RE: Applying On-Line

["Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miriam McGinty-Lowe [mailto:Miriam_McGinty-Lowe -at- MDSUK -dot- COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 3:59 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Applying On-Line
> 
> I'm a little unsure what's wrong with using 'Normal'.

First of all, there is no such thing as "normal" in a document. As soon
as you change that paragraph to have bullets, bolding, or something
else, it is "abnormal" with respect to the "normal" style. 

I'm sure we're all aware of what happens when the abnormal "Normal"
style is formatted as, say, plain text in some places and bullets in
others. If you decide that you want to change some characteristics (like
indenting) of "Normal" bullets, you can't (1) without affecting the
"Normal" plain text or (2) without doing it manually every place where
needed.

> If it's used for normal 'filler' paragraphs, without 
> additional formatting, and
> in conjunction with styles that have been formatted 
> appropriately, what's wrong with it?

The reason it is "wrong" is that leading/trailing space should be
controlled by the paragraph style. If you want more space in front of
your headings, define the headings style with more leading space. That
way all of your headings have consistent definitions. I usually define
all paragraphs to have 6 points before and 6 points after, which gives
12 points between most paragraphs just like a filler paragraph would. In
addition, the headings get 12 or 18 before and 6 points after to provide
more separation.

Word can be smart enough to know that if that heading happens to land at
the top of a page or bottom of a page, it doesn't need to allocate
leading or trailing space, respectively. 

If you insert "filler" paragraphs, they don't go away when you are at
page boundaries and may serve to push your text down from the
appropriate starting point (top margin) of the next page. Also, anything
new that you add to the beginning of the document necessitates going
back through the document to see where it might have pushed things down
from the top margin of subsequent pages. You'll have to delete those
filler paragraphs.

If you apply the "keep with next" features of a paragraph definition
properly, Word will automatically break text or push text to the next
page without you inserting "filler" paragraphs or manual page breaks. It
means that you are free to re-arrange and add text without constantly
having to go back to get things to fit properly all the time.

Filler paragraphs tend to add more complications to any "keep with next"
or "keep with previous" settings, because those paragraphs may be the
"next" or "previous" when really it should have been something else with
more meat.

I "never" use filler paragraphs except (1) when including code samples
or (2) when writing in a stupid editor/e-mail.

Glenn Maxey
Technical Writer
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
1765 West 121st Avenue
Westminster, CO 80234-2301
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com



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