change settings for inserting cross-references in Word

[MikeTheLinguist]

Given the following text in a document:

--

(12) Examples of Irregular Verbs in English

a. John sat on the chair.
b. Mary sang the song well.
c. Alice thought up an excuse.

--

I would like to be able to add something like the following in the text:
"Example (12b) is interesting as it illustrates what was once a regular
process in English verbal morphology: sing, sang, sung; ring, rang, rung,
etc...."

The problem is this. When I select "full context" in the cross-reference
dialogue box, I get the following: "Example (12)b is interesting..." In other
words, I get "(12)b" instead of "(12b)." This is strange because, as far as I
know, no publisher hasa style manual that uses (12)b...rather, everyone uses
(12b). Does anyone know a way to get Word to do this?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Mike,

Style manuals have nothing to do with the way "full context" works -- it's a
purely mechanical concatenation of the levels of numbering, using whatever
decorations (parentheses, periods, dingbats) are defined at each level.
There's no provision for combining, omitting, or altering the decorations.
It really works properly only if the decoration at each level is a trailing
period.

Any other arrangement would require the active intervention of a macro that
would replace the entire cross-reference field with static text using the
desired decorations. That could be made to work, but the cross-references
would no longer update if the referenced text was renumbered as a result of
editing.

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi MikeThe Linguist

I'm not aware of any way to get Word to concatenate (12) and b to produce
(12b).

There may be good reasons for this. If your numbering scheme were
1 A heading
(a) A sub-heading
(ii) A sub-sub-heading

then you would want the cross-reference to be 1(a)(ii), and not 1(aii).

I would fudge it and write something like "In question 12, option b is
interesting because...".

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[MikeTheLinguist]

The macro is a good idea. Thanks. It could be executed on a copy of the
document once it is finished and saved under a different name. That way
revisions could be done on the old document, where the cross-references can
still be updated.

 

[Stefan Blom]

You can use SEQ fields for numbering, and enter the desired separators
manually.