RE: Word XP Graphics Page Margins

["Laurel Hickey" <lhickey -at- 2morrow -dot- bc -dot- ca>]

In my experience, it's best not to have "floating" images if you can
avoid it. With Word, this means having no text wrap. Why? Anchors create
lots of predictability problems, especially in reflow. Same with text
boxes. Ug. 

I prefer to have an image sit in its own styled paragraph spot. Captions
fit below or above as desired and have their own style as well. By
adjusting the style of one or the other, they will move together onto a
new page.

If you need the caption or additional text to one side, set everything
into a 2-col table. (Not a "floating" table either!) ;-))

Personally, I prefer manuals where the text immediately to the right or
left of an image provides more information about the image or the
procedure the image illustrates and isn't part of the flow of the body
text. It's because when you're reading, you're not looking at the image
and when you look at the image, you've often lost the place in the body
text that referred back to it (I know, that's what fingers are made
for). With summary or condensed text set close to the image (and a style
that id's it as such), that text and the image become a unit and
reinforce the information, visually identify what is being talked about
(as do headings) and can be used on their own by the reader when they
scan.

Generally, working harmoniously with Word for long documents means
keeping the file as simple and "pure" as possible. Paragraphs and
paragraph styles for everything. Character styles only when they make
absolute sense. No empty paragraphs to create spaces. No anchors of any
sort. NO TABS. EVER. No text boxes. No grouped "objects" to make
diagrams (that invariably fall apart either in the document or with the
final printing or anytime you start to feel safe). Minimum use of page
and section breaks. Minimum use of columns ... shiver (try using
tables). Think linear... save your sanity.

On the other hand, some things that sound out there actually work well
with Word and when used, solve other problems. Use fields that pick up
on heading styles and document properties info to populate headers and
footers (the character styles work here to shorten long section headers
to just the text you want to appear in the header/footer). This means NO
section breaks are needed in the body of the document between sections.
I even use fields in the document title page... actually anywhere it I
can feed off the same document properties info. 

Oh, and keep your paragraph marks and breaks visible at all time. You
need to be able to SEE what is happening.

Short documents? Like a 3-round olympic boxing match compared to 19th
century bare knuckle fights that could go 60 rounds. 

--Laurel


-------------------------------------
Laurel Hickey
2morrow writing & document design
lhickey -at- 2morrow -dot- bc -dot- ca
http://www.2morrow.bc.ca