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MS Office Forum / Word / Long Documents / November 2005Style Naming Convensions
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'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'? * 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)? * If you have Strong as Bold and Emphasis as Italics, is there a 'standard' name for Bold+Italics (Stong Emphasis)? * Is it 'better' to call indented Body Text 'Body Text Indent' or just 'Indent'? * Are the list and table styles of much benefit - do experienced Word users recommend using them? 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. Thanks Paul  SignatureVisit my website www.pdtech.co.uk for Access Developer Resources Hello Paul > 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 [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > * 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 Signature/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS \ / | MVP X Against HTML | for / \ in e-mail & news | Word 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 ;-) SignatureVisit my website www.pdtech.co.uk for Access Developer Resources > Hello Paul > [quoted text clipped - 73 lines] > Greetinx > Robert 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 > Thanks for the answers to the specific points. > [quoted text clipped - 81 lines] >> Greetinx >> Robert > 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 > ;-) I guess that we're all having trouble enough either to bring the users of our own templates to use styles, and consistently; or "seal" the templates in ways that they _have_ to use them that way. IOW: it's hard enough to standardise the use of styles in one company. To come up with a feasible scheme for general use, though ... As much as yourself, I'm looking forward to other answers to this thread! Greetinx Robert Signature/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS \ / | MVP X Against HTML | for / \ in e-mail & news | Word > 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 ... But since Normal, by default, is the parent of many (all?) styles in Word, this would be tricky. The setting would transfer to all of those styles! SignatureStefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP Hi Stefan > But since Normal, by default, is the parent of many (all?) styles in > Word, this would be tricky. The setting would transfer to all of those > styles! That's the idea! It doesn't only tell the user that a given paragraph hasn't been correctly assigned yet, but it does also tell the template creator that a given style hasn't been correctly setup. :-) I base some styles on Body Text instead of Normal so that I have 2 or 3 style "branches". Greetinx Robert Signature/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS \ / | MVP X Against HTML | for / \ in e-mail & news | Word I see. So when applying a style does *not* display any text effects, it would be an indication to users that "I'm allowed to use this style" and to template designers that "the setup of this style is completed". A good idea! Thanks for explaining, Robert. SignatureStefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP > Hi Stefan > [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > Greetinx > Robert Hi Stefan There is (at least) one draw back to this bizarre idea. Try this in a new document: 1. Modify Normal to be Pink. 2. Modify Body Text to be Black (or Automatic). 3. Create several paragraphs in a row of Body Text. 4. Within the block of Body Text paragraphs, insert a Table. You'll see that, even though the Table was inserted into a paragraph in Body Text, surrounded by other Paragraphs in Body Text, the end-of-row markers are pink. In this case, Pink was supposed to be a message saying "all is not well". But for end-of-row markers in a Table, it provides a false warning. Cheers Shauna Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP. http://www.shaunakelly.com/word >I see. So when applying a style does *not* display any text effects, > it would be an indication to users that "I'm allowed to use this [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] >> Greetinx >> Robert I guess this is a side-effect of the strange connection between table styles and the Normal style in Word 2002/2003? SignatureStefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP > Hi Stefan > [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > >> Greetinx > >> Robert >> You'll see that, even though the Table was inserted into a paragraph >> in Body Text, surrounded by other Paragraphs in Body Text, the >> end-of-row markers are pink. >I guess this is a side-effect of the strange connection between table > styles and the Normal style in Word 2002/2003? Yes, if you want to use table styles, you mustn't customize the Normal paragraph style. If you don't apply another style in the table, Normal is applied. But the formatting of Normal isn't applied ... *as long* as the factory-default settings of Normal haven't been changed. As soon as you customize Normal, it's no longer "transparent" in tables, and font settings done in the table style will be without effect (and the settings in the Normal style will be used instead). It seems this is "by design", but usually it's perceived as a bug. Greetings, Klaus Klaus, thanks for confirming this. SignatureStefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP > >> You'll see that, even though the Table was inserted into a paragraph > >> in Body Text, surrounded by other Paragraphs in Body Text, the [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > Greetings, > Klaus I'm coming in late, but I'll join the others in recommending Body Text over Normal (see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NormalVsBodyStyles.htm) and for using the built-in styles (modified as desired) whenever possible. This is especially important in the case of headings (see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/UseBuiltInHeadingStyles.html). SignatureSuzanne 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. > 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 [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] > > Paul |
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