INLS261 Tools for Information Literacy

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[document markup] [object formatting] [graphics & tools] [lab]
[styles, templates, breaks, headers & footers] [practice] [next time]

Letting Document Formatting Do More Work for You

Use The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie to practice things today. Open it and save it as a document on your client. It has already been set up for formatting (the original source text is available online).

Styles and their uses

[MSWord 2007 Styles sidebar]

The styles and formatting sidebar allows you to control and modify all the styles in your document
When you make changes in the sidebar, you make changes to your Style Sheet. You can thus make document level or line level style modifications.

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Templates

[MSWord 2007 templates dialog box]

Templates set up a document for you, allowing you to place your text into the pre-set locations already formatted for style
again, can be useful and can be modified to suit your particular needs
every document you create in MSWord is based on some template (usually normal.dot) and every template has an associated document-level stylesheet incorporated in it. You can change any or all of the styles in any template by using your style tools and you can create templates tailored to your needs.

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Page numbering

If you use headers and footers, you can do numbering as part of those sections
If you do not, this will create headers and footers with page numbers for you

Format including chapter numbers involves text formatting

[MSWord 2007 page number format dialog box]

Page numbering done from the standard toolbar can end up fighting with page numbering done from the footer toolbar, so it's a good idea to decide which tool you want to use to number your pages.

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Breaks

[MSWord 2007 insert break dialog box]

Why might you want to insert page or section breaks?
- A page break is pretty self explanatory - it causes the printer to generate a new page at the point of the break.
- A section is a part of a document that has a specified number of columns and uses a common set of margins, page orientation, headers and footers, and sequence of page numbers. A section break thus will allow you to do different formatting in each section.
This will be very useful when you combine it with headers and footers.

Types of breaks

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Footnotes

choose either a footnote or an endnote and customize how they will display

use Normal view to see footnotes/endnotes as you work with text

[MSWord 2007 normal view with footnotes displayed]

use browse tool on lower right corner of screen to browse document by footnote/endnote
moving cursor over footnote reference in text brings up the footnote in a bubble window
footnotes move with their mark in the text

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Headers and Footers

To quote Microsoft on it:

Headers and footers not only make your work look more professional; they prevent confusion and help readers to keep their bearings inside your document. Remember, people don't necessarily read a report or paper from front to back -- they flip ahead to the parts that interest them, and even extract and photocopy sections as it suits their needs. By setting Word to automatically add elements like page numbers, section titles, date, and author name, you ensure that each page bears the essential information that situates it within the whole of your document.

remember, you defined where this header and footer would be when you did page setup
You can now change it from the Header/Footer taskbar. You need to format the header/footer to suit your document (influenced by themes). Make the header look like what you want it to look like by using table borders and fills to add color and distinction.
Because you have sections, you can format headers by section and have them display in conjunction with the needs of the document's section.

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