Word's default paragraph styles are "special" and that trying to avoid them is likely to lead to trouble down the road. Should I force myself to live with Word's default styles (or at least default style names), or would it be equally reasonable to get rid of them and use my own style names? Thanks, Scott |
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