[Originally appeared 1999]

THE SEVEN LAWS OF STYLES

LAW 1. All paragraph formatting should be applied through appropriate paragraph styles. Use the least possible direct formatting. Do not use the Format Painter.

The documents of legal practice should be highly consistent in formatting and structure. Sometimes they must follow prescribed formatting rules, such as those of courts. Legal documents get reworked intensely and reused constantly. Documents need to be reformatted in whole, whether to meet the requirements of different courts, or the practices of different departments. Portions of documents should be able to be moved and reused, with a minimum of reformatting.

Thorough use of styles, backed by appropriate templates, enables Word to work just this way. Direct formatting may seem to be a quick solution to special formatting needs, but it makes it difficult to “see” the source of formatting and to allow clean reformatting when a document needs to travel. The Format Painter is even worse, creating invisible formatting links that ought to be controlled by proper application of styles.

Note that this discussion applies to paragraph styles. Character styles have much less use. They will be covered in a future column.

LAW 2. Format Follows Function.

With a nod of the head to our architect friends, this law tells us to name styles for the function text performs in a document, rather than the method of formatting. For instance, the most common text in many documents will use Body Text style. If in some documents it needs to be single spaced, while in others double spaced, don’t use a “Single Space” style for one and a “Double Spaced Style” for the other. Use Body Text in both, but change the settings for Body Text (preferably through application of a grouped set of styles maintained in a template). Then the document will be instantly and accurately transformed from the formats required by one practice to those of another, with no fiddling around with formatting.

LAW 3. Use common names for styles across the body of legal documents.

Use Body Text as the style for the body text of all documents, Headings 1 through 9 as the style names for heading levels, and so on. Then, to change the overall formatting of documents, store the appropriate style settings in a template, and use the Style Gallery to switch formats.

LAW 4 Avoid applying Normal style.

Use Normal style as a base for other styles. Using Normal Style itself violates LAW 2.

LAW 5 Change locally, then propagate globally, but do not use the “Automatically Update” setting for any styles.

The Automatically Update setting can cause nearly instantaneous havoc with document formatting. It represents a solution to an intrinsic issue in ease of use for Word. While styles have all the power we have described, modifying and managing them can be difficult to learn, and often, even for experienced users, difficult to do. To modify styles, users must dig through 5 levels of menus and dialogs, then climb back again. When you get there, the connection between the settings and text may be very difficult to see.

Automatically Update was supposed to solve that. For instance, changing Left and Right Indents or tab settings could be accomplished directly and visually with the controls on the Ruler. Then, with Automatically Update on, these changes would immediately change the style settings the same way. Unfortunately this can also happen accidentally, leaving users confused and frustrated.

Word has a better, more controllable way to spread local formatting changes to the style applied to a paragraph. Make the font, spacing and indent changes to one paragraph of the appropriate style. Then, select the paragraph including its paragraph mark. With the formatting toolbar on, press CTRL SHIFT S (or mouse click on the style name in the toolbar) and press ENTER. If (and only if) you have changed the formatting of the paragraph from that of its style, a “Modify Style” dialog will appear asking whether “you wish to modify the style to reflect recent changes” or reapply the formatting of the style to the paragraph. Choosing the first will then propagate the local changes to the style and change all paragraphs in the document with that style.

Catch 1. This technique does not work unless a toolbar is showing with the style name (standard in the default Formatting toolbar).

Catch 2. Spacing and indent changes can propagate using this technique whether or not the paragraph mark for the paragraph has been selected. Font changes for the paragraph as a whole can propagate only if the paragraph mark has been selected. If not, this technique will cause the font to revert to that of the style. Thus, learning the technique by selecting the whole paragraph, including its paragraph mark, achieves more consistent results.

Catch 3. This technique can leave hidden direct formatting. In a future column, we will look at a macro shortcut that will support these technique without the catches.

The following macro will remove the Automatically Update setting from all styles in a document for Word 97 and 2000.

Public Sub RemoveAutomaticallyUpdate() Dim aSty As Style For Each aSty In ActiveDocument.Styles aSty.AutomaticallyUpdate = False Next aSty End Sub

LAW 6 Use no empty paragraphs.

Empty paragraphs are a relic of typing. They have no text except the paragraph mark. When documents use them for spacing, instead of styles set with proper paragraph spacing, they corrupt the clean global transformation of document formats.

Again, a brief macro can clean out empty paragraphs.

Public Sub CleanEmptyParagraphs() Dim aPara As Paragraph For Each aPara In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs If Asc(aPara.Range.Characters.First) = 13 Then aPara.Range.Delete End If Next aPara End Sub

LAW 7 Tie automatic numbering to heading styles.

This law deserves its own column, next time.

 

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