Quote:
Originally Posted by Anna Drake
I use LO. I'm currently learning to use its styles features. Fingers crossed. But I really won't know if it's been done correctly until after I upload the book.
How do you set up an alternative dictionary? Am an extremely tech-challenged person.
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I'll answer the second part first: From the "Tools" menu choose "Options". Then expand "Language Settings" and select "Writing Aids". This is where you can edit existing dictionaries and create a new one - and select which dictionaries are active.
I create a new one for my book or series (I name it as the book or series), and activate it when I'm working on it. While editing and you want to add a word to the dictionary you should see your newly created dictionary available as the one to add it to. (And/or you can review, add and edit your dictionary from the dialog mentioned above.)
As for styles. Get used to watching the style box up on the toolbar (which shows the current paragraph style) and/or have the "Styles and Formatting" window open (I attach it to the side of my main writing window). As your cursor moves through the document you will see the currently selected style change. The window version is useful because you can also choose the character styles display to see that text that looks italic (for example) is actually a given style (other than default). If you make a habit of checking this you will begin to get a better feel for how styles work and how you can make effective use of them.
Note that checking how well you have used styles, before upload, can be achieved also by converting to epub (I use
writer2xhtml) and looking through the raw html (if you're into that sort of thing
). This is a useful way to see how consistent your document formating has been, and maximising consistency will maximise the chances that your document will convert well.
The advanced search features inside LO can also be used to find certain style attributes as a way of finding things (like direct bold/italic etc) that should really have been styles. For example: to find something that you made explicitly italic, you would search using the "Attributes" button of the search dialog (click "More Options" if necessary) and tick the "Font Posture" item. For bold, search for the "Font Weight" item. Don't forget to click the "No Format" button to clear these searches when done.