Style confusion

[Colleen E]

I have been reading a lot on styles in MS Word 2003, and have used them,
but remain confused about "linking" and "based on" concepts. I thought I
was doing OK, until I read that if you base a style on "no style", you
have to "set the language" because no style has no proofing by default.
I have read a lot on the subject, ie. "understanding styles", etc., but
cannot seem to find anything that explains these things. Instructions
like "link your styles" totally confuse me. Is there anything anyone
can recommend that I have missed? I am starting to feel that I'll never
"get" styles, and I know how important they are! Thanks! Colleen.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

See the following page of fellow MVP Shauna Kelly's website:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/TipsOnStyles.html

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Stan Brown]

Sun, 8 Jan 2006 11:02:30 +0100 from Doug Robbins - Word MVP

See the following page of fellow MVP Shauna Kelly's website:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/TipsOnStyles.html

It's a good page, Doug, but unfortunately it doesn't answer Colleen's
question. (Perhaps standing on your head to post confused you.

Colleen, I can answer about "based on".

Think of styles as a family tree. When style A is based on style B,
it inherits all of its properties from style B except those you
change.

Example: The Normal style is usually used for your standard paragraph
formating: space before, indention, font, line spacing, "keep lines
together" or not, and so forth. You'll want to base most of your
other paragraph styles on the Normal style. For instance, suppose you
create a "Blockquote" style. It would be based on Normal but would
have half-inch left and right margins and a smaller font size and
line spacing.

Why bother to do it this way? Suppose down the road you decide that
the font you originally chose looks too severe (or doesn't look
businesslike enough). You change the font name in the Normal style
only. If you've based all other paragraph styles on Normal, then the
fonts of all those other styles change to match.

In other words, "based on" helps you keep formatting consistent
except where you specifically want a difference. Without "based on",
you'd have to make that change individually in every style.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
A: Maybe because some people are too annoyed by top-posting.
Q: Why do I not get an answer to my question(s)?
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Shauna does have another article,
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/HowStylesCascade.html, that may be
more to the point.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Nah, it was having to stand on my head to read your upside down post<g>

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Stan Brown]

Sun, 8 Jan 2006 11:35:23 -0600 from Suzanne S. Barnhill

Shauna does have another article,
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/HowStylesCascade.html , that may be
more to the point.

I like this! I don't know whether anything on that page is new to me,
but it's clearly laid out and I'll recommend it to people trying to
come to grips with styles. It's a zillion times better than what I
wrote, obviously.

 

[reades]

Know what you mean Colleen. I've been trying to understand styles for ages
and its driving me nuts too. Shauna Kelly's stuff is good up to a point. I
follow the instructions and click away merrily but I struggle to understand
what I'm actually doing. Maybe someone knows of a helpful learning resource
out there.
Rod

 

[Stefan Blom]

Besides reading the material at http://www.shaunakelly.com/word and
linked articles about styles, you may have to experiment a little! Do
some testing on an unimportant document, creating a style and then
basing some styles on it, to get a better understanding of the
concept. Feel free to come back with questions, if necessary.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[reades]

Hi Stefan,
I assure you I've done lots and lots of experiments. But still don't
understand why new styles with fonts I've never heard of appear in the task
pain without any input from me. I am managing a team writing procedures to a
defined standard - I am person defining this standard. Using styles is the
obvious but and am now thinking this method is not robust enough. For example
one of the authors cannot get "select all" to select all of a particular
style.
For some reason a heading always produces "1.5 blah blah" selecting "level
1" doesn't reduce it to "1 blah blah". I did have a full head of hair but now
nearer bald.
Rod

 

[Stan Brown]

Thu, 2 Feb 2006 03:30:30 -0800 from reades

don't understand why new styles with fonts I've never heard of
appear in the task pain

Is that a Freudian slip?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I assure you I've done lots and lots of experiments. But still don't

understand why new styles with fonts I've never heard of appear in the task
pain without any input from me.

If you paste in (other than as "unformatted text") text from another
document that uses styles not defined in your own, it will bring its style
(including the font) with it.

one of the authors cannot get "select all" to select all of a particular
style.

"Select all" works only if "Keep track of formatting" is checked on the Edit
tab of Tools | Options.

For some reason a heading always produces "1.5 blah blah" selecting "level
1" doesn't reduce it to "1 blah blah".

Outline numbering should be set up *exactly* as described at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html

Hi Stefan,
I assure you I've done lots and lots of experiments. But still don't
understand why new styles with fonts I've never heard of appear in the task
pain without any input from me. I am managing a team writing procedures to a
defined standard - I am person defining this standard. Using styles is the
obvious but and am now thinking this method is not robust enough. For example
one of the authors cannot get "select all" to select all of a particular
style.
For some reason a heading always produces "1.5 blah blah" selecting "level
1" doesn't reduce it to "1 blah blah". I did have a full head of hair but now
nearer bald.
Rod

 

[reades]

Thanks for pointing this out Stan. It reinforces my thoughts of becoming a
standup comedian instead.