Quote:
Originally Posted by AlanHK
Explicitly, this means using the STYLE menu in your word processor. NOT just the formatting buttons.
Word has a default set of heading styles:
Heading 1, Heading 2 , etc.
If you use those for parts, chapter headings, subheads, you can generate the TOC automatically.
If you just format each heading with "Bold 24 point" or the like, that won't work.
When exported to HTML, these come out as <h1>, <h2> etc tags, and again the generate TOC will work using those.
After almost 30 years in the business, I've found most authors now have basically zero knowledge of styles, and zero interest when I try to explain why they should use them. In the dawn of the word processing era, people read the manual and learnt how to use the features. Now it's just point and click and 98% of the features are never used.
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I've wondered if it's simply that the people that come to folks like us--formatters and book designers--are that way. I mean, we know factually that many self-pubbed authors "format" their own eBooks, either by the simple expedient of uploading properly formatted (using Styles and Headings, I mean) Word files, or by converting those files into ePUBs either directly (export-->HTML, Filtered-->.html file-->Sigil) or via Calibre (delicate shudder).
But yes, I can count on BOTH hands--so, for those with a counting deficiency, fewer than 10--the number of manuscripts I've seen, in slightly over a decade now, in which Styles and Headings are used, remotely correctly. I've even seen downloaded Templates, from Amazon, from The Book Designer, in which unformatted or ad-hoc-formatted text was pasted into templates that HAD the styles right there to be used, with examples on how to deploy it. {shrug}.
I
don't understand it, myself. I've had to use word-processing since...gosh, the very late 70's, (starting with the old IBM OS/6) and Styles and Headings, understanding how the styling is applied--is fundamental to making the programs work FOR you, rather than you having to be their slave.
I don't get why
anyone wouldn't want to make their lives easier. What, just to avoid an hour or two of learning something? So that they can waste many
MORE hours, in fighting the programs? In not understanding why hitting the backspace key could change the formatting of the prior paragraph, and instead, just apply more ad-hoc styling? Not be able to use the Nav Pane, see the entirety of their book in outline format? Not be able to drag-drop entire sections, chapters, scenes, whatever?
Where's the
sense in that? I mean, hell, I'm lazy, but even I can't see the sense in avoiding two hours' of work now to save
dozens of hours later.
Hitch