[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/