Body Text vs Normal

[Adrian]

Hi,



My company has undergone a few mergers and I am now tasked with
standardizing our style sheets across offices. I'd like some advice on this.



The templates I have been using till now use "Normal" as body text rather
than a specific style called "Body Text" or similar. (One of our offices
uses "Body Text".) Most tech authors seem to advocate staying away from
Normal, but I don't see any problem with it as long as you follow these
simple rules:



i. You base any styles you don't want to change if Normal changes on "no
style" or another style.



ii. If more than one person will work on the same master document, you
EITHER give strict orders never to select "Automatically update document
styles" in the Templates dialog box OR you make sure that everyone in the
authoring team has the same definition of "Normal" in their "Normal"
template OR you attach the document to a template on a shared network folder
that you know will always be available, and in which the "Normal" style
matches that of the document.



I don't see any problem with copy/pasting from other documents or emails
that use Normal, particularly with the latest versions of Word where you get
a dropdown menu that allows you to choose whether to retain source or target
formatting when you paste. To me this is easier than reformatting imported
Normal text as Body Text. Even if somebody accidentally chooses "retain
source formatting" when pasting, as far as I can see you can easily tidy
this up by selecting "Automatically update document styles", saving, and
then clearing this setting (or by selecting the offending text and clicking
ctrl + space).



Does this make sense?



IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I don't
think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of one and half
a dozen of the other.



In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base it
on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't make
any sense to me.



Thanks,



Adrian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

My case is at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NormalVsBodyStyles.htm

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Adrian

The templates I have been using till now use "Normal" as body text rather
than a specific style called "Body Text" or similar. (One of our offices
uses "Body Text".) Most tech authors seem to advocate staying away from
Normal, but I don't see any problem with it as long as you follow these
simple rules: [..]
IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I don't
think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of one and half
a dozen of the other.

In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base it
on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't make
any sense to me.

I personally prefer to use "Body Text", but I agree: you can certainly
work both ways.

[I used to define Normal as something like 16 pt purple, so that
whenever I setup a template or work in a corresponding document, I
quickly see whethere there's still some paragraph that hasn't been
designated its proper style already. But this gets complicated when
working with tables, esp. when you _try_ to work with table styles.]

The biggest drawback about using normal productively is when you have to
deal with documents containing a lot of textboxes and such. Almost 100%,
Normal is assigned to their contents. Now, say, this document is pretty
unstyled so far and you need to bring it in-line with your company's CI
(as good as and ASAP). When you import another normal style from your
template, or change it manually, all those textboxes might run havoc.

Again, I agree, not a strong case ...

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Charles Kenyon]

I use Body Text. I would urge you to read Suzanne's short article as well as
the longer articles she links to. The
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm is
especially important if you are trying to build company-wide templates.
Also, if automatic numbering will play a part in your templates, look at:

How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your Word document
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html. (For
bullets see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html, the
subject is related.)

This is based on ...

Word's Numbering Explained
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm

It sounds as if you already have a much better feel for styles and their
importance than most. Good luck.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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[anon k]

IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I don't
think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of one and half
a dozen of the other.
In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base it
on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't make
any sense to me.

The question really boils down to what you want to do, and what's the
best (or most convenient) means to achieve that.

And so I use Normal, because I want to maintain consistency if ever
there's need to alter the font or formatting.

But if I wanted styles to be completely independent, I would be sure to
decouple them from the Normal style.

 

[Adrian]

Thanks Charles,

I've already read all these great articles and will certainly be putting a
fair number of their suggestions into practice. It's really just this pesky
Normal vs Body Text thing that is niggling me

Cheers,

Adrian

 

[Adrian]

Thanks Suzanne. I saw your FAQ already, but all of its arguments are based
on the assumption that the default styles are based on Normal, whereas I am
suggesting breaking this link to Normal for all styles in your document
(unless you do really want a style to change if Normal is changed). I am not
saying using Normal has any benefits over Body Text, just that I am not
convinced by the arguments against using Normal. The biggest argument I can
think of against Normal so far is exactly the fact that I would have to
spend 30 mins breaking the link to it in all the default styles

Thanks,

Adrian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I explicitly do want the styles to be based on Normal (at least on the
Normal font), and I want Normal to remain "plain-vanilla" so that I have
something unformatted to fall back on. Since Body Text by default has some
Spacing After, I need to have a style that doesn't. Or, in many documents I
format Body Text (and its derivatives) with Exactly 24-pt. line spacing, but
I want Normal to be single-spaced.

 

[Adrian]

Thanks for your reply Robert.

Regarding having to reformat docs that have text boxes, let's assume that,
like you say, the author chose to use Normal for such text boxes.

Now, if my template body text is "Body Text" and I don't want Normal in my
documents, I'm going to have to reformat these text boxes anyway, right?
Either changing them to "Body Text" and troubleshooting any resulting text
box spacing/cutoff problems OR changing them to another style e.g. a
user-defined "Body TextBox" style so I can control their formatting
independently. I don't see this as being any different than having my body
text as "Normal" and doing the same thing ie. troubleshooting text box
problems or changing to another style all together.

Maybe I am missing the point of what you are saying?

Thanks,

Adrian

Hi Adrian

The templates I have been using till now use "Normal" as body text rather
than a specific style called "Body Text" or similar. (One of our offices
uses "Body Text".) Most tech authors seem to advocate staying away from
Normal, but I don't see any problem with it as long as you follow these
simple rules: [..]
IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I
don't think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of one
and half a dozen of the other.

In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base
it on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't
make any sense to me.

I personally prefer to use "Body Text", but I agree: you can certainly
work both ways.

[I used to define Normal as something like 16 pt purple, so that whenever
I setup a template or work in a corresponding document, I quickly see
whethere there's still some paragraph that hasn't been designated its
proper style already. But this gets complicated when working with tables,
esp. when you _try_ to work with table styles.]

The biggest drawback about using normal productively is when you have to
deal with documents containing a lot of textboxes and such. Almost 100%,
Normal is assigned to their contents. Now, say, this document is pretty
unstyled so far and you need to bring it in-line with your company's CI
(as good as and ASAP). When you import another normal style from your
template, or change it manually, all those textboxes might run havoc.

Again, I agree, not a strong case ...

Greetinx
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word

 

[Jonathan West]

Hi Adrian,

I have made a standard practice of using Body Text and leaving Normal alone
as thoroughly as possible for some years, since I discovered that if you set
Normal to have anything other than 0pt paragraph spacing before & after,
envelopes tend to come out printed double-spaced.

I decided that as I could never tell when someone would attempt to select an
address in a document based on any kind of template and print an envelope
from it, I was far better off not having to remember to explicitly include
all the envelope styles in my templates and set them back to 0pt paragraph
spacing.

In addition, if you attempt to use Table styles, (I rarely do because many
of my customers still require Office 2000 compatibility) I understand the
Table style definitions sometimes go all strange on you if the Normal style
is set away from the factory default.

--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
Please reply to the newsgroup
Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Adrian

Regarding having to reformat docs that have text boxes, let's assume that,
like you say, the author chose to use Normal for such text boxes.

Now, if my template body text is "Body Text" and I don't want Normal in my
documents, I'm going to have to reformat these text boxes anyway, right?

My (admittedly not very strong) reasoning in this case is: I don't
really care whether such a textbox contains Normal if I use Bodytext
(and build up many styles upon bt), so if the formatting and/or
positioning of those boxes is not plain _ugly_, I will not want to
reformat it.

I can still change my bt style and this ripples through the document,
and if I get really lucky, I don't have to touch the textboxes. But if
normal is used for bt also, then the textboxes will most probably reflow
differently.

And, you are right, when you set up a template and do not want to use
Normal, then you have to touch a lot of styles and break the connection
to Normal (set it to "none" with a few styles, to bt in some, maybe to a
heading style for that hierarchy -- though I've seen this discouraged
before, probably of fear of spreading numbering dependencies that way).
But this makes sure you have really looked into all styles you intend to
use ... ;-)

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The argument re: table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the
problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than
paragraph formatting. I haven't really paid close attention because I don't
use "table styles" but do use specific styles for Table Heading and Table
Text.

 

[Klaus Linke]

The argument re: table styles is an especially strong one, but I

think the problem arises from changing the font or font size of
Normal rather than paragraph formatting. [...]

I think the issue is with both font and character formatting. Only users
tend to run into issues with font formatting more often.

And if you change the paragraph formatting of Normal, table styles will
likely be only a small part of your troubles <eg>.

I'd love to use Normal as the default, since most Word docs use it anyway,
and you would have the least work to do reformatting.
Unfortunately, that has become less of an option because of the issues with
table styles.

BTW, I've heard from Stuart Stuple that table styles ignore settings in the
document default -- which I assume is "(no style)"? -- rather than those in
"Normal". That contradicts my experience, but I haven't had time to
investigate.

Klaus

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I forget exactly what Stuart said about this except that it was going
to be either changed or made a lot clearer in Word 2007.

The argument re: table styles is an especially strong one, but I
think the problem arises from changing the font or font size of
Normal rather than paragraph formatting. [...]

I think the issue is with both font and character formatting. Only users
tend to run into issues with font formatting more often.

And if you change the paragraph formatting of Normal, table styles will
likely be only a small part of your troubles <eg>.

I'd love to use Normal as the default, since most Word docs use it anyway,
and you would have the least work to do reformatting.
Unfortunately, that has become less of an option because of the issues with
table styles.

BTW, I've heard from Stuart Stuple that table styles ignore settings in the
document default -- which I assume is "(no style)"? -- rather than those in
"Normal". That contradicts my experience, but I haven't had time to
investigate.

Klaus

The argument re: table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the
problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than
paragraph formatting. I haven't really paid close attention because I
don't
use "table styles" but do use specific styles for Table Heading and Table
Text.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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