Hi Paul
In an ideal world everyone would adhere to these naming standards so that
copying and pasting text between documents would not cause so many
formatting problems, but Word Help does not seem to offer any guidance
about such standards.
For me, this is the crucial issue. And for that reason, I *always* use
built-in styles if a style with an appropriate name exists. I still create
custom styles (I seem to create one called TableText in almost everything I
do). But when in doubt, my rule is to use a built-in style and modify it for
my needs.
If we all did that, then there would, effectively, be a naming standard.
For what it's worth, I always use Body Text for Body Text because Word uses
Normal for so many other things. For example, Word uses Normal style for
text in text boxes and other shapes. If you've modified Normal to do
double-duty as a body text style, then you're now stuck with that formatting
for all AutoShapes, and you'll have to change the formatting for your
shapes. In any case, I can't imagine a conversation in which I say to
someone "Hi, I've created this gorgeous template for your business. When you
come to create a paragraph of body text, don't use the built-in Body Text
style that's available in every Word document ever created. Instead, use
Normal style." That doesn't seem to make sense to me!
(Oh, and I think I'm the pink text and red marching ants person, though I
haven't actually done that lately!)
Hope this helps.
Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the answers to the specific points.
I was surprised not to find any best practice guides for style naming in
Word help or via a Google search. I think there is an opportunity here
(for you MVPs) to create a standards document and make it available on the
web ;-)
--
Visit my website www.pdtech.co.uk for Access Developer Resources
"Robert M. Franz (RMF)" wrote in message
...
Hello Paul
Paul wrote:
I am setting up a few templates for users who have long documents which
have been re-used for many years (e.g. for 2003 document the 2002 one
was used and overwritten) and have text pasted in from other sources and
in terms of formatting/styles are a complete mess.
I guess most in here can feel your pain! :-)
I'm quite comfortable creating and modifying styles and going through
the documents and removing all the manual formatting in favour of the
styles (styles and formatting pane is great for this, although I wish it
was a bit more stable and quicker to update - it tends to claim
formatting is still in the document after you have removed all
instances).
What I want to know is, can anyone point me to a good guide for style
use/naming. Headings, captions, page numbers etc are obvious but I would
like to know (for example):
* Is it better (or more common) for the 'standard' paragraphs to be
defined as 'Normal' or 'Body Text'?
From all I read, this seems to come down to personal taste. I prefer Body
Text in longer documents. For letter templates, I usually don't bother
beceause I know users will not adhere too much, anyway.
An interesting idea was reported in here to, if Body Text was used, to
define "Normal" as something like Arial Bold, 13 pt, purple, with red
marching ants around it; this serves as an indicator that, at this
paragraph, the correct style has obviously not been applied yet ...
* Is it considered better to use a character style 'Strong' to apply
bold than to apply manually (in 2003 I would say yes, as you can then
lock the document for formatting but still allow Strong to be applied to
text in any other style)?
Very good reason in Word 2003. In earlier versions, I'd vote for
Strong/Emphasis, too, esp. if you plan to export to (X)HTML from those
documents. The bad part of Word is that it treats character styles as
direct formatting (which you have found out if you are familiar with the
CTRL-A | CTRL-Q and ... | CTRL-Space Shortcuts). There are macros out
there that preserve character styles when resetting direct character
formatting to the famous "Font of the underlying paragraph".
* If you have Strong as Bold and Emphasis as Italics, is there a
'standard' name for Bold+Italics (Stong Emphasis)?
I'd probably rather try not to use that combination (unless with "real"
crafted fonts for that purpose), but that's personal typographical
preference, I'm sure.
* Is it 'better' to call indented Body Text 'Body Text Indent' or just
'Indent'?
I'd use the former simply beceause that is part in a Normal.dot, anyway.
* Are the list and table styles of much benefit - do experienced Word
users recommend using them?
I see the former recommended around here, and the latter rather
discouraged. Personally, my list numbering seems stable enough without
having to delve into the realms of list styles. Table styles seem to be a
bit weird when you want to control paragraph style/formatting of the
table text, but for the rest seem to be OK. My "production" templates
still use mere table AutoTexts (with para styles for heading row and the
rest applied); if I ever wanted to globally change table properties aside
from the para styles, I'd use VBA.
In an ideal world everyone would adhere to these naming standards so
that copying and pasting text between documents would not cause so many
formatting problems, but Word Help does not seem to offer any guidance
about such standards.
Hear, hear!
Greetinx
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word