The Silicon Amanuensis, Part 4: A Microsoft Word Template: Order From Chaos
Steve Beisner -- August 11, 2006
In our last installment of The Silicon Amanuensis we saw how paragraph styles can bring consistency and convenience to the formating of manuscripts. In this installment we provide the InkByte For Word template, downloadable from the Ink Byte Software site, designed specifically for the preparation of manuscripts for short stories, novels, memoirs, and the like. The template contains a set of predefined styles, as well as a special InkByte toolbar to help make Microsoft Word into a better manuscript preparation tool. [ARTICLE REVISED 8/22]
Installments of The Silicon Amanuensis:
The Silicon Amanuensis, Part 1: The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Silicon Amanuensis, Part 2: Microsoft Word Ate My Manuscript!
The Silicon Amanuensis, Part 3: With Microsoft Word It's a Matter of Style
The Silicon Amanuensis, Part 4: A Microsoft Word Template: Order From Chaos
This article (and the associated template file) has been revised to reflect feedback from readers... to make the template easier to use.
If you haven't read earlier installments of "The Silicon Amanuensis," especially Part 2 and Part 3, you should do that now, since those articles cover turning off the dangerous settings that MS Word comes with "out of the box," and the basics of using paragraph styles. Styles make the manuscript format more consistent and allow the writer to change the overall appearance of a manuscript (i.e. the font family, font size, indentations, spacing, etc.) without touching the text at all, only tweaking the style definitions. As always, when you're learning something with Word, it's best to be at your computer so you can follow along while you're reading.
Note that we're using the word, "template," to mean an ordinary Word document that defines some formatting styles and other content. (There are also Word Template files, usually having the file name extension, ".dot" that have a slightly different purpose. We won't discuss that kind of template here.) We'll get into what you can do with the InkByte For Word template in a moment, but first you'll need to download it and put it somewhere on your computer where you can open it when you want to start a new manuscript, perhaps on your desktop.
Installing The InkByte For Word Template
Download the InkByte For Word template from the Ink Byte Software web site. The site features a number of pieces of software, so you may have to follow a link to get to the download area for InkByte For Word. There you'll find a links to download InkByteForWord.doc, the latest version of the template.
Creating an InkByte For Word Manuscript
It's easy to begin using InkByte For Word. Open the file, InkByteForWord.doc, just as you would any other MS Word document, then immediately do menu File|Save As... to save a copy of the template under the name of the manuscript you're creating. From here on, you'll open the manuscript as normal. Note: in some cases, when you open the template, InkByteForWord.doc, to create a new manuscript (or sometimes when you open a file created from the template) you'll see a dialog box with a warning that says the document contains "macros." The dialog will ask you if you want to enable the macros. The answer is that you do want to enable macros... otherwise you won't get the "InkByte Toolbar" feature. If you don't care about the toolbar (you just want the styles), you can open the template with macros disabled. In this article we'll assume you're using the InkByte toolbar.
MS Word features a gizillion toolbars. You can turn individual toolbars on and off by using menu View|Toolbars to get a list of toolbars for you to check or uncheck. Check "InkByte" to turn on the InkByte For Word toolbar.
The InkByte Toolbar Buttons
We'll discuss some of these buttons in this article, all are documented in the MS Word Help. All buttons are standard in MS Word, but they are normally scattered over several different toolbars. The InkByte toolbar collects them all together in one place. The InkByte toolbar has buttons or widgets arranged as follows from left to right:
- Styles Dialog Button -- You can apply styles to the current paragraph (wherever the text cursor is), modify the definitions of styles, define new styles, etc.
- The Style Drop-down List will show the style being applied to the current paragraph. If you click on the drop down list you can change the style applied to the paragraph.
- The Font Face Drop-down List shows the the font face (also known as "font family") of the text containing the cursor. Also allows changing the font of the currently selected text.
- The Font Size Drop-down List shows the the font point size of the text containing the cursor. Also allows changing the font size of the currently selected text.
- The Format Painter. Very handy for copying formats without copying text. See the Word help... we won't discuss it here.
- The View Invisibles Button (looks like a paragraph glyph) toggles whether to make "invisible" characters (spaces, end-of-paragraphs, tabs, etc.) visible.
- Shift Left and Shift Right Buttons -- shift the left edge of of the current paragraph or currently selected paragraphs left/right.
- Numbered List Button -- format paragraph as a item of a numbered list.
- Bulleted List Button -- format paragraph as an item of a bulleted list
- Left Adjusted Button
- Center Adjusted Button
- The Zoom Control
- Text Highlight Button -- used like a highlight marker pen to mark some text for later attention.
- The Document Map Button is useful to navigate large manuscripts, like novels, if you've used the Title, TitleChapter, and Scene styles to create outline levels within your manuscript.
InkByte For Word Styles
The following paragraph styles are predefined by the InkByte For Word template. To format a paragraph put the text cursor somewhere inside the paragraph then use either the Style Drop-down List or the Styles Dialog Button to select a style and apply it to the paragraph containing the cursor.
- TextSquare -- This is the basic paragraph style from which most of the other styles are derived. You can change the font family (Courier New, Times New Roman, etc.), font point size, and line spacing (single, double, one-and-one-half) for the entire manuscript by modifying the definition of this style. TextSquare is most often used for the first paragraph of a chapter or scene.
- TextIndent -- This is the most common paragraph style you will use. It is exactly like TextSquare except that the first line of the paragraph is indented. If you're converting an existing document to use InkByte For Word it's probably easiest to select the entire document, apply TextIndent to the entire thing, then go back and set the style for paragraphs that are not TextIndent.
- TextSpaced -- Not used much. Like TextSquare, but with extra spacing between paragraphs.
- TextCenter -- Used to center lines of a paragraph. Usually you'll want to insert explicit line breaks using SHIFT-RETURN instead of letting the auto wrap/fill feature insert line breaks for you.
- QuoteSquare, QuoteIndent, QuoteCenter -- like TextSquare, TextIndent, TextCenter, except that extra "whitespace" appears above, below, left, and right. QuoteCenter is used to format "paragraphs" that are manuscript marks like "***" or "---" scene break marks or "~~~ The End ~~~" end-of-work marks.
- TitleMain -- Use to format the title of a novel, short story, etc. or for a part or book title (e.g. "Book I, Book II, etc.) Paragraphs formatted with TitleMain are at outline level #1.
- TitleChapter -- Use for chapter title. Outline level #2.
- Scene -- Use to "title/comment" a scene. In most cases, scenes will not have titles that make it into the finished manuscript. However, scene titles are usefult during development both to navigate a large manuscript (see "Navigation" below) and to record notes-to-author describing work needing to be done on a scene. One can even use these notes as placeholders for scenes before they are written. When the writer is ready to produce the final manuscript, the definition of the Scene style is changed to have font with the "hidden" attribute... causing all the Scene titles/comments to disappear! Outline level #3.
- Note -- another paragraph style intended for note-to-author comments. Outline level #4.
- Epigram -- Used for those little epigrams, quotations, dates, etc. at the start of a chapter or scene. You may want to consider changing the style definitions to suit your purpose.
- PageHeader -- Used to style page headers.
- PageFooter -- Used to style page footers (if you use them!)
You can, of course, define additional styles as required my your particular manuscript.
Modifying Styles
Besides selecting a style to apply, the Styles Dialog allows you to modify the definition of a style or define a new style for some purpose not addressed by the styles predefined by the InkByte For Word template.
A style need not be defined from scratch, but can be defined relative to an existing style. For example, the TextIndent style is defined as being the same as the TextSquare style with the addition of an indent of the first line. In fact, the TextSquare style is the basis for all of the styles defined by the InkByte For Word template that might be used for the text of a manuscript.
What this means is that you can change the font face, font size, line spacing, etc. for the complete manuscript by changing only the definition of the TextSquare style.
Defining new styles takes some practice, but it's worth learning. A good place to start is the MS Word Help menu, searching for "Style."
Also be aware that styles are primarily for control of formatting for paragraphs. Margins, which apply to the entire document are handled independently of styles. For document level formatting, see if your version of Word has a dialog for menu Format|Document; if not, try menu File|Page Setup.
Hiding "Notes to Author"
The style called Scene is used to put a comment to the author at the beginning of each scene. The Note style is used for a comment to the author anywhere. In both cases, you'll probably want these notes visible during manuscript creation and editing but you'll want to hide them when you print the manuscript for submission. To make paragraphs formatted with these styles invisible, modify the font definitions for each of the styles to include the "hidden" attribute.
Navigation: Finding Your Way Around Large Manuscripts
By using styles Title, TitleChapter, Scene, and Note to format titles and scene notes, you build up your manuscript as a hierarchy. Title is level 1, TitleChapter is level 2, and Scene is level 3, Note is level 4.
The Document Map button on the InkByte toolbar will display the hierarchical structure of the manuscript in a column against the left border. Clicking on this hierarchy will take you directly to the corresponding portion of the manuscript. This is extremely useful when you're finding your way around a novel-length work.
Getting Help
If you get stuck, first try checking the manual (available on the InkByte Software web site). You can also email the editors of Ink Byte at editors@inkbyte.com with your question. We'll try to help. It the question is of general interest we'll add it and our reply to the manual.
Check Ink Byte soon for the next installment of The Silicon Amanuensis.