Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
[...]Anyway, if you had some simple advice for me I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
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First simple advice is don't use your tab key while typing your document - ever. Nor should you put manual spacing between paragraphs (hit enter twice) - except when providing an intentional break between scenes. Similarly don't try to use manual spacing for your chapter headings. Any formatting (tabs, spacing, direct italics and bold etc.) that you add to your paragraphs are added over top of the existing style - and this is exactly what you want to avoid.
If you want a tab-like indent then modify the "Normal" paragraph style (called "Default" in OO/LO) and set it up there - just once. (You can copy styles between documents or set up a template with your preferred styles for writing to make it easier in the future.) I'm not familiar with all dialogs in MS-Word 2003 - and MS keep changing things, I sometimes suspect they do this to make it difficult to help people use their products. But Google gave me links like these:
Word 2003: Style Basics
Understanding Styles
Styles basics in Word (about Word 2007 but from MS themselves)
Typically, normal paragraphs should using "Normal" style - it's just easier that way (there is some linking between styles so that changes to Normal (for example) will pass on the child styles, but here we're getting into more advanced territory). For chapter headings I using "Heading 2", but you could also create your own style (perhaps copy an existing and modify) and name it to suit yourself. If you want to increase the space between the chapter heading and the chapter text then alter the chapter heading style - do
not hit enter multiple times to achieve it.
That's paragraph styles. To apply emphasis to a word in a paragraph I always prefer to use the Emphasis character style (OO/LO have it already there, don't know about MSO), rather than ctrl+i, though the advantages here are less clear because it is doubtful you will ever what to change from using italics. I prefer to use an explicit style because it shows up as a CSS style in the generated epub and makes everything neatly explicit.
While the advantages for emphasis are questionable, this is much less likely to be true for any other special character styles you may want. These are less common in writing a novel but can happen - for example you may decide to show what the user typed on the screen with different formatting. Always use character styles for these.
Trying to stay brief. Is this enough to get you started?