Learning to work in Microsoft Word correctly

It just so happened that on duty, I often have to use MS Word to write scientific and technical reports. For 10 years at work, I almost daily encounter the fact that people mainly use a computer together with this rather powerful text editor as an analogue of a typewriter. In principle, this is enough for writing an official or explanatory note, but when a person begins in the same way the formation of an abstract, a scientific and technical report or writing a book, such work, due to the need for regular editing of what was previously written, very quickly becomes torture. And the same torture becomes the editing of the text by a person who can work in MS Word, after the edits made by a person who does not know how to work in it.

Here I will try to capture the milestones of how to do it right and how not to do it. Next, I will show that the MS Word text editor was originally developed by programmers and for programmers, and not for other people.

First, let’s make a small digression and mention the fact that you need to work in a text editor only in edit mode or “Show all characters” (Ctrl + *).

This should be done for the simple reason that otherwise you simply will not see many of the service signs that are required for the correct orientation in the document and the correct understanding of what a particular place in the document really is (list, main text or heading). You will also not understand that in this place there is such an important and useful thing as a non-breaking space (Shift + Ctrl + Space) or a line feed without creating a new paragraph (Shift + Enter)… The first is used mainly to add units of measurement of physical quantities to the text, the second is needed much less often. You will also not see how many extra spaces you randomly beat off and extra line breaks. The latter is generally recommended to do only if you need to create a new paragraph, and not to go to a new page — for this there is the function “Insert page break” (Ctrl + Enter).

A document with a bunch of blank lines looks disgusting and opens differently in different versions of MS Word (you risk not seeing the beginning of a new portion of the text where you intended it, and the number of pages may also differ).

So, back to programming. A book or scientific and technical report is a document with many levels of difficulty. This circumstance immediately imposes some restrictions and sets certain requirements when working with a text editor. The first of these requirements: the DRY principle must be observed, as programmers do when writing code, because if we do not do this, then we will simply get tired of editing such elements one by one. MS Word has all the necessary tools to comply with the DRY principle, and the main element of this toolkit is built-in classes with their methods that we can use when declaring variables. In modern versions of MS Word, almost all possible actions with classes are designed as a set of functions in the menu (often not very well).

The first thing a beginner needs to learn to work in a text editor is to use styles (Alt + Ctrl + Shift +S).

It is almost impossible to work in MS Word without the constantly open “Styles” panel, because it contains classes that form the structure of the future document (headings of different levels, list items, table of contents elements, captions for numbered figures and tables), which allow you to create an auto-generated table of contents and edit similar report elements at the same time by editing the properties of the style assigned to them.

The originally presented system of unnumbered headers for the original Normal.dotm template (located in C: \ Users \ {{user}} \ App Data \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates or C: \ Users \ {{user}} \ App Data \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates ) is pretty simple, but we will need to refine it to create a hybrid system of numbered and unnumbered titles, and bring it in line with GOST 7.32–2001 “Research report. Structure and design rules “ , which is completely copied from a similar American standard (you can verify this by looking through the NASA documents that are in the public domain). It is this GOST 7.32–2001 should be used by all pupils and students for their abstracts.

There are basic (!) Heading styles in MS Word (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3…). But this does not mean at all that we need to use them in their original form. It is necessary to inherit from them — here is the second requirement from the programming world. In order to set up our hybrid heading system, we need to remember two main locations:

Home — Multilevel list — Define a new multilevel list

And Links — Table of Contents — Custom Table of Contents — Options.

It should be noted right away that ordinary bulleted and numbered lists, due to their primitiveness and limited scope (there is no connection with the levels of the table of contents, it is impossible to redefine the numbering principle, it is impossible to set a character after the number), we will only use to create lists within sections that are not involved in the formation the main structure of the document.

So, first, let’s create new styles for the numbered headings. Let’s start with the Numbered Heading 1 style. To do this, at the bottom of the Styles panel, click on the Create Style button. A window like this will open.

Points to note here:

1. Initially “Numbered Heading 1” is created completely unnumbered. This is not scary at all, and can be solved at the next stage of the configuration during the creation of a bundle with a multilevel list;

2. The style must be set to “Linked (paragraph and sign)”;

3. Based on the style: “Heading 1” is the same inheritance. That is, all properties of the Heading 1 style will also be used in the Numbered Heading 1 style , except for those that you yourself override;

4. Style of the next paragraph: “Body text”. This is the style of the line following the title. I recommend using the Body Text style as the style for the document base text instead of the Normal style for better compatibility with LibreOffice;

5. Don’t forget to check the “Update automatically” box. This will allow you to automatically change the view of the document after updating this style without having to press the “Ctrl + A” and “F9” keys;

6. All other settings are a kind of esoteric, which allows you to bring the title to its prototype in GOST 7.32–2001 (color, font size, alignment, indents, kerning, leading ).

Next, we just create the Numbered Heading 2 — Numbered Heading 5 styles in the same way. Typically, five levels of numbered headings are enough to create a complex document of 300–500 pages. We will inherit from the corresponding basic heading styles “Heading 2” — “Heading 5”.

The second step in setting up a hybrid heading system is setting up a multi-level list.

To do this, we select any line and assign it the newly created Numbered Heading 1 style. Next, go to Home — Multilevel list — Define new multilevel list, click the “More >>” button and see something like this.

The following should be noted here:

1. Apply to the entire list — the structure of a multilevel list must go through the entire document;

2. Key point — linking level 1 with the newly created style “Numbered heading 1”;

3. The format of the number is just a number without any dots. Only levels are separated by dots, as our American standard tells us. That is, not “1. Header Text ” , and “ 1 Header Text ” . This approach is interesting because it is practically not used in publishing. The meaning of the approach is to minimize the required number of service characters in the document without losing understanding of its meaning;

4. Assign a space after the number instead of a tab, so as not to have regular problems with the distance between the number and the title.

Next, we associate levels 2–5 with the corresponding Numbered Heading 2 — Numbered Heading 5 styles. Pay attention to the format of the number: two numbers separated by a dot, no dot at the end. To the above four points, only the numbering setting is added: for level 2 we set “Re-number: Level 1” so that the numbering is not continuous.

The last step is to customize the table of contents. In “Links — Table of Contents — Custom Table of Contents — Options” we set the heading levels that should appear in the auto-assembled table of contents.

In this case, we have set the first level for the styles “Numbered heading 1” (left-aligned, in lowercase letters) and “Report structural element” (for example, INTRODUCTION, SUMMARY, CONCLUSION — in capital letters and in the center, also inherits from “Heading 1 “ ). Now in the auto-assembled table of contents, both of these headings will be at the same level.

Finally, I will write for the sake of what all this is done. The fact is that if you set Level 1 for the Heading 1 style and any other style, for this other style MS Word will simply reset the level. If you set Level 1 for two styles inherited from one ( “Heading 1” ), this does not happen.

Of course, the people who developed the standard are completely unaware of these problems. And, not only do they have practically no idea about aesthetics (headings of the same level in different letters with different alignments), they also absolutely do not care how you will implement this standard using a text editor (many things like you are convinced that they are implemented quite nontrivially, if you want to automate the process of document generation at least a little, and for this reason, the standard certainly requires at least revision).

As a result, we set up our own heading system in accordance with GOST 7.32–2001, and determined the levels of the auto-assembled table of contents for which they will be applied (for example, two headings of the first level can be assigned — numbered and unnumbered, outwardly looking completely different — for the sake of which was the idea of ​​creating your own header system using inheritance).

Next, we need to save our edits to the styles and overwrite the default Normal.dotm template so that we can apply the created styles to all new documents. To do this, click “File — Save As” , and save the file anywhere as a template with support for the Normal.dotm macros.

Then close MS Word, go to the folder C: \ Users \ {{user}} \ AppData \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates or C: \ Users \ {{user}} \ AppData \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates depending on the Windows version, and without a twinge of conscience, we rewrite the basic Normal.dotm template to a new, still more stupid basic template than the Microsoft template, it is impossible to come up with for the purposes of all our schoolchildren, students and clerks.

In the next articles I will tell you about the correct work with tables, pictures, links, fields and macros, teach you how to bypass the problems provoked by the developers of state standards, and also teach you how to use the necessary hotkeys so that the document meets the basic requirements of typography and does not set your teacher on fire. We will also learn how to do all of the above in the free editor LibreOffice , and I will show its undoubted advantages compared to the monstrous brainchild of Microsoft. Learn more.