Style Naming Convensions

[Paul]

I am setting up a few templates for users who have long documents which have
been re-used for many years (e.g. for 2003 document the 2002 one was used
and overwritten) and have text pasted in from other sources and in terms of
formatting/styles are a complete mess.

I'm quite comfortable creating and modifying styles and going through the
documents and removing all the manual formatting in favour of the styles
(styles and formatting pane is great for this, although I wish it was a bit
more stable and quicker to update - it tends to claim formatting is still in
the document after you have removed all instances).

What I want to know is, can anyone point me to a good guide for style
use/naming. Headings, captions, page numbers etc are obvious but I would
like to know (for example):

* Is it better (or more common) for the 'standard' paragraphs to be defined
as 'Normal' or 'Body Text'?
* Is it considered better to use a character style 'Strong' to apply bold
than to apply manually (in 2003 I would say yes, as you can then lock the
document for formatting but still allow Strong to be applied to text in any
other style)?
* If you have Strong as Bold and Emphasis as Italics, is there a 'standard'
name for Bold+Italics (Stong Emphasis)?
* Is it 'better' to call indented Body Text 'Body Text Indent' or just
'Indent'?
* Are the list and table styles of much benefit - do experienced Word users
recommend using them?

In an ideal world everyone would adhere to these naming standards so that
copying and pasting text between documents would not cause so many
formatting problems, but Word Help does not seem to offer any guidance about
such standards.

Thanks

Paul

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello Paul

I am setting up a few templates for users who have long documents which have
been re-used for many years (e.g. for 2003 document the 2002 one was used
and overwritten) and have text pasted in from other sources and in terms of
formatting/styles are a complete mess.

I guess most in here can feel your pain!

I'm quite comfortable creating and modifying styles and going through the
documents and removing all the manual formatting in favour of the styles
(styles and formatting pane is great for this, although I wish it was a bit
more stable and quicker to update - it tends to claim formatting is still in
the document after you have removed all instances).

What I want to know is, can anyone point me to a good guide for style
use/naming. Headings, captions, page numbers etc are obvious but I would
like to know (for example):

* Is it better (or more common) for the 'standard' paragraphs to be defined
as 'Normal' or 'Body Text'?

From all I read, this seems to come down to personal taste. I prefer
Body Text in longer documents. For letter templates, I usually don't
bother beceause I know users will not adhere too much, anyway.

An interesting idea was reported in here to, if Body Text was used, to
define "Normal" as something like Arial Bold, 13 pt, purple, with red
marching ants around it; this serves as an indicator that, at this
paragraph, the correct style has obviously not been applied yet ...

* Is it considered better to use a character style 'Strong' to apply bold
than to apply manually (in 2003 I would say yes, as you can then lock the
document for formatting but still allow Strong to be applied to text in any
other style)?

Very good reason in Word 2003. In earlier versions, I'd vote for
Strong/Emphasis, too, esp. if you plan to export to (X)HTML from those
documents. The bad part of Word is that it treats character styles as
direct formatting (which you have found out if you are familiar with the
CTRL-A | CTRL-Q and ... | CTRL-Space Shortcuts). There are macros out
there that preserve character styles when resetting direct character
formatting to the famous "Font of the underlying paragraph".

* If you have Strong as Bold and Emphasis as Italics, is there a 'standard'
name for Bold+Italics (Stong Emphasis)?

I'd probably rather try not to use that combination (unless with "real"
crafted fonts for that purpose), but that's personal typographical
preference, I'm sure.

* Is it 'better' to call indented Body Text 'Body Text Indent' or just
'Indent'?

I'd use the former simply beceause that is part in a Normal.dot, anyway.

* Are the list and table styles of much benefit - do experienced Word users
recommend using them?

I see the former recommended around here, and the latter rather
discouraged. Personally, my list numbering seems stable enough without
having to delve into the realms of list styles. Table styles seem to be
a bit weird when you want to control paragraph style/formatting of the
table text, but for the rest seem to be OK. My "production" templates
still use mere table AutoTexts (with para styles for heading row and the
rest applied); if I ever wanted to globally change table properties
aside from the para styles, I'd use VBA.

In an ideal world everyone would adhere to these naming standards so that
copying and pasting text between documents would not cause so many
formatting problems, but Word Help does not seem to offer any guidance about
such standards.

Hear, hear!

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Paul]

Thanks for the answers to the specific points.

I was surprised not to find any best practice guides for style naming in
Word help or via a Google search. I think there is an opportunity here (for
you MVPs) to create a standards document and make it available on the web
;-)

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Paul

In an ideal world everyone would adhere to these naming standards so that
copying and pasting text between documents would not cause so many
formatting problems, but Word Help does not seem to offer any guidance
about such standards.

For me, this is the crucial issue. And for that reason, I *always* use
built-in styles if a style with an appropriate name exists. I still create
custom styles (I seem to create one called TableText in almost everything I
do). But when in doubt, my rule is to use a built-in style and modify it for
my needs.

If we all did that, then there would, effectively, be a naming standard.

For what it's worth, I always use Body Text for Body Text because Word uses
Normal for so many other things. For example, Word uses Normal style for
text in text boxes and other shapes. If you've modified Normal to do
double-duty as a body text style, then you're now stuck with that formatting
for all AutoShapes, and you'll have to change the formatting for your
shapes. In any case, I can't imagine a conversation in which I say to
someone "Hi, I've created this gorgeous template for your business. When you
come to create a paragraph of body text, don't use the built-in Body Text
style that's available in every Word document ever created. Instead, use
Normal style." That doesn't seem to make sense to me!

(Oh, and I think I'm the pink text and red marching ants person, though I
haven't actually done that lately!)

Hope this helps.

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

in message

An interesting idea was reported in here to, if Body Text was used,
to
define "Normal" as something like Arial Bold, 13 pt, purple, with
red
marching ants around it; this serves as an indicator that, at this
paragraph, the correct style has obviously not been applied yet ...

But since Normal, by default, is the parent of many (all?) styles in
Word, this would be tricky. The setting would transfer to all of those
styles!

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Thanks for the answers to the specific points.

I was surprised not to find any best practice guides for style naming in
Word help or via a Google search. I think there is an opportunity here (for
you MVPs) to create a standards document and make it available on the web
;-)

I guess that we're all having trouble enough either to bring the users
of our own templates to use styles, and consistently; or "seal" the
templates in ways that they _have_ to use them that way.

IOW: it's hard enough to standardise the use of styles in one company.
To come up with a feasible scheme for general use, though ...

As much as yourself, I'm looking forward to other answers to this thread!

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm coming in late, but I'll join the others in recommending Body Text over
Normal (see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NormalVsBodyStyles.htm) and
for using the built-in styles (modified as desired) whenever possible. This
is especially important in the case of headings (see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/UseBuiltInHeadingStyles.html).

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Stefan

But since Normal, by default, is the parent of many (all?) styles in
Word, this would be tricky. The setting would transfer to all of those
styles!

That's the idea!

It doesn't only tell the user that a given paragraph hasn't been
correctly assigned yet, but it does also tell the template creator that
a given style hasn't been correctly setup.

I base some styles on Body Text instead of Normal so that I have 2 or 3
style "branches".

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Stefan Blom]

I see. So when applying a style does *not* display any text effects,
it would be an indication to users that "I'm allowed to use this
style" and to template designers that "the setup of this style is
completed". A good idea! Thanks for explaining, Robert.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Stefan

There is (at least) one draw back to this bizarre idea.

Try this in a new document:
1. Modify Normal to be Pink.
2. Modify Body Text to be Black (or Automatic).
3. Create several paragraphs in a row of Body Text.
4. Within the block of Body Text paragraphs, insert a Table.

You'll see that, even though the Table was inserted into a paragraph in Body
Text, surrounded by other Paragraphs in Body Text, the end-of-row markers
are pink.

In this case, Pink was supposed to be a message saying "all is not well".
But for end-of-row markers in a Table, it provides a false warning.

Cheers

Shauna

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

I guess this is a side-effect of the strange connection between table
styles and the Normal style in Word 2002/2003?

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Klaus Linke]

You'll see that, even though the Table was inserted into a paragraph

I guess this is a side-effect of the strange connection between table
styles and the Normal style in Word 2002/2003?

Yes, if you want to use table styles, you mustn't customize the Normal
paragraph style.
If you don't apply another style in the table, Normal is applied. But the
formatting of Normal isn't applied ... *as long* as the factory-default
settings of Normal haven't been changed.

As soon as you customize Normal, it's no longer "transparent" in tables, and
font settings done in the table style will be without effect (and the
settings in the Normal style will be used instead).

It seems this is "by design", but usually it's perceived as a bug.

Greetings,
Klaus

 

[Stefan Blom]

Klaus, thanks for confirming this.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message