Formatting Documents

I've been getting my first book (a collection of poems) ready for publication, and thus have spent the last few weeks reacquainting myself with the joys of formatting. It's about as much fun as it sounds, but I realize that even with a lot of computer experience this can be a frustrating process. I can't imagine what it would be like to attempt this without having a lot of practice with it. So here's a list of general formatting tips. This isn't a guide for specific and technical formatting techniques, for those already exist and are much more detailed than anything I could create, but more of a guide on how to approach formatting a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx).

1. Save formatting for last

This should be obvious, but for some it's not. Get your raw text down before you do anything else. Don't touch anything in the formatting bar until every word that's supposed to be in the finished document is already in it. This includes paragraph spacing, margins, justification, and font. The reason? If you start formatting a half done document you're going to end up with inconsistent formatting and a lot of repeated work. Formatting choices tend to bleed down the paper as you go too, so any change you make may not end up throughout the whole document. Get it written first, then make it pretty.

2. Section breaks

After the document is written, you're going to want to add section breaks to anywhere where the formatting will be different from the rest of the document. Doing this will save you headaches in the long run.

3. Working from the top down

Now that you're formatting your document, the best approach is to work from the top down, or from the big to the small. Basically ask yourself, what's the biggest/broadest thing I need to change? And then do that first. For example, you would change your page orientation/size/margins first, then apply font style/size, and then add page breaks. If you try it the other way around you're going to end up changing where all your page breaks are.

NOTE: Microsoft Word provides "styles" to help with formatting all your scattered text that needs to be consistent (such as headings). While they are useful, I'm not going to explain how to use them because they fall under the 'technical' category and are not required to make a pleasing document.

4. Hot keys

Hot keys are not strictly necessary, but they really help streamline the whole process and make formatting faster. While things vary from computer to computer, here's some basic hot keys to know:

shift: selects everything between one click to the next. Useful for highlighting large bodies of text
ctrl: selects one section and another non-adjacent one. Useful for highlighting disparate pieces of text
home: goes to the beginning of a line
end: goes to the end of a line
ctrl+home: goes to the beginning of your document
ctrl+end: goes to the end of your document
ctrl+a: select all
ctrl+s: save
ctrl+x: cut
ctrl+c: copy
ctrl+v: paste
ctrl+f: find
ctrl+z: undo
double click: select word
triple click: select paragraph

Obviously, these are not all the hot keys available, but they are the ones I use the most. Control and shift can be especially useful in conjunction with some others. For example, if you need to select all the text below a certain point, you can click on the point and then hit shift+ctrl+end to highlight all the text below. Go ahead and try them! They're really great.

5. Keep a notebook

Lastly, I like to keep a physical notebook by the computer at all times. When I discover a formatting or editing error while proofreading I find it useful to write them down and cross them off once they're fixed. This is especially true for large documents where it may not be practical to fix errors as you find them. It's easy reference and a good practice to get into.

Formatting can be a bear, but the results are well worth the effort, as a well formatted document looks both professional and effortless. So keep at it and you will improve.