Numbered Normals extend past right margin

[Tim Murray]

I'm working on a doc that first came to me with everything as Normal style,
modified by hand.

I'm adding and applying new styles to it and generally it is okay, except for
one thing: Any Normal paragraph that has a number as the first character
extends past the right margin, apparently forever (meaning even very long
paragraphs don't wrap).

These are numbered paragraphs, and usually the numbering never extends past
about 6 or more than two pages. However, there are boatload of them, and I'm
not thrilled with the thought of applying a "list number" style to them, then
having to mess around with nonnumbered paragraphs in the middle, reseting
some to n=1, and so on. I suppose a SEQ field would not take too long.

I tried applying a non-Normal style to the paragraphs (and they always look
right when I do), but when I reapply the Normal, off they go into the
right-margin void.

I have worked on this in both Mac Word 2004 and Windows Word 2003. Same
behavior.

Any ideas?

 

[Tim Murray]

I'm working on a doc that first came to me with everything as Normal style,
modified by hand.

I'm adding and applying new styles to it and generally it is okay, except for

one thing: Any Normal paragraph that has a number as the first character
extends past the right margin, apparently forever (meaning even very long
paragraphs don't wrap).

Change that: I came upon a Normal that does not have a number, and it's
extending past the right margin. I would guess that in its past this
paragraph used to have a number, however.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I would treat the document as corrupt.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Tim:

I would suggest that when the "Numbering" was applied, it was applied with
"Keep track of formatting" still switched on. Under those circumstances,
Word has generated a new fake style "based on" the underlying properties of
the original style.

Because you have "Keep track of formatting" switched off (at least, I hope
you do...) Word is hiding the weird "Char Char" style name from you.

The cure is to apply the List Number style to these paragraphs.

That may be all you have to do. That will abandon the corrupt style and you
don;t have to worry about it further. You may have to adjust the formatting
of the List Number style to your taste.

Don't try to apply numbering "over the top of" a paragraph style in a
complex document. Taht way lies pain city The more complex the
document, the more important it is to use a different style for different
formatting, and "Numbering" is different formatting.

The reason is that "Character formatting", "Paragraph formatting" and
"Number formatting" are three different mechanisms. They can all be part of
one style, or they can come from three different styles, or they can be
directly applied. However they get applied, they interact. So create a
style that contains the correct properties for all three and apply that
whenever you want numbering. Word will be less confused, and so will you


Cheers

--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]

 

[Tim Murray]

Hi Tim:

I would suggest that when the "Numbering" was applied, it was applied with
"Keep track of formatting" still switched on. Under those circumstances,
Word has generated a new fake style "based on" the underlying properties
of the original style.

Because you have "Keep track of formatting" switched off (at least, I hope
you do...) Word is hiding the weird "Char Char" style name from you.

The cure is to apply the List Number style to these paragraphs.

That may be all you have to do. That will abandon the corrupt style and
you don;t have to worry about it further. You may have to adjust the
formatting of the List Number style to your taste.

Don't try to apply numbering "over the top of" a paragraph style in a
complex document. Taht way lies pain city The more complex the
document, the more important it is to use a different style for different
formatting, and "Numbering" is different formatting.

The reason is that "Character formatting", "Paragraph formatting" and
"Number formatting" are three different mechanisms. They can all be part
of one style, or they can come from three different styles, or they can be
directly applied. However they get applied, they interact. So create a
style that contains the correct properties for all three and apply that
whenever you want numbering. Word will be less confused, and so will you.

Cheers

In this case, "keep track" was enabled, but there were none of those annoying
char char styles. In any case, I found something interesting along the lines
of my initial post.

In my second post I said that I found some non-numbered paragraphs that went
wide, but may have been numbered in the past.

That said, I found that whenever a paragraph went wide, numbered or not, I
could change it to any other style and it would be okay, but as soon as I
changed it back to its original style (Normal), it would go wide. Further, I
could do a reset character or reset paragraph, and it would not help.

But then I found that if I pasted the paragraph into a new document, it would
be okay margin wise -- but it would have a tab in front of the first
character. (Quick brown fox pastes as [tab]Quick brown fox.) The original
shows no hint of a tab there.

So all I had to do was copy the whole document (even that last pilcrow),
paste it into a new doc, and it's okay, I just have to take out that first
tab.