it:ad:word:howTo:Understand Styling

~~ODT~~

Summary

Word makes a big deal about trying to get users to prefer using Styles such as 'Strong' and 'Emphasis' Styles rather than Bold and Italic inline formatting (there's a difference…see Background below). But then they persist at making it more a lot easier to use Bold and Italic as compared to the equivalent Styles – so why bother? Or is there a way to use them as efficiently?

Under Files/Options/Advanced tab there is an item that says: Style area pane width in Draft and Outline views (Figure H). I change that from zero to one inch. That change will reveal the style name used for each section of your document. Click OK to apply all of your changes.

First, let's understand the difference that there are two different mechanisms: * Inline formatting: these are equivalent to HTML Hi and mom... tags, and * Styles: the equivalent of HTML classed span/p tags: Hi mom... tags.

Just like in HTML, there are no correlations between the two (if you type Hi it's not magically translated to Hi. That's mainly because it can't guess what style you think of as a visually strong (you may have several classes that bold things up…one in red too…) class.

The problem is that Bold and Italic are too accessible on the Menu and via shortcuts (Ctrl-I and Ctrl-B) for Users to fish around the too small Quick Style window.

The solution involves reading the following: * IT:AD:Word:HowTo:Customize Shortcuts in order to: * Removing from the Inline Bold/Italic Formatting the default Ctrl-I / Ctrl-B shortcuts, * Making them harder to get to (giving them instead Ctrl-Shift-I and Ctrl-Shift-B) * Attaching the Ctrl-I and Ctrl-B to the Strong and Emphasis default styles.

The point is based on understanding that you – being web efficient – are addicted to Ctrl-B and Ctrl-I, as it is the web's – where you do the majority of your work – default way of setting Bold and Italic inline formatting.

After all that, there will remain one last problem, that will require some re-education effort on your part. Whereas Inline Formatting operations (eg Ctrl-Shift-B) toggle the operation – Styling justs sets it Repeating the operation does not undo the Style. I suspect that this is because if you remove a style…what do you choose instead? Normal? The fragment to the left? The fragment to the right?). Either way, from now on, we're going to have to learn how to use Ctrl-Shift-N or Ctrl-N to get back to the 'Normal' style. So Reassign Ctrl-N from File/New to the Normal style…and start using it.

My other nemesis…

So Bullet Lists are a combination of many things…Paragraphs in 'List Paragraph' Style.

Facts: * Under Files/Options/Advanced you can define whether List Items are created with elements that have style 'Normal' (the old default) or 'List Paragraph'. I'm not sure why they think that lists should be a different style – so I go and set it back to the old way.

* Ctrl+Shift+S: Open Apply Styles task pane. * Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S: Open Styles task pane. * Ctrl+Shift+N: Apply the Normal style.

The complete list of styles¹⁾ has many, but you should stick to the bare minimum:

Normal
Title : for cover page
SubTitle: for cover page
TOC Heading
TOC1..9: These are the fonts used to build a Table of Content.
Header 1…6:
Text Body
Emphasis: use this instead of Italics
Intense Emphasis:
Strong: use this instead of Bold
Quote
Reference:
List Paragraph: ← match Normal
Footer * Footnote Text: the font used for footnotes
Hyperlink What I need as well is something to deal with:
Hidden Instructions
Code. The closest thing I saw was HTML Code

Summary

Bullets are strange beasts in Word. Read the following first: * IT:AD:Word:HowTo:Understand Bullet Lists * Instead of *{space}foo, or the bullet menu button, use Ctrl-Shift-L – which stands for bullet List.