More re: Margin size and bindings? 2)-- " Anyone can do it" & Thanks

[sclarke -at- nucleus -dot- com]

I'd just like to take a moment and thank all who took the time to respond. 
I received some really good suggestions. For my ego...I recieved some 
solace for my poor bruised ego and from the point of view of the technical 
writing craft some good suggestions on how to handle the situation. I even 
enjoyed (got a chuckle and smile) from the individual who mentioned that 
they recognized from email address that I must dealing with "pigheaded 
Albertans. (Yup! I'm an Albertan and proud of it.)

Just to clarify one point...I'd orginally set the margins in the style 
guide to Word's default settings. This was primarily due to the fact that 
there's an individual(not a tech writer by trade) who has been pressed into 
service on this documentation project. This individual had a hand in 
developing the "templates" (not truly a template by our definition) for 
this project. The templates-from a layout and design point of view-were 
fairly flawed and so development of the style guide solved a number of 
different issues in one fell swoop-including the worst of the template 
design flaws. I was reluctant to propose any other sorts of changes 
(including the margin settings) because this individual would have been 
extremely resistant. (Read hit the roof).

 This person is a permanent employee while I am "just the contractor" and 
is *not* open to hearing/learning *any* thing about documentation 
development, doc design principles etc. etc. etc. It seemed quite clear to 
me that this person (who was involved in this project right from the 
beginning) regards it as " their baby."

In the 'original' template there were*no* spaces after headings,2) headings 
and titles were in all caps, bold & italic (yes...all three all at the same 
time) and this person was proposing to use a larger font for body text than 
for the headings. e.g. 12 point font for body text and ten point font for 
headings. Okaaaay?! This same person also didn't want to use a 16 point 
font for titles "because it would make the document longer."

It was this person (above) and the person I report to who cooked up the new 
margin settings.

To the person who wondered whether it was cm versus inches? No, it was 
inches and it says so right in the 'revised' style guide. Also I had a copy 
of the style guide handy when I recieved the fateful telephone call and had 
made a note of the revised settings as my supervisor was telling me.

Had they actually "applied" these settings to a document? No, it didn't 
appear so. They certainly had not applied the settings to the Style Guide 
itself. I, however,did. Naturally,90% of whatever content was on the page 
went sliding off the page and the net result is extremely unattractive.

I left two sample copies of two different documents with the revised 
settings applied. In addition I did screen captures of the print set-up 
dialog box attached to both showing that I *had* correctly applied the 
"revised" settings. I also left a short note/memo for my supervisor to 
which these were attached...asking whether this was the effect he had 
intended to achieve. I also included an article on basic layout and design. 
I'm sure that will win me *no* brownie points!

Sara in Canada

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