Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
All those wasted key strokes. I don't mean the find and replace, I mean all those tab and then start typing. Anyone would think you were still using a typewriter. 
There can be lots more to it than simple indent fixes. Styles give you a lot of flexibility whether you're going to epub, pdf or paper. A quick change of style setting and I have my preferred paragraph spacing for paper based review. When producing print-ready PDFs for print on demand I get to fiddle with the styles make the pages fit together as I want them - automatically adjusting the spacing of the chapter titles, margins and so on.
The problem with waiting for things to become more involved is that your habits are all entrenched and it starts to look like hard work to change. To turn a non-styles-consistent document into a styles-consistent document can be fiddly, so you waste time trying to adjust your processing for "just this little thing" and then "oh, just this little bit here too". Training yourself early, while things are simple, can save time later.
Of course there is another way: I once worked with a person who happily reported that he knew everything he needed to know about computers, he would turn to his secretary and say, "Do this for me."  |
Hey gmw,
I'm about to embark on some lengthy writing so I wanted to make sure I had things set up as efficiently as I could. I re-read your posts on styles and for the most part they just go over my head. What I did, though, was set up the styles box to the right of the screen (this in MS Office Word 2003) as I worked. I saw no changes in the style box when I indented paragraphs with the tab key. What I did see was when I used the tool bar to make something italisized that the italics style popped up in the styles and formatting box. But, when I italicize with "ctrl i" it pops up as well. So I don't know if I just need some super-remedial styles tutorial or if I'm just wasting my time (in that I--writing simple novels--don't really need to use styles.).
Anyway, if you had some simple advice for me I'd appreciate it. Thanks.