Your Computer is More Than a Typewriter (part 2)

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Document formatting with Styles

In Your computer is more than a typewriter, I wrote about how you can improve the appearance and legibility of documents by fine tuning  spacing between  lines of type, between paragraphs, and around headings. Perhaps I made it sound like hard work. Now I’ll explain how to make life easier with the use of Styles.

If you look at professionally designed publications, you will notice a regular and repeated pattern to the design of text, headings, captions, etc. So it was in 1984 when my wife Noi and I became the design and production team for a small serious magazine, Inside Asia. The editors wanted to follow the pattern of other serious news and analysis magazines, particularly Time, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I promised our typesetters that we would communicate our requirements as clearly as possible.

In those days that involved working with typescripts, prepared with a large left margin; taking a fine red pen; and writing typographic instruction and British Standard marks (BS 5261 – 1976) to comprehensively ‘mark up’ the copy. Our repertoire included standard text paragraphs in Times New Roman, justified, with an indented first line; block quotes indented left and right with space above and below; subheadings in Helvetica Bold;  headlines in Franklin Gothic bold; an enlarged ‘standfirst’ paragraph; and photo captions.

Marking up copy for a 48-page magazine could get pretty boring. Then we had a bright idea. On our next trip to Bangkok, we took artwork for a set of 20 rubber stanps, and got two sets made. The face of each stamp had comprehensive typesetting instructions, and to the wooden handles we added a more generic name such as ‘Subhead’. Even our editors could understand those! And so we accelerated the mark-up of copy.

Type stamps developed by Conrad and Noi

Setting up and using paragraph styles today

In word processors like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, and in more capable publishing software such as Adobe InDesign, FrameMaker or Affinity Publisher, you can set up your own ‘box of rubber stamps’. Most programs come with a ready-to-use set, but you can add to them and redefine them.

In the software I’m using to draft this, my redefinition of the style ‘Text body’ specifies the font Georgia, at 11pt size, and colour black; custom linespacing of 3 mm; no indents left or right, or to the first line; with an extra 3 mm space after each paragraph. To apply the style, I place my text cursor anywhere in a paragraph, or select a range of paragraphs; and click ‘Text body’ from a styles menu – and that’s it! Now, all those paragraphs have consistent formatting, done in the twinkling of an eye.

Word for Mac styles pane

It can be time-consuming to set up a customised set of styles, and you wouldn’t bother if ywriting just a letter or a quick memo; but if you are asked to prepare a thirty-page report with three levels of heading, block quotes from other documents, and several ranges of bullet points, you will give yourself a big Thank You for doing so.

Here’s a bonus tip: once you have made that document, you can save it as a Template. Even if you delete all of the contents, the Styles will still ‘haunt’ the template ready for the next report you have to make.

Several times I have been called in by organisations to prepare sets of template documents. I’ve done it in Word, PageMaker, and notably in FrameMaker, a serious software package for creating documentation, books and software manuals.

For example, Incomes Data Services was publishing six regular journals. They wanted to refresh the designs, and give them a more co-ordinated appearance. Their production team knew how to use Paragraph Styles, but they were wary of setting them up. First I analysed the journals and the kinds of content in them, then I took sample copy from old editions, and went through numerous iterations of designing, printing and co-evaluating until everyone was happy.

More elaborate paragraph styles

The definition of a paragraph style can include whether a paragraph is a bullet item, and if so, what symbol to use for the bullet, what colour it should be and with what amount of indenting. Or a heading might be numbered. For my friend’s PhD thesis we had a FrameMaker template with headings numbered to four levels deep (e.g. 3.14.6.2). When her supervisor suggested she move one chapter, the whole lot re-numbered themselves ‘automagically’!

Other useful definitions you can make could include forbidding a multi-line bullet point from breaking over a page boundary, or forcing a heading to stay on the same page as the next three lines of text. In narrow columns where the text is justified left and right, you will probably want to permit hyphenation, and in more sophisticated software you can set rules for how extra space will be distributed between words and characters, and the minimum number of characters before or after the hyphen.

Paragraph styles can be based on previously defined paragraph styles. The Incomes Data Services journals were a case in point. First I set up the style ‘Body para’, with each first line being indented 4 mm. Then I made a derived style called ‘First para’ — exactly the same except with no first-like indent. I then set up ‘Bullet point’ based on ‘First para’, but with the appropriate bullet symbol, a tab, and an indent from the left margin…

Character styles

A character style is usually created as an override to the normal setting for text. I first encountered this when using a specilist document editing programme called FrameMaker to prepare training materials, where I would want a special emphasis on a technical word being defined for the first time. I wanted it formatted as a sans-serif font, bold, and with the size minutely adjusted. I set that up on a menu of character styles and used it as needed. Otherwise, I know I would have gone mad!

Your Computer is More than a Typewriter (part 1)

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Everyone working for an MP, in whatever capacity, will find themselves creating documents for a variety of purposes. In this guide Conrad Taylor, who has been  doing this for many years, will look at ways to make the documents you create on computers more attractive, more professional looking and more legible.

As a starting point may I introduce you to Robin Williams – a Californian graphic designer, writer and teacher, whose career has run spookily parallel to my own. We’re even the same age.

In my case, I learned graphic design working on magazines and newsletters, but was drawn to the production of reports, documentation and learning materials. In the early 1980s, I handed copy to professional typesetters, specifying and proofreading phototypeset matter. Then, in 1985, I discovered what was heralded as ‘Desktop Publishing’. Companies were sold the promise that if they bought a DTP system, their staff could produce professional documents in house. What was not mentioned, was that there was more to that than buying a Mac or PC and installing PageMaker. It also required a software upgrade to the ‘meat computer’ running between your ears.

For nearly 20 years, I trained people how to become better document and magazine designers using computers. In parallel, Robin Williams was doing the same. In the early 1990s she wrote a book provocatively titled, ‘The Mac Is Not A Typewriter’. She soon followed that with another, ‘The PC Is Not A Typewriter’. Both are still available via online booksellers. What I’m about to tell you is similarly drawn from my own experience of design and publishing, applied to today’s technology.

Boss your fonts around!

When you look down at your computer keyboard, it does indeed look like a typewriter. But there is more to that keyboard than meets the eye. By pressing key combinations I can invoke the names of footballer João Mário and the ABBA composer Björn Ulvaeus, and the cities of  Køpenhavn, Luleå, Besançon and A Coruña. I can insert the symbols ® and © and of course €, and refer to today’s temperature as 24˚C.

 

More prosaically, I can improve the typography of my everyday documents by typing the ‘en dash’ (–) and the ‘em dash’ (—), and create a proper ellipsis character… (By the way, ‘en’ and ‘em’ are valid words from the world of typesetting – and you can use them in Scrabble!)

How you actually do this depends on two things: your computer’s operating system, and the ‘character set’ contents of the font you use. When the Macintosh came out, Apple devised a set of easy-to-remember keypress sequences to access the extended characters: thus, [é] is Alt-e immediately followed by e, and ç is simply Alt-c.

On the latest Macs you can hold a key down to see the most common extended characters

For Windows systems it’s a bit more clumsy. It requires you to have a keyboard with a numeric keypad at the side. Hold down the Alt key, and on the numeric keypad, type the three or four digit code for that character, then release the Alt key, and the character will appear at the cursor position. For example, the en dash is invoked with [Alt 0150].

There are several reference pages on the Web to help you with these Windows character codes, for example https://www/alt-codes.net.

Over time, font standards have changed, some fonts have thousands of available characters, and now there are characters you can’t access with a keyboard shortcut or an [Alt] numeric code. If you need that (e.g. to refer correctly to the Polish city of Łódź), learn how to access the Windows character map utility, or its equivalent for Mac or Linux. Or you might have it built in as a facility in your software. I am writing this in OpenOffice (it’s free!) and under the Insert menu I can invoke a table of the characters in the font I am using, with the menu item [Special Character…].

The importance of controlling space. And spacing

In typography, we can say that type matter consists of ‘Ink’ and ‘Space’. My focus here is the space between lines, and between paragraphs. The appearance and professionalism of your documents will be transformed!

Most office documents are printed to A4 paper, with rather narrow margins; OpenOffice defaults to margins of two centimetres each side. The column of type is therefore wider than you would find printed in a book or magazine. As your eye scans back from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, it is hampered by the need to identify which line to latch onto. Furthermore, as you read each line, the type above and below tends to intrude into your central field of high-resolution vision which is what you need to concentrate on.

Matters can be improved hugely by varying the ratio between the type size and line spacing. I’m writing this draft using a TrueType font called ‘Georgia’, at size 11pt. If I use the normal ‘single linespace’ configuration the channel of space between the lines appears rather squeezed. To compensate, I deliberately use a ‘fixed linespace’ setting of 5mm. Immediately, legibility is improved and the tone of the page is lightened.

And what of the space between paragraphs? I never make inter-paragraph space by pressing the carriage return key twice. Instead, I’ve set up the Body Text style so  each paragraph inserts an extra 2.5mm space after it. As for my subheadings, in Arial 13pt, they get 4mm extra space above, and 2mm space below, bringing them into a better logical relationship with the text that follows.

Isn’t this a lot of work to do? Not really, because I’ve set up formatting stored in a list of Paragraph Styles. With a single click, I can tell a paragraph – ‘you are a Text Body paragraph, so behave according to the formatting definitions I’ve set up for you!’ And it does what it’s told. In my following article I shall describe in detail how you can make use of this powerful feature of just about all modern word processors and publishing software.

There is a comprehensive set of tutorial on aspects of Microsoft Word on the Microsoft Support website at

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/word-for-windows-training-7bcd85e6-2c3d-4c3c-a2a5-5ed8847eae73


You can also read the next article looking at ways to improve your efficiency and consistency using Paragraph and Character Styles.

JustUs

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JustUs advocates for people when they’re homeless to access the statutory support they are eligible for.

They currently offer training via Zoom on Homelessness Law aimed at new and experienced front line workers and volunteers as well as managers of services that regularly have contact with homeless people.  The course provides:

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Please see their website for details of how to book: http://www.justus.org.uk/