When you have completed your manuscript and amended it to conform with Goldenford technical standards, it’s quite likely that the vast majority of the document will follow the rules, but with some remaining minor problems. Here's how to find and correct the final few.
Make a list of all the styles you intend to use and what they are for in a separate document (your standard styles). This should be quite a short list.
Work on a copy of your document, as it's easy to make unintended changes with styles.
In Word XP or later, open the Styles and Formatting pane (Format > Styles and Formatting) and select ‘Formatting in use’ at the bottom. (For earlier versions of Word, there are similar ways to identify and work with styles in use.) You may find it helpful to display end of paragraph markers on screen (click the paragraph icon on the toolbar to turn paragraph marks on and off). Inspect each of your standard styles (hover over style with your mouse) to check they are defined as you expect and make any corrections. Standard styles other than Normal should only exceptionally include a font selection and generally only simple layout settings (space before and after and indent).
Next, inspect the styles not on your list and investigate any that you don’t expect to see. You can select all instances of a particular style with the drop-down selection list to the right of each style, and if the correction is to be generic you can select the correct standard style in the toolbar. The unexpected style should then disappear from the list.
It’s likely you will find several styles are used only a few times, many of which quite likely should be ‘normal’. When you have finished these changes, there should be no styles in use for complete paragraphs other than your standard ones.
Where part of a paragraph uses a different format (eg some characters in italics) a style will be shown and these should be left in place. These should only exceptionally include a font selection and never layout settings (tabs, margins...).
Check carefully styles with a + sign in their name, showing a combination of more than one style. Appling explicit formatting and then selecting a different style for the paragraph can result in unintended formatting.
Heading 2, for chapter headings, should be defined as ‘Page break before’, removing the need for almost all hard page breaks. Ideally there should be no hard page breaks in your manuscript.
Normal is generally be defined with space after of 6pt. This ensures that paragraphs are properly separated. If you need paragraphs without space between them, use another style.
It’s can be quite hard to edit a large document all in one go. If necessary, do the work in sections. You can amalgamate several documents into one big one all in one go without copy and paste using the IncludeText field (Insert > Field and select IncludeText).
We recognise that cleaning up a document can be painful, but it is essential before the next stage and attention to detail will lead to a higher quality product.
If you need more detail, please contact me.
Templates are available on request for Word and OpenOffice supporting these standards
Technical enquiries and information from mike@goldenford.co.uk
Telephone (01483) 304234 (14:00-19:00)
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