Archives for January 10, 2012

[Originally appeared 1999.]

Word of Law No. 2 began the journey through the labyrinth of Word 97’s automatic paragraph numbering. This week we continue that journey. We may not make it past where the last column ended, but we will dig deeper. Up to our hips, at least.

In the short time since Word of Law No. 1 was distributed, many of you have sent detailed questions and comments, especially about automatic numbering. Eventually, we will try to cover as many of those questions as possible. Your questions also show a range of understanding and experience with the structure and tools of Microsoft Word. We will try to address those at several levels, and trust you will be patient with materials either too simple or advanced for your needs.

We started with Law 7 of the Laws of Styles stated in Word of Law No. 1, “Tie automatic numbering to heading styles” and ended with the direction to prepare templates with proper settings for numbering and all other heading style formatting, then using the Style Gallery to apply numbering formats. There will be exceptions, of course.

Before diving back into the List Gallery, let’s explore in greater detail the strategy for using Heading styles to organize the structure, formatting (and, where applicable) numbering of legal documents.

The following three examples illustrate (within the limits of the plain text formatting of WOW), the use of Heading and Body Text styles to organize the structure and formatting of three types of legal documents. In each case, the name of the style used for each paragraph can be found in brackets preceding the text of the paragraph (but not the paragraph numbering. Please imagine that the spacing between the paragraphs and the first line indents are established by the spacing and first line indent settings of the styles.

SIMPLE AGREEMENT STRUCTURE:

1. [Heading 1]SCOPE OF WORK

[Body Text]Subject to the terms and conditions hereinafter provided, Customer engages CONSULTANT for the furnishing of the services specified ….

2. [Heading 1]TERM

[Body Text]This Agreement shall terminate one (1) year following the Effective Date; provided, however, …

3. [Heading 1]CONSIDERATION AND PAYMENT

A. [Heading 2]This Agreement is on a time and materials basis only …

COMPLEX AGREEMENT STRUCTURE:

ARTICLE 1 [Heading 1] REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES OF THE SHAREHOLDERS

[Body Text]As a material inducement to OLDCO to enter into this Agreement and consummate the Merger, …:

Section 1.1 [Heading 2]Status. The Company is a corporation ….

Section 1.2 [Heading 2]Corporate Authority,Effective Agreement. The Board of Directors and the Shareholders have duly authorized …

Section 1.3 [Heading 2]Contracts, Leases, Agreements and Other Commitments.

[Body Text]The Company is not a party to any contract or agreement except for the following (collectively, the “Company Agreements”):

(a) [Heading 3]the investment advisor agreements…;

 

BRIEF STRUCTURE:

[Heading 1]NATURE OF CASE AND ORDER FROM WHICH APPEAL IS TAKEN

[Body Text]Appellant, …

[Heading 1]STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND THE FACTS MATERIAL TO THE ISSUES PRESENTED ON APPEAL

[Body Text]This action arises out of …

[Heading 1]STATEMENT OF ISSUES [Body Text]…

[Heading 1]SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

[Body Text]The district court gave …

[Heading 1]ARGUMENT

A. [Heading 2]No Implied Attorney-Client Relationship Was Created Between …

[Body Text]…

1. [Heading 3]The Agreement of Counsel Relied Upon by the District Court …

[Body Text]Neither the plaintiffs nor the district court identified …

[Heading 1]CONCLUSION

[Body Text]For all of the foregoing reasons, …

In the actual documents, the Body Text and Heading styles in each of these documents control the font, line spacing, spacing between paragraphs and margins for each of the types of paragraphs. For instance, in the Simple Agreement, the font for the Heading 1 style, used for the titles of the provisions of the contract, has its font set to Bold, All Caps.

In addition, automatic paragraph numbering has been set for Heading styles 1 through 3. In the agreements, each of these levels includes a paragraph numbering setting. In the brief, Heading 1 does not include numbering, but Heading styles 2 and 3 do. The sample text indicates the content of the “number” in the text preceding the name of the style. Thus, in the simple agreement, the number for Heading 1 Style includes Arabic numbers (1,2,3) and the period character. In the Complex Agreement, the Heading 1 style numbering includes the word “Article” followed by Arabic numbers, while Heading 2 includes the word “Section” followed by a compound numbering, including the prior level.

If only the story ended here… Notice that the list of paragraph formatting characteristics for Heading 1 through Heading 3 styles did not list left indent, first line indent and tab settings. These are the style format settings (in VBA terms, the properties of Styles(StyleName).ParagraphFormat) in conflict between the settings stored in the style and those maintained through the numbering dialog.

Let’s go back to the List Gallery and look at this conflict in action. Several of you have asked where to find the “List Gallery,” pointing out correctly that there is no menu entry with that name. List Gallery is the name assigned to the dialog that appears upon selecting the Bullets and Numbering entry in the standard Format menu. The dialog has three tabs. For the present, we focus on the “Outline Numbered” tab. It presents eight windows, one to “None” and seven to numbering patterns.

Open a blank document. (Please, do not do this on any real work, yet.) Insert a paragraph in Heading 1 Style, then Body Text, then Heading 2 Style, then Body Text, then Heading 3 Style (similar to the examples above). With the cursor in the Heading 1 Style paragraph, select Format|Bullets and Numbering and the Outline Numbered tab. If you have not changed from the default settings, the window second from the right in the bottom row will be in a standard outline I, A, 1 scheme. Select this choice and notice that the settings for the left indent, first line indent and first tab for each of Heading 1 through 3 has changed to a staggered, left to right descending pattern, with a first tab set 0.25 inches to the right of the first line indent.

Decide, for whatever reason, that you want the first tab after the paragraph number to be 0.5 inches to the right of the first line indent in Heading 1. Were you to try to use the CTRL-SHIFT-S Modify style technique described in issue 4.20, this would be trivial, <heh, heh>. Just put the cursor in a Heading 1 style, drag that custom tab over on the ruler, press CTRL-SHIFT-S and choose to update the style. It works for now, without changing the numbering. But wait, you also want to change the numbering format, such as making Heading 3 “(1)” instead of “1”. Proceed to the List Gallery and on to customize the number. When you return, you will find that custom tab right back at 0.25 inches to the right of the first line indent. If you have made this change to several heading styles, they will all be affected.

Another way to invoke the same misbehavior is to remove the numbering on the Heading Style paragraph with the 1,2,3 button on the formatting toolbar, then restore it with the same button. While that procedure violates more than one of the Laws of Styles, it also causes these hard programmed changes to the other Heading Styles.

Remember, this is a feature! It is a small, but critical example of the unexpected control of styles built in to automatic numbering in Word 97. Left indents and first line indents suffer similar effects, although they can be controlled through settings in the List Gallery, which we will explore further in the next column. The tabs are a creature unto themselves. Some of you wrote of your despair of working with Word 97’s automatic numbering, and success in the use of the {SEQ} sequence fields. These older tools for automatic numbering can be used successfully, but do not offer all of the power of numbered styles. Believe it or not, before we are through, we will have a successful strategy and the tools to use and troubleshoot it.

By the way, the following code for creating the examples offers a simple and unsophisticated technique for creating a written scheme for the use of paragraphs styles in a document.

Public Sub InsertStyleNames() Dim aPara As Paragraph For Each aPara In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs aPara.Range.Select Selection.Collapse wdCollapseStart Selection.TypeText (“[”& aPara.Style & “]”) Next aPara End Sub

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.  Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/

[Originally appeared 1999.]

Word of Law No. 1 stated “The Seven Laws of Styles” and ended without explaining Law 7: Tie automatic numbering to heading styles.

This may be the hottest issue for Word 97 in legal practice. First, we will not finish this topic in this column. In fact, before we can really master automatic numbering, we will touch Word 97 at many levels. Topics to be covered will include (not necessarily in order) the linkage of styles to templates, the relationship of direct paragraph formatting to style based formatting, the mysterious and intricate List Gallery (the Word VBA name for the dialog entitled “Bullets and Numbering”), the relationship of the Windows Registry to the List Gallery, the Outline View, the Document Map, Tables of Contents and strategies for the structure of legal documents. We must understand the basic conflicts in the methods Word 97 uses to format numbers and paragraph styles. We cannot avoid some attention to the numbering tools from earlier versions of Word.

Even to write that list feels frightening. Before we start trying to sort these issues out, is it worth it? If there are problems with automatic paragraph numbering and styles, why bother? Wouldn’t it be easier to just type the numbers? Isn’t there an easy solution?

In the WOW spirit, if the reward is great enough, we will pick apart and rework Word 97 to make it work, if we have to. We have to.

Attorneys love to number paragraphs in their documents. From simple sequential numbered or lettered paragraphs, numbering in legal documents may flower into complex schemes. Beyond outlines such as:

I. Main Heading

A. Subheading

1. Subsubheading.

legal documents may use schemes such as:

1. Main Heading

1.1 Subheading

1.1.1 Subsubheading

or

ARTICLE I

Main Heading

Section 1.01 Subheading.

As the preceding paragraphs indicate, the formatting of the levels is as important to the geography of a document as the numbers. That link cries for the use of styles. Styles force paragraphs with the same function in a document to have the same formatting. That’s what Law 2, Format Follows Function, means.

If we want (legal) documents to be fully interchangeable and reusable, style based formatting (supported by appropriately formatted templates) is a must.

In significant ways, Word 97 rewards documents that attach their hierarchy of numbered paragraphs to Heading Styles 1 through 9. The built-in settings for the Document Map and the Outline View make documents structured this way modular and powerful to navigate and edit. The Document Map allows a user to travel from heading to heading in a framed view. The Outline View allows users to move, insert and delete segments of a document with a single mouseclick or keystroke. Tables of contents can be constructed from the contents of the headings without additional coding. When all this works, those who write with their word processor achieve the full potential of Word 97.

The simple truth is that it doesn’t always work, and the failures can be subtle and difficult to understand.

For this column, we will describe the clash between style based formatting and number formatting. We will save other issues for future columns.

Following the Laws of Styles, if the numbering scheme is to be attached to Heading Styles 1 through 9, it would be natural to expect to use the format settings for each of the styles to control all elements of the formatting of those paragraphs, including fonts, left, right and first line indents, paragraph spacing, borders and shading, to name some. We might even want to use the techniques described in Law 5, “Change locally, then propagate globally.”

Troubles arise when one tries to change the numbering format. When the numbering format is changed through the List Gallery, left indents, first line indents and tab settings for Heading Styles 1 through 9 that have been set in those styles (other than through the List Gallery controls) can change. Users perceive these changes as instabilities or bugs in the operation of the styles. In fact, Word also controls the left indent, first line indent and first tab setting through the List Gallery. If control of these settings is made solely through the settings in the List Gallery, the problems can be limited. Using the List Gallery for these settings is harder and far less natural than the methods of Law 5.

We will need to dig deeper to fully understand and control these functions. A solution lies in developing and storing templates with the numbering and associated formatting properly configured for the heading style levels, then applying those style settings to a document through the Style Gallery (or the equivalent macro function), when it is necessary to change numbering formats. The number levels themselves are applied through application of the appropriate style. If set up and managed properly, end users can apply automatic numbering consistently and accurately.

We (just) need to work through the techniques and traps for those templates. There are plenty of twists and turns.

***

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.