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Microsoft Word is a powerful word processor which, when used correctly, produces
smart business documents with a consistent layout and style. For Word to work
correctly, however, there are several Golden Rules you need to followed.
Rule 1: Use Styles—Avoid Direct Formatting
Styles are Word's most powerful feature. Everything you create in Word is attached
to a Style. A style is a predetermined set of formats that you can use repeatedly
throughout all your documents. Different parts of the document are tagged
by the underlying styles. Reasons why you must use styles include:
- Consistency
Using styles ensures that document are formatted identically.
- Ease of editing
By using styles throughout a document, any change of layout or formatting
can be applied to a style to make the change global.
- Efficiency of Working
Once a style has been created, it may be applied again and again eliminating
the need to repeat the same old format changes and guaranty consistency.
- Table of Contents
By using heading styles, TOCs can be created automatically.
- Faster Navigation
Using styles enable faster long document navigation using the Document Map
feature.
- Numbering
When numbering (and bullets) are linked to styles, numbering schemes become
consistent and easier to manage.
- Efficiency and Robustness
The file structure of a document full of manual formatting (direct formatting)
will be complex, bloated, slow to scroll, slow to render on screen and prone
to corruption. Word is a style-based application; when a document is opened,
Word first renders the contents, applies the styles and finally applies the
manual formatting (that counters the style's formatting). This makes Word
sluggish because it has to labour to open, render or print the document.
- HTML and XML
A styles-based document will readily transfer into HTML or XML.
Rule 2—Use Templates
Templates are a natural extension to styles. Where styles ensure that formatting
and layout is consistent throughout a document, templates ensure consistency
of similar documents.
Rule 3—Don't Use Line Feeds to Make Space
Don't use line feeds to make space between paragraphs!
This is a bad form of direct formatting that has adverse affects on a document's
efficiency and robustness. For example, it negates the affect of the Keep
with Next paragraph function, used to keep headings with the following text,
if the heading is floating with the extra manually inserted line feed. Use the
paragraph space before and/or after setting (Format/Paragraph) to keep consistent
spacing and headings with text. This spacing should be included as part of the
style.
Spacing is not accumulative when using successive different styles (unless
the compatibility option is deliberately changed). So if the body text style
is formatted with 6 points space below and it is followed by a heading level
formatted with 12 points space before, only the larger of the two spaces is
displayed (12 points) and not the accumulative space (12 + 6 = 18 points). This
makes spacing consistent, but not excessive throughout the document.
Rule 4—Don't Use the Spacebar to Make Spaces or Align Text
Aligning text vertically or padding out words by adding extra spaces is bad
practice. Proportional fonts such as Tahoma, Times New Roman, etc., automatically
adjust spacing between characters, so a letter 'i' occupies less width than
a letter 'm'. Additionally, different printers interpret fonts slightly differently.
You will waste time adding/removing spaces using the spacebar as when someone
else views your document on a computer that has a different printer/printer
driver the affect that you carefully prepared is ruined.
Use tabs to align text. If you have more than a couple of rows or columns to
align, use a table.
Rule 5—Use Only One Space After a Stop
For similar reasons to above, the algorithm used to automatically expand or
contract spaces between letters/words makes the use of double spaces after a
stop superfluous. Traditionally, non-proportional fonts such as Courier (a typewriter
emulation font) use the same character width for all letters, so a letter 'i'
occupies the same space width as a letter 'm'. In order to help the eye more
readily distinguish the white space at the end of a sentence from the white
space at the sides of narrow width characters, it was standard practice
to put double spaces after a stop. This improved readability. This does not
work with proportional fonts, as there is no inter-character white space.
Don't do it.
Tip! In its default setting, Word is very poor at full justification
of text. This is because Word only expands space between words to make the line
fit margin to margin. If you go to Tools/Options/Compatibility and select
the option to Do Full Justification like Wordperfect6.x, Word will use
a different justification algorithm that contracts spaces between words, as
well as expand spaces to make the line fit margin to margin. This works exceptionally
well if you also use Format/Font/Character Spacing and condense the spacing
by 0.1 or 0.2 points (depending on the font being used).
Rule 6—Don't Manually Number
Numbering is one of Word's weakest features and it has progressively become
worse as developers have unsuccessfully tried to fix the bugs in successive
versions of Word. Always tie in numbering with a style, especially if different
numbered lists are going to be used in a single document. For more information
on the numbering complexities of Word, see the following article:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm
Rule 7—Minimize the Use of Sections
Sections complicate the structure of a document. Usually, section breaks are
used to change the contents of a Header or Footer. Before using a section break,
investigate other methods of changing the header or footer. One much overlooked
feature is the StyleRef field. If the StyleRef field is used in a Header
or Footer, the text with the appropriate formatting nearest the top or bottom
of the page is inserted into the header or footer. So if you need the header
text to change because the section/chapter heading has changed (rather like
dictionary headers and footers) use the StyleRef field to reference the correct
Heading Level.
Similarly, if you need to change the footer depending on the page numbering,
you can use the IF field to achieve this. For example, the following field tests
to see if the current page is the last page in the document: if the answer is
true, it enters the document name and path, if the answer is false, it enters
nothing.
{ IF { PAGE } = { NUMPAGES } { FILENAME \P \* MERGEFORMAT } }
Rule 8—Avoid Manual Page Breaks
Inserting manual page breaks should be avoided. A manual page break will move
if the document is edited or it is moved to a computer with a different printer
driver. When it moves, it invariably moves down so that it rolls over to the
next page putting in an additional unwanted page.
It complicates the documents structure which frequently slows the creation/updating
of a TOC and sometimes causes a TOC to display incorrect page numbers. There
will be a few occasions when a manual page break is unavoidable and desirable;
however, look for other options first.
The most common and best used alternative is to apply the Page Break before
Paragraph format (Format/Paragraph/Line and Page Breaks), especially
if the next page is starting with a heading. This has the advantage that editing
the document prior to the heading will not affect the new page and will allow
Word to continue to insert automatic breaks correctly.
Another method is to use Keep with Next or Keep Lines Together options
also from the Paragraph formatting dialog.
Many thanks to tips gleamed over several years from many other Microsoft Most
Valuable Professionals. Please visit the MVP Word Site for a host of tips and
information on using Microsoft Word. You'll find it at this link: http://www.mvps.org/word/.
Need further help getting your complex Word docs formatted? Join our free
Word Doc Design support group! See this link for details: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Word_DocDesign/ .
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