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Subject:RE: NORMAL vs BODY styles From:"Michele Marques" <marquesm -at- autros -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 25 May 2001 13:25:09 -0400
Geoff Lane writes:
> Peter Kleczka wrote:
> >
> > Why have a normal *and* a body. Why not just
> > body?
> ---
>
> In Word, "Normal" is a system style, which you modify at your
> peril. To find
> out why, wait until you try to index your document, or do one of the other
> things that rely on the Normal style having a particular font or
> leading.
[.. example of index getting messed up by redefining "normal" ...]
As others have explained, styles in Word are based on other styles, with
most of them (if not all) ultimately based on "normal". This is why you want
to use "body" as your default style and do most modification on body.
On the other hand, if you have certain typographic conventions that you want
to perpetuate throughout the document, make the modifications that should
apply to most styles to "normal" (but still attach "body" and other styles
to your paragraphs, instead of "normal"). For example, if you suddenly
decide to stop using "Times New Roman" and instead use "Garamond" or some
other font, modify the "normal" style to use "Garamond" and this will ripple
through all styles where the font family was not changed, as long as those
styles are based on "normal", or based on a style that was based on
"normal".
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