RE: Sideheads in WORD documents

["Cook, Jenise" <jenise -dot- cook-crabbe -at- pacificlife -dot- com>]

Hi, everyone:

I, too, have used tables in Word to create sideheads. Like Mike O., I also
found that tables and text boxes can cause problems with page layout and
print shops with a Mac-only platform. Can I offer a solution I've found
works for me?

To create sideheads in Word, I use a combination of a paragraph style and a
character style. The paragraph style defines where both my sidehead and my
text begin. The character style I use to "bold" the sidehead and apply a
slightly larger font size than the text.

I create a style at the manual's left margin. Within that style I set an
indented margin about 2" (or so) from the left margin (your inches may
vary). Let's call the style SIDEHEAD.

Then, I set a character style for the sidehead (bold, font size, font face
different from body text, whatever). Let's call it SIDEHEAD TITLE.

For subsequent paragraphs that do not have a sidehead, I create a paragraph
style called BODY. In the Styles dialog, there is an option called: "Style
for following paragraph". I make sure my SIDEHEAD style has BODY as the
style that follows when I hit the Enter key for a new paragraph. (I almost
typed "carriage return.")

When I'm ready to create my manual, these are my actions:

1. Select the SIDEHEAD style.
2. Type sidehead's heading. Tab to left indent and type away.
3. When ready, highlight the actual sidehead heading and apply the SIDEHEAD
TITLE character style.

Sure, this means I have to go back through my manual and apply the character
style SIDEHEAD TITLE to all of the sideheads. However, it sure beats
rearranging tables and text boxes when the UI changes! :-D

I have a Word doc I've created to illustrate the styles, and I'm sending it
to Cedric. If anyone else is interested, please let me know!

(P.S. You can also use linked text boxes.)

Jenise Cook-Crabbe

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Oboryshko [mailto:obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2001 7:03 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Sideheads in WORD documents


Cedric asked:
> What is the best solution to create side headings in Word
documents

<snip Mike's response>
Tables and text boxes are problematic for structured documents.

Just set the left margins for the whole document where you want
the body text to line up. Then define your "sidehead" style as a
frame with a negative indent.

This works in Word 2000; I haven't tried XP. My only reservation
about frames is I suspect they may be deprecated in future
versions. But in the meantime, it's nice to be able to just
create a "sidehead" style without having to chase each paragraph
around with a table or text box.

Hope that helps,
Mike O.



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