Engineering Thought
Contents
1. but one built just for you In our case we ll erect scaffolding over our paragraphs This scaffolding will aid our writing process as we revise paragraphs optimize sentence order and refine meaning When we re finished we ll remove this scaffolding and open our writing to the public Introducing the Girder Styles The scaffolding we will install within each paragraph will be a simple system of girder sentence styles of which there will be three types one for each specific sen tence role The character styles we will construct will be specifically for the follow ing paragraph elements Your main point Any examples Any comments to yourself These girder styles make it easier to formalize the meaning for a paragraph and force you to focus on its goal its purpose They help you answer questions such as What s my main point here Did I do a good job articulating my point and providing evi dence What am I missing We ll use these girders to optimize and improve the re vision process The process of improving your paragraphs becomes much easier when every main point sentence is visually emphasized with a highlight After you highlight your main points over several paragraphs and begin revising your own work an interesting dynamic occurs The highlights add visual emphasis to your main points and you relate to your writing differently than you did before You begin to better understand your own work and can then begin improv2. re doing here Since Office 97 the tools to engineer thought have remained fundamentally the same About the Layout of this Book I designed this book to exemplify every topic I discuss Therefore this book was entirely laid out in Word and all you see in this book matches the topics you read In essence this book is one long example of its ideas I did this to show a concrete example of how each principle translates into a real world scenario and to present you with ideas for formatting your own documents About the Exercises Each chapter includes a handful of exercises in the form of questions The point of these questions is to review the key points of each chapter and to encourage you to gain a hands on feel for how the principles we discuss apply to your writing projects Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Conventions Used in This Book This book uses several visual tools to convey information When referring to Word s graphic interface or keyboard these references will look like this Right In dent Any keyboard commands will look like this Hit F9 When referring to menus an arrow character gt designates choosing a command from a menu so for example Choose File gt Open means pull down the File menu and choose the Open command When referring to a style its name will be in yellow like this Most features in Word are the same regardless of the computer operating system you re using but in the event
3. 124 Body style 82 formatting 82 Body text 33 35 41 42 43 44 45 49 56 58 59 61 63 64 79 81 82 83 84 117 136 141 145 146 147 149 151 156 159 161 166 170 grids 161 Bookmarks displaying 102 103 inserting 101 102 Built in headings levels required 53 0 Cascade of attributes See Style Families Cervantes Miguel De 108 Character styles applying quickly 127 character styles vs paragraph styles 114 creating 112 deleting 136 direct formatting differences between 116 drafting techniques 120 example style 118 125 134 137 examples real world gallery of 121 girders as 116 main point style 117 126 129 132 137 query style 118 126 128 134 137 removing 114 136 shading 118 structural elements as 115 style type dropdown 112 Child style See Styles Families Coach See Design systems Columns 159 www SqueakyCleanWriting com aligning to grid 159 Columns dialog box 160 Contextual menus 127 D Darwin Charles 12 80 166 Demoting headings 56 62 Descent of Man Charles Darwin 12 80 166 Design systems Coach 164 165 171 Informer 164 165 166 167 Mind Alterer 164 165 166 168 Raconteur 164 165 166 169 Directory TOCs 86 Document Setup dialog box 154 157 158 Dot leaders 100 Drafting strategies 62 Drafting techniques 128 breaking apart paragraphs 131 132 Drafting with heading levels 62 Dreyfus John 174 E Eco Umberto 108 Engineering thoug
4. General discussion no special formatting www SqueakyCleanWriting com 119 www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word An Overview of Drafting with Girder Styles I built these girders to overcome the haphazard way I write and I d like to share a little more about my writing process Most of the time when I sit down to write I cannot predict exactly what I m going to say about my topic Therefore I can t predict exactly what I m going to write or how I will order my ideas I cover the process of how I draft in much more detail on page 128 but here s the basic pat tern of how I work 1 I begin in a state of ignorance about what I m going to say so I brainstorm ideas to get down as many as possible I often have only the vaguest idea of what I plan on writing and I start sometimes with a completely blank slate which for me is natural Right off the bat I make liberal use of GIRDER_Query style and interrogate myself with objections I like to insert my queries within brack ets xxx because I like the way this looks yeah it s a little persnickety 2 After brainstorming I organize the ideas I wrote and revise the heck out of them I expand on topics that seem important and remove those that don t I also aggressively reorder my paragraphs and the sentences within them 3 Inthe next stage I highlight the most important sentence in a paragraph with the GIRDER_MainPoint style This is a cruc
5. inserting 101 role of 87 Graphic designers professional use of grids 142 Grids baselines 143 built in headings 150 changing measurement preferences 145 columns aligning to 159 creating 145 definition of 142 displaying the grid 146 grid increments 159 increments 144 147 172 line spacing 143 multiples 144 172 professionality of 141 162 sense of order installing 141 Gunslinger Series Stephen King 107 Gustave A 115 H Habits See Bad Habit Corner Harry Potter JK Rowling 107 176 Heading hierarchy 74 163 alignment 78 as support system for paragraph 51 body style 82 components 78 emphasis 84 font attributes 79 indents 79 optimizing 81 sample 80 slope 75 symmetry 76 TOC for 100 vague headings 50 Headings grids role in 150 TOCs role in 90 hyperlinks TOCs as 86 I have a dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr 25 Idealized thinking writing as 2 Image schemas 65 66 Advantages of 70 Avoiding price of 71 Examples of 67 Frames relationship to 68 Obstacles to outlining 66 Tactics for drafting with 72 In the Heart of the Sea Nathaniel Philbrick 123 Indentation first line indents the white square 151 saving keystrokes 28 saving time 29 using styles to automate 28 Indentation techniques for designing 172 Indenting paragraph dialog box 27 Indents inserting manual indents 26 Index and Tables command 94 Informer See Design systems Inheritance Styl
6. Microsoft Word Create Your Example Girder Style You ll want to see examples visually jump out at you so add something special to your example style color it with a shade of light green This makes any examples you write easy to see and you can much more easily optimize their placement within a paragraph See Figure 77 1 Create a new character style 2 Name it GIRDER_Example 3 Format its Shading as light green This is the only attribute you ll change Figure 77 Setting up the Example Girder Borders and Shading Borders Page Border Fill Preview Light Green More Colors AaBbCcYyZz Patterns Style L Clear E App Color Automatic cecooobococoooooocooococococococococococooosoossooosoooooo Show Toolbar Cancel Ex Shading is interesting because in most other situations Word allows you to apply shading to an entire paragraph or to only specific characters But in this case Word knows you re editing a character style so it prevents you from applying this shading to paragraphs and allows you to apply it only to text see Figure 77 which is what you seek to do anyway 118 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Create Your Query Girder Style The third and last character style which we ll call GIRDER_Query comes in handy during the early drafting stage of writing After I do my first round of drafting ideas I find it useful to play my own devil s advocate and aggressiv
7. com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word early in your sequence of paragraphs the concepts among them will link together and create a coherent and convincing string of ideas that congeal into a highly persuasive unit of logical thought By doing this for your reader you present an incredibly helpful reading aid and your reader gains maximum comprehension at maximum speed Remember Rick the distracted reader and how he ended up feeling bad about reading If you focus on placing your well written main points early in each para graph your readers will have a very different experience than Rick They will ex amine your work conclude you are a genius of supernatural talent feel like a gen ius for understanding you and be enthralled by your writing Some writers perceive this point first structure as limiting and therefore find it distasteful Don t look at this structure as imprisoning you This paragraph struc ture offers incredible creative freedom within your examples and discussion and allows for artistry style and intellectual athleticism When writing nonfiction you should obey this structure almost all the time but it is optional and you do so only for the sake of your reader How exactly can Word help you engineer your paragraphs into a coherent whole In terms of seeing paragraph structure it turns out Word has plenty to offer Its powers of visual formatting make it easy to write well articulated main points follow
8. each and every visual func tion you think of your list of styles will spiral out of control and hinder you not help you www SqueakyCleanWriting com 113 Note here the attributes that a character style can and cannot retain Note also where the style information is stored www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word What are the Differences between Paragraph Styles and Character Styles Paragraph and character styles are similar in several ways Both are collections of graphic and typographical settings that you can apply quickly and easily to make your document s graphical format consistent The difference between them lies in the Format dropdown on the New Style dialog box see Figure 74 But how are they different Character styles are applied onto words and letters not onto paragraphs You can apply only one character style per letter but you can apply many character styles next to one another within one paragraph Character styles store graphical information at the word level They don t retain paragraph format information such as line spacing or indents Paragraph styles store more attributes than character styles do Paragraph styles store paragraph attributes tabs borders frames and numbering settings in addi tion to the information held by character styles Furthermore you can only apply one paragraph style per paragraph which is stored in the paragraph mark The table below sum
9. encountered docu ments whose topic interested us but the way the author presented his ideas seemed odd When you see writing like this look at the conceptual frame the author used to organize his document What is wrong with it The writer proba bly chose a frame that in this case isn t working Difficulties in framing may af fect you too the frame of your writing can also fall flat Strategize your writing by using styles to preemptively test your frame and make sure your document makes sense as one unit of thought We cover how styles and headings help frame your ideas in on page 65 The Visual Advantage of Styles Styles bestow a distinct visual advantage that you can use it to optimize your writ ing To illustrate this advantage I created two different documents and formatted them differently Compare Figure 2 against Figure 3 below both of which show the same text but each looking substantially different The document in Figure 2 has a minimum of formatting whereas the document in Figure 3 has four styles with basic formatting It Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Figure 2 The Visual Advantage of Styles a Document Without Styles Would you rather read this THE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN The Evidence of the Descent of Man from some Lower Form He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre existing form would probably first enquire whether man varies however slightly in bod
10. family 44 46 example of simple family 43 44 inheritance configuring 39 40 overrides 40 43 parent style configuring 39 parent child relationships 37 planning 41 quirks of 45 robust style families configuring 44 robust style families features of 38 simple families configuring 42 simple families limitations of 43 strategies for setting up 41 style overrides 40 41 style overrides removing 46 weak style families features of 39 Styles Modifying Modify Style dialog box 21 Modify Style dialog box details 20 Modifying a style definition quickly 21 Survival of the Prettiest Nancy Etcoff 122 Switches See Field switches T Table of contents built in headings role of 90 creating 96 directory as 86 examples in this book 89 F9 key 101 fields 90 globe as 87 88 101 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Index and Tables command 94 inserting manually 96 inserting different methods for 94 roadmap TOCs inserting 101 roadmap as 88 89 101 role of 86 styles 98 styles automatically update 100 styles creating a hierarchy of 99 switches customizing with 98 updating 97 Templates free 48 85 173 Text boundaries 155 The Midnight Disease Alice W Flaherty 122 Transposing paragraphs 62 Transposing sentences 130 Extend selection 131 Typewriters ruler emulating 27 V Views 51 interconnection with styles 52 Master Document 51 Normal View 51 Online Layout 51 Page Layou
11. of Normal View and Outline View You ll use these tools to periodically inspect your styles The Style List The Style List shows three different lists of styles Styles in use All styles and User defined styles shown in Figure 6 When you select All styles you ll see that a generic docu ment comes equipped with nearly 100 styles Thankfully you can ignore most of these 14 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word The left hand graphic shows all the dialog boxes controllable by the Style dialog box But you don t need to fuss with the settings within all 10 dialog boxes The real dialog boxes you need to know are highlighted in blue in the right hand graphic Simplify the list of styles by selecting Styles in use or User defined styles Figure 5 The Ten Dialog Boxes Springing Out from the Style Dialog Box The Ten Dialog Boxes Perret Perret gt Paragraph k Frame a Shortcut Border Key Figure 6 The Style List Showing All Styles Showing Styles in Use The Five You Really Need Styles gt Language gt Tabs be Numbering E oide Shortcut C Key Showing User Defined Styles Styles Styles Styles i Message Header ce 1 Block Text q My Cool Style M Body Text gt T Normal ba Default Paragraph Font Normal web T Heading 1 q Normal Indent 1 Heading 2 11 Note Heading T Heading 3 a Page Number List Bullet q Pla
12. read your 10 www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word own writing so it s important to understand how styles work and use them to op timally set up documents Styles bestow an interesting advantage to the drafting process they give you an extra tool for conceptual planning Every document contains ideas and the way an author chooses to present these ideas is known as her frame We sometimes say for example How is she framing this issue By frame we mean how an author has his or her own perspective on life since we know people present their ideas differently In other words a frame is how an author lays down an argument in her own peculiar way how she writes a story in a different order or how she fo cuses on certain points that another author would gloss over Styles quickly force you to think in terms of your frame and to quickly articulate it And when you re alize the frame you ve chosen is weak Word accommodates changes to this frame Styles help erect this frame of ideas Word s heading styles give the power to eas ily compartmentalize and organize your writing They help you perceive an order within the ideas you wish to discuss and when you re not sure how to say some thing they become a brainstorming tool that helps you articulate ideas Choosing the right frame for a writing project is an important stage of drafting Readers notice when a frame feels wrong As readers we ve all
13. s create some About Scaffolding If you ve ever watched construction workers you ve probably noticed how they put up scaffolding around a building A scaffolding is a temporary structure of steel bars erected outside a building to aid construction making it safer for the builders as they work on the building s exterior When the construction is fin ished the workers remove the scaffolding and open the building to the public Scaffolding often has structural importance An interesting example of this is the Statue of Liberty In 1884 the sculptors of the Statue depended upon scaffolding as a critical support device during its construction Figure 75 shows three stages of its construction revealing an internal structure of iron girders that remains in place today and an external scaffolding of wood that was removed after the Statue was installed in New York Harbor Figure 75 The Statue of Liberty Scaffolding But for Writers Many construction projects benefit from scaffolding and so too can your ambi tious writing projects That s what we re going to do We writers can also create tools for writing paragraphs In this section we learn how to erect scaffolding over the words we write Longer writing projects such as how to books novels memoirs and long essays are similar to large construction sites in that they bene 115 www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word fit from scaffolding
14. the reader feel able competent ready to tackle anything But the stakes for you the writer grow when you know your reader feels bad about reading Rick might conclude his failure to focus on reading is a deficiency not in your writing but in him and he may feel ashamed He might chastise him self for becoming distracted thinking he doesn t have the focus to read your work He may even go so far as to conclude he s not smart enough to read your writing and drop your book essay or article forever Is this what you want No Make Rick feel like a genius You can do this as long as you make him understand the issues he needs to un derstand That s how you can make your reader feel smart What specifics go into accomplishing this feat Consistently articulate your point quickly memorably and early in your paragraph When you do this you ll make your reader feel as if he possesses a superior intellect and when you make your reader feel this way he ll become addicted to this feeling and read every single word you write Is this what you want Yes Allow him to understand what you re saying Make your reader feel brilliant Make him get it So again if a nonfiction reader feels a gun to his head as he reads this pressure is doubled upon the writer herself particularly if she knows her readers aren t so phisticated about the rules on what constitutes understandable and readable para graphs Writers of nonfiction are wise the
15. 17 Changing Styles 19 Using Styles While Writing 22 Making New Styles 34 Removing Styles 36 Setting Up Style Families 37 2 OUTLINING IN WORD 49 How Headings Affect Our Thinking 49 Word s Views and Their Connection 51 Applying the Built In Heading Styles 53 The Tools of Outline View 56 Outlining Headings and Body Text 58 Outlining Frames Using Image Schemas 65 3 SCULPTING YOUR HEADING HIERARCHY 74 The Elements of a Heading Hierarchy 74 An Example of Optimizing Heading Hierarchy 81 4 USING TOCS AS THINKING TOOLS 86 The Role of TOCs 86 Nuts and Bolts about Fields 90 Nuts and Bolts About TOCs 94 Inserting Globe TOCs 101 Inserting Roadmap TOCs 101 Part Review 104 www SqueakyCleanWriting com 8 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word 1 USING SITLES Why Styles Are Useful www SqueakyCleanWriting com In Word everything gets a style Every text element gets a style every paragraph gets a style every sentence gets one every letter This is why understanding styles is so important they are the language Word speaks and once you grasp the basics of styles you gain total control over your text While it s true that styles may be initially confusing once you understand how they work you can apply themasa powerful design tool for your thoughts as well as your words In this important chapter we cover styles in detail A style is a collection of graphic settings grouped
16. Engineerin E wm Microsoft Word Techniques for Writing Nonfiction Books and Papers Robert F Gilpatric February 2009 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Techniques for Writing Nonfiction Books and Papers by Robert F Gilpatric Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gilpatric Robert F Engineering Thought techniques for writing nonfiction books and papers Robert F Gilpatric lI ed p cm Includes index ISBN 978 0 9818349 0 0 Library of Congress Control Number 2008941421 Library of Congress subject heading Writing English Language Technical writing Copyright 2009 by Robert F Gilpatric All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying recording or other electronic or mechanical meth ods without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embod ied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law Microsoft Word and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Corporation While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book the author assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein Printed in the United States of Amer
17. a measure of thanks for purchasing this book I offer you the SqueakyClean Writer s Kit This free kit contains a suite of templates and SqueakyClean the coolest writing tool I ve ever seen for writers and I m proud to have made it What is SqueakClean SqueakyClean dramatically speeds the writing process It is a plugin that auto mates time consuming and repetitive aspects of drafting covered in Part II These drafting techniques include 1 making it easy to rapidly re order sentences within your paragraphs 2 a simple way of working with the Girder styles covered on page 112 and 3 several other automations and enhancements for Microsoft Word Its user manual is available online and contains instructions on Squeaky Clean installation usage and troubleshooting SqueakyClean Compatibility SqueakyClean is compatible with a wide range of Microsoft Office versions On Windows it is compatible with Word for Office 97 to Office 2007 For the Mac OS it is compatible with Word for Office X Word for Office 2004 but sadly not with Word for Office 2008 because of its lack of support for Visual Basic which is scheduled to return in 2010 174 The Template Suite COLOPHON www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word The Template Suite includes ten templates that make it easy to create new docu ments Each template which I designed includes an attractive grid based layout and a useful collection of st
18. aders compre hension and more importantly your own By doing this you will also maximize your pleasure in the writing process We examine how to Use character styles in special new ways that help you write more meaning fully and powerfully Write using a series of proven paragraph structures exemplified in the work of some of today s best writers We also examine the drafting process in detail and we learn several editing tips and techniques for the writing process Part III Shaping Your Page Within Word the page is composed of two rectangles the page itself and the text block within it Word arranges your writing in these textblocks In this last part you ll learn different ways to configure the geometry of these two rectangles while taking into account how to maximize the legibility of your writing both for your reader and for you We cover How to install an overall sense of order by setting up and following a grid How to format different documents such as novels nonfiction books family histories how to manuals memoirs and essays How to set up a document so it looks like a published book and understand how this affects thinking and writing The techniques covered within these three parts are critical for writing long pa pers and documents Throughout the process of drafting these tools force Word to remain in the background as your humble writer s assistant helping organize and display your thought
19. d it is one of Word s most important dialog boxes Note here how a plain vanilla Word document is equipped with an intimidating array of styles www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Figure 4 The Style Dialog Box Style Styles Paragraph preview cise univer e i 4 List Number 3 1 List Number 4 4 List Number 5 f q Macro Text 71 Message Header gt T Normal f T Normal Web T Normal Indent 1 Note Heading f a Page Number f 1 Plain Text Character preview l Salutation 0 7 Signature a Strong q Subtitle Times 4 Table of Authorities M a List Description All styles B Font Times 12 pt English US Flush left Line spacing single Widow orphan control Organizer New Modify Delete Cancel C Apply This profusion of controls and dialog boxes requires that you pay attention when wrangling styles However when you look at how these dialog boxes relate to one another note how they do make sense and they give a great deal of creative con trol over how a document looks Inspecting Styles Every so often you must look closely at your styles and Word offers two tools to do so The first is the Style dialog box as shown in Figure 4 which has three parts the Style List the Style previews and the Style Description And the second is the Style Area pane not shown here but covered on page 17 which is a feature
20. d to control the appearance of their work How ever an author who writes 200 page technical documents dissertations or nonfic tion books absolutely cannot avoid styles The rule is the more ambitious a writer gets the more she writes and the more she writes the more styles become an imperative to know and to control www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word The good news is that styles are not impossibly complex Anyone can understand how they work and once you do you ll see they re no more baffling than other tasks such as writing thank you notes balancing checkbooks and making airline reservations All are everyday jobs but we do them because of the benefits we get And benefit from styles we do A document without styles is deficient in key ways Like a marionette without strings an unstyled document can t dance you can t change it you can t bring it to life It just sits there bland and dormant The other crucial deficiency in avoid ing styles is consistency it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain consistency Let s look into this issue of consistency a bit more Direct Formatting Vs Styled Formatting The first thing to understand when talking about styles is the difference between direct formatting and styled formatting When you select text and click the bold but ton you re applying what Word calls direct formatting You re applying a graphic effect directly on text B
21. e See Style Famlies Isaacson Walter 125 126 K Kerouack Jack 108 King Martin Luther Jr 25 King Stephen 107 L Leading See Line Spacing Lincoln s Melancholy Joshua Wolf Shenk 121 123 Line spacing 143 M Mailer Norman 108 Main point style See Character style main point style Managing styles 13 See also Styles Manual page breaks inserting 31 Margins indenting left margin 156 indenting outside margin 156 setting up 154 text boundaries toggling on 155 www SqueakyCleanWriting com Master Document view 51 Melville Herman 108 123 Microsoft Word page elements 153 pagination 152 Mind Alterer See Design systems Modify Style dialog box 21 Modifying TOC styles 95 Moving sentences See Transposing sentences Multiples in grids 144 172 N n switch 99 New York Trilogy Paul Auster 107 Nonfiction paragraph contents of 110 point first paragraph structure 111 stakes of 108 109 structure 110 vs fiction differences between 107 Normal View 51 page breaks seeing 34 0 o switch 99 On the Road Jack Kerouac 108 Online Layout 51 Outline Level 58 Outline View 49 body text level 63 compared to Page Layout View 55 connection between Outline View and paragraph styles 60 demoting 56 demoting headings 61 62 display tools 57 Drafting techniques using 62 Frames drafting with 68 Image schemas using with 65 inserting roadmap TOC s role in 101 Move down 62 Move up 62 moving la
22. e process of writing more satisfying and fun Word is equipped with tools of miraculous power that can help you create deep and meaningful works of written thought Don t think this book is only about formatting and thus deals with a superficial topic Don t think since this book deals with a cosmetic aspect of writing that formatting is trivial phony vacant It isn t Formatting is only superficial when you use it superficially when you apply it last Formatting hints toward vanity but it can also help you solidify the core of your writing In this sense formatting is not skin deep it is not surface oriented and it is not superficial This book dis cusses how to use formatting in a deep and thoughtful way to amplify your ideas The basic premise of this book is that the eye and the mind are inextricably linked When written text is optimized for the eye the mind comprehends it more easily And when the eye is hindered the mind is also hindered So how can you speed the eye and thus the mind That s what this book is all about How This Book is Organized This book takes a unique approach to writing that the design and organization of a document exerts a subtle influence upon the understanding not only of the reader but also of you the writer Many writers begin by pouring out as many ideas as possible Then at a later stage they tackle styles formatting and the out lining tools Yet this book covers these tools and topic
23. eated your new character style Figure 73 The Style Type Dropdown New Style Properties _ Name Paragraph Style ype Table Style based on List Style for following paragraph www SqueakyCleanWriting com 112 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Figure 74 Creating a New Character Style Note how the controls relating to paragraphs are grayed out when creating a new character style Note also how in the Description Field I ve set this new Name style s Font Color to orange Properties Style type f Character A Style based on f a Default Paragraph For H Style for following paragraph Formatting 4 Miss v la 4 Ios 33 Saraple TeatSursple Textarsple Terange Teattursple TestSarepte TextSarsple Teattarpic Teartargic Teatuenpic Texareple Texttumpic Teatturepic Teaarpie Texttarepic Teattampic VeatSurepte TeatSurepie Textareple Teattarpic Teartarspte TeatSaropie TeatSarsple Teat eeeeNote the orange formatting Default Paragraph Font Font color Orange lt qeeeceeccccocccete O Add to template Automatically update roma Font Paragraph i Border Language Frame Numbering Shortcut key Character styles tend to breed Once you learn how easy it is to create character styles one for each specific graphic job a danger is that you may create too many new styles Restrain yourself If you create a style for
24. ed by smooth discussions which we back up with good examples But to make Word show us this structure we have to get creative Let s get started set ting this structure up 111 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word 6 WRITING WITH CHARACTER STYLES Your mind and your eyes are connected This means that we can use character styles to display structure that helps us think Our goal is to enhance our vision by creating character styles to show the structure within a paragraph Character styles help engineer paragraph structure in the same way that paragraph styles help engineer document structure The first step in setting up this paragraph structure is creating three new character styles Setting up Remember how simple it was to create a new paragraph style Paragraph styles a New Character were incredibly easy to set up All you did was modify an existing style click the Style Style dropdown box type in a new name for your new style and hit Enter That s all it took Creating a new character style isn t as simple because there s no quick shortcut for it but it still isn t hard You have to enter the Style dialog box and create a new style Choose Format gt Style gt New Style See Figure 74 on page 113 From the Style type dropdown list choose Character See Figure 73 Enter a descriptive name for your character style Set the font attributes for your style oo fF WN F amp F Click OK and you ve cr
25. el De Cervantes Umberto Eco and Herman Mel ville just to name a few contain vast sections of self indulgent rambling The in fluential novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac is one long entertaining and poignant ramble Whether you find these ramblings enjoyable is altogether a different ques tion but my point is a paragraph of fiction fundamentally differs from a para graph of nonfiction because of the reader s expectations In nonfiction the rules about what makes up a paragraph are far more stringent The Stakes of Nonfiction The nonfiction books and articles that readers consume can affect them in special ways Let s talk about these effects for a moment The readers of novels don t necessarily feel a gun to their heads while reading for leisure If a reader gets bored or confused she can simply put the book down However this may not be the case with readers of nonfiction The stakes are high for many nonfiction readers and they distinctly feel guns to their heads As an example let s pretend you are friends with a fan of your nonfic tion a guy named Rick Rick s understanding of your writing means a lot to him because if he becomes bored or confused it threatens an important aspect of his life It ll mean he can t fix his toilet fill out his taxes or understand some crucial financial concept or legal loophole Rick knows he can t simply drop the book and go on with his life as he can with the novels he reads His fa
26. ely question my assumptions and arguments I find this technique to be useful in predicting trouble and arguing with myself For this reason I always make this girder visu ally loud 1 Create a new character style 2 Name it GIRDER_Query 3 Format its Font Color to red and its Font style to italic The Query girder style is particularly useful for identifying holes in your logic gaps in your thinking or objections you expect your readers to raise To address these issues use GIRDER_Query to present opposing viewpoints antagonize yourself and create a dialog with yourself that you ll eventually remove You can also use it to place reminders to yourself during the drafting process such as check page ref erence or find source You can postpone mundane or distracting tasks and pre vent interruptions in your drafting rhythm Jot down questions to yourself like What s your main point here Is there more to this picture than what you re saying What evidence do you have of this Please verify this fact Writing General Discussion and Analysis When discussing the meat of your main point don t add any special formatting just keep the text plain Discussion shouldn t get any character style This way your example sentences will stand out Below are the three girder styles and gen eral discussion Character Style Name Attribute Example GIRDER_MainPoint blue GIRDER_Example light green shading GIRDER_Query italic red
27. g box Then we learn various ways to apply styles how to modify them how style inheritance works how to create new styles how to delete them and finally several strategies for writing with styles Styles are easy to customize and manage once you get the hang of it You can cre ate your own styles delete them change them and you can also should you need to move them from one document into another The tool you use do all this is the Style dialog box Choose Format Style to see it see Figure 4 This is the nerve center for styles Here you can do the following Inspect styles Apply styles Change styles Make new styles Remove styles When you open the Style dialog box styles immediately become a bit tricky How so This single dialog box connects to ten other dialog boxes and each offers sev eral commands Figure 5 on page 15 shows how these dialog boxes relate to one another and how you only need five of them not all ten A Profusion of Options Out of curiosity I counted every attribute in each of these ten dialog boxes and to taled them up The total 132 Every style controls 132 attributes that you access through ten dialog boxes This glut of settings makes Word complex and is one of the biggest reasons so many people avoid it Then again needing all 132 settings is impossible At most you ll use only ten 13 The styles you manage in the Style dialog box control how your document looks an
28. gineer bolsters structural integrity and improves designs So too must you write You must engineer your writing Microsoft Word includes many tools to help you more easily accomplish this process provided you know where to find them and how to use them By the term engineering thought I refer to the fluid and clear way you order your ideas The process of engineering thought entails writing reading what you wrote editing and then writing again a loop of continual thought and action see Figure 1 that repeats until you re satisfied or you run out of time Figure 1 The Cycle of Writing Writing fy Editing Reading fo One of the reasons we write is to idealize our thinking We human beings think a lot but our memory isn t always reliable To stabilize thought we fix them in place using sturdy materials such as rock clay or parchment However when we write with computers we enjoy the ability to edit our writing and improve it to the point where it becomes optimized perfected and idealized And although the writing we read throughout the day may be imperfect the truth remains that most writing is meant to be idealized into engineered thought Using Word to Engineer Thought www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word That brings us to Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word My goal is to teach you to use Microsoft Word in unusual ways to clarify your thinking speed up editing and make th
29. ht as loop de loop 2 Etcoff Nancy 122 Evaluating styles tools for 14 Example style See Character style example style Exercises Applying styles 19 36 Carving your text block 162 Creating style Families 48 Designing styles 84 Outlining 73 Using TOCs as Thinking Tools 103 Writing paragraphs 135 Extend selection 131 Extra line paragraph separation technique 151 F F8 key 131 F9 key 91 101 Families See Styles Families Fiction freedom of 107 rules of 108 vs nonfiction differences between 107 Field brackets 93 Field codes gotchas 99 shading 92 switches 94 viewing 92 Field switches 93 b switch 99 gotchas 99 n switch 99 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word o switch 99 p switch 99 Field types 93 Fields F9 key shortcut 91 field codes components of 93 gotchas 99 inserting 91 95 switches 96 TOC type 90 types 93 updating 91 viewing field codes 92 Find amp Replace fixing sentence spacing using 25 Flaherty Alice W 122 Following Paragraph style for 18 Formatting headaches See Bad Habit Corner Frames 11 49 53 62 63 65 67 68 69 70 71 72 87 97 135 Emphasis as tool for 69 Globe TOCs relationship to 87 Image schemas relationship to 68 Outlines as part of 67 Outlines relationship to 68 Framing ideas 53 G Girders See Character styles structural elements hiding 136 removing See Character styles removing Gladwell Malcolm 124 Globe TOCs
30. ial satisfying part of drafting I do these steps I highlight the main points over several paragraphs I optimize the way I write the sentences and I expand any information I may have skipped I am of ten uncertain of what should come first so you can understand how knowing what you want to say early in the editing process greatly speeds writing 4 Another big step is fleshing out my discussion with more evidence I apply GIRDER_Example to any proof or support for an idea I cite When I do this throughout my document I can see exactly where I ve inserted specific sup port into my discussion As a writer citing evidence is my weakness and the process of applying this style forces me to be ruthless with myself in terms of finding facts that support my ideas which is critical to persuade people in a civilized way 5 Last I read my writing quickly but carefully feeling for stops or other prob lems along the chain of ideas I ve created If I stumble on a sentence phrase idea or argument I mark it with GIRDER_Query I know I m actually reading and evaluating my own writing when I experience these tiny pauses and I ve de veloped a heightened sensitivity for them I stop to identify the gap or hole that s bothering me with a question marked in GIRDER_Quey style like this Please double check this I must admit how conflicted I feel about these stops I m slowed down by the process of sprinkling red notes to myself all over my d
31. ica HINTERLAND 102 unionst PUBLISHING Brooklyn New York 11231 www SqueakyCleanWriting com www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word CONTENTS Introduction 2 GRIPPING YOUR TEXT 7 Using Styles 9 Outlining in Word 49 Sculpting Your Heading Hierarchy 74 Using TOCs as Thinking Tools 86 BWN FH Il WRITE 105 5 A Theory about Writing Paragraphs 107 6 Writing with Character Styles 112 7 gt Editing Tips and Techniques 127 Ill SHAPING YOUR PAGE 139 8 Designing Against a Grid 141 9 Carving Your Textblock 152 10 Strategizing Page Design 163 Afterword 174 The SqueakyClean Writer s Kit 174 Colophon 175 Index 176 INTRODUCTION What It Means to Engineer Thought The loop de loop of thought and action required to engineer thought www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Writing requires courage It is the very act Audacious Presumptuous Bold of putting your ideas into someone else s mind This is an intimate task so you should assume as pleasing a manner as possible one lyrical to the ear and elegant to the eye If you don t you ll appear to your readers as flat footed unconvincing artless and otherwise an airbag Do you have time for bad writing Neither do I Make sure your writing has good table manners Carefully arrange your thoughts similar to the way an en
32. ilure to understand what he reads might cost him his job his safety or the health of his family Read ers of nonfiction often trudge through heinous acts of bad writing because an im portant issue is at stake And the stakes are high not only for the nonfiction reader but also for you the nonfiction writer How well you write your nonfiction sometimes affects how in telligent your reader thinks he is This is particularly true if your reader is un 108 www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word aware of the principles of reading comprehension such as those about complex sentence construction passive voice topic strings and thematic strings If Rick isn t an advanced reader if he s unsophisticated and you commit upon him a se ries of incomprehensible paragraphs he will fail to understand you and become lost in your writing He ll become distracted by a random urgency popping into his mind and begin to mentally wander off thinking about another topic instead of your writing By the time Rick remembers he s reading your book his eyes will have skimmed mindlessly over three or four of your paragraphs or if Rick is very distracted over several pages of your writing The stakes for a nonfiction writer can be surprisingly high in this way By deliver ing information in a clear and succinct manner a writer can protect a reader like Rick from the conclusion that he is inadequate The writer makes
33. ily structure and in mental faculties and if so whether the variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals Again are the variations the result as far as our ignorance permits us to judge of the same general causes and are they governed by the same general laws as in the case of other organisms for instance by correlation the inherited effects of use and disuse etc Is man subject to similar malconformations the result of arrested development of reduplication of parts etc and does he display in any of his anomalies reversion to some former and ancient type of structure It might also naturally be enquired whether man like so many other animals has given rise to varieties and sub races differing but slightly from each other or to races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species How are such races distributed over the world and how when crossed do they react on each other in the first and succeeding generations And so with many other points The Bodily Structure of Man The enquirer would next come to the important point whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence and consequently to beneficial variations whether in body or mind being preserved and injurious ones eliminated Do the races or species of men whichever term may be applied encroach on and replace one another so that s
34. in Text 1 My Cool Style Salutation gt T Normal q el a Strong q Subtitle 0 q Table of Authorities M Table of Figures L q Title a T TOA Heading a Styles in use List cooe Re All styles coe Styles in use User defined styles All styles User defined styles 4 My Cool Style Styles in use All styles e User defined styles www squeakyCleanWriting com 15 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word ll Write www SqueakyCleanWriting com In the last part you learned the first step in engineering thought casting a net across paragraph styles and gripping your headings with pinpoint control But it is within your paragraphs that your readers experience the real you Your thought shows through not in your headings and not necessarily in an individual sen tence but in the composite whole of a series of paragraphs Your paragraphs are the most elemental bits of writing you offer They are the kernels of your thought And you must now take the next step and craft these kernels by gaining control over your text within your paragraphs and improving your writing at the para graph and sentence level something that paragraph styles both fail to do In this part we learn how to Construct units of thought using a common and useful theory on writing paragraphs Use character styles to apply visually meaningful colors to specific sentences within your paragraphs Quickly edit text The goal for th
35. ing it The more you revise your paragraphs with an eye on maximizing each paragraph s mean ing the more you detect an increase in clarity within your writing Your para graphs begin to fit together better They begin to cohere After this you will find it easier to improve some sections while removing other sections you see aren t use ful Using character styles makes it easy to gain a tight grip over this visual format ting Could you do this with direct formatting Yes but applying direct format ting doesn t allow you do so systematically Just as with paragraph styles we can alter a particular character style s visual look and with one quick change update every instance of this style saving precious minutes and maybe hundreds of mouse clicks Let s create three girder character styles now 116 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Here is a sample paragraph lied style to my first sentence my main point Create Your Main Point Girder Style This is the most important girder style it s the one you ll use the most because almost every paragraph you write will have a main point sentence as I ve done in Figure 76 1 Create a new character style 2 Name it 3 Format its Font Color to blue This is the only attribute you ll change Figure 76 Setting up the Main Point Girder One unexpected reaction we have to modern life one that we guard very closely is guilt When we hea
36. is part is to use Word s character styles to amplify the message you deliver within your paragraphs to tighten up the ideas in them and to optimize your intent clarity and cohesion Therefore we must learn a few ideas about how to write a coherent paragraph How is this done How do you go about writing a paragraph This questions the very heart of an important issue What are para graphs for 105 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word In This Part 5 A THEORY ABOUT WRITING PARAGRAPHS 107 Differences Between Fiction and Nonfiction 107 The Contents of a Paragraph 110 6 WRITING WITH CHARACTER STYLES 112 Setting up a New Character Style 112 Seeing Paragraph Structure with Character Styles 115 Girders in Action A Gallery of Real World Examples 121 7 EDITING TIPS AND TECHNIQUES 127 Quick Ways to Apply Girder Styles 127 How Draft One Writer s Techniques 128 Removing Girders 135 Part Review 138 www SqueakyCleanWriting com 106 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word 5 A THEORY ABOUT WRITING PARAGRAPHS Differences Between Fiction and Nonfiction www SqueakyCleanWriting com Readers of nonfiction expect to see a basic structure in the paragraphs they read They usually expect a writer to announce his point quickly and then they want to see how well he discusses it Your success as a writer depends upon how well you understand these expectations and in how well you forecast your reade
37. it 3 Provide an example or two that supports this point 4 Addasentence that links your point to the ideas in the following paragraph in the form of a teaser statement This also acts as a transition Here is the abstract structure of this type of paragraph This is your main point succinct and powerfully written This is your discussion of your supporting ideas and examples Here is an example Here are the results of a survey Here is another subtlety Here is a general summary that hints to the main point of the next paragraph Collapsed into a single paragraph these sentences become This is your main point succinct and powerfully written This is your discussion of your supporting ideas and examples Here is an example Here are the results of a survey Here is another subtlety Here is a general summary that hints to the main point of the next paragraph The type of structure in this example is called a point first paragraph and it s a rock solid layout for most ideas and paragraphs If you think in these terms as you write the ideas within your paragraphs will magically transform right before your eyes into a greater whole Magically Let me explain When you follow this paragraph structure over several paragraphs a special un ion occurs to your writing Your main points begin to rise up off the page toward your readers and boldly announce themselves When you articulate these points 110 www SqueakyCleanWriting
38. lope Special paragraph formatting 27 SqueakyClean Writers Kit 6 bookmarks viewing 93 SqueakyClean plug in 137 Templates 48 85 173 view oriented tools 93 Statue of Liberty 115 Style Area pane 14 16 displaying 16 use with Normal View 16 use with Outline View 16 Style for Following Paragraph 18 Style type dropdown 112 Styles 9 as harness of design 9 character styles See Character styles Creating 24 deleting 36 direct formatting vs styled formatting 10 escaping the Bad Habit Corner 24 177 evaluating tools for 14 graphic advantages 10 inserting page breaks using 33 managing styles 13 modifying styles 19 naming 42 paragraph styles vs character styles 114 profusion of options 13 15 Reasons Authors Avoid Them 9 reasons to use them 10 Style Area Pane 14 16 style definition modifying 19 Style descriptions 14 Style Dialog box 13 Style list 14 Style previews 14 timesaving advantages 10 TOC styles 98 troubleshooting 155 troubleshooting with Style Area pane 16 Styles Applying 17 Outlining keyboard shortcuts 18 Style Dialog box 17 Style Dropdown list 18 style for following paragraph 18 Styles creating 34 Styles Families 37 advantages of 37 based on attribute 37 40 child styles configuring 40 child styles inspecting 44 45 47 child styles releasing from parent 47 www SqueakyCleanWriting com disadvantages of 38 example of robust
39. marizes these differences STORES INFORMATION ON PARAGRAPH STYLES CHARACTER STYLES Style type icon a Font y v Paragraph s X Tabs v x Border y v Language y v Frame y X Numbering 7 x Stored in the paragraph mark Text Applying and Removing Character Styles Applying character styles is simple and there are two ways to do so The easiest is to choose a character style from the Style dropdown list see Figure 10 on page 18 The second method of applying styles is Choose Format gt Modify Styles select a character style and hit the Apply button In addition to these two methods you can customize Word s menus toolbars and keyboard shortcuts to create other meth ods of applying character styles which I will mention briefly in Quick Ways to Apply Girder Styles on page 127 114 Seeing Paragraph Structure with Character Styles Note both the internal and external systems of girders used in the statue s assembly www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Removing a character style from text is simple too Select your text and choose Clear Formatting from the Style dropdown This will remove all formatting including character styles from your selection This is handy when you want to strip out di rect formatting that you have applied to your text I have in mind three specific jobs during the writing process that character styles might be well suited for Let
40. ocuments but this is a crucial step in strengthening and optimizing my writ ing and I can tell that my work is all the better for it 120 AFTERWORD John Dreyfus Classical Typography in the Computer Age William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California Los Angeles 1991 p 28 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word And there you have it how to engineer thought in Microsoft Word We ve come a long way through this document and learned an incredible amount about Word What does it all mean Allow me to quote typographer John Dreyfus with em phasis added Despite the difficulties they face a few authors encouraged by cost conscious pub lishers already consider the layout and design of their books to be an integral part of the creative process and want to become involved from the outset As more and more books come to be written by authors who will have played computer games in their nurseries before they even learned to read or write a higher proportion of authors are likely to want to become involved in book design With the right training and resources authors might become adept in designing their own books Please keep in contact with me via this book s website and be sure to check for updates to the SqueakyClean Writer s Kit as I will periodically add new templates and update SqueakyClean Thank you for reading THE SQUEAKYCLEAN WRITER S KIT SqueakyClean www SqueakyCleanWriting com As
41. of notable differences between the PC version and the Mac version Ill refer to the Windows version as and the Mac version as For example Choose command shift right arrow 4 Choose alt shift right arrow Also we will repeatedly alter Word s option settings known on fA as Options and on as Preferences The route to this dialog box differs depending upon the operat ing system you use To open these preferences on 4 choose Tools gt Options but on choose Word gt Preferences To keep things as simple as possible I ll refer to this dialog box as Word s Options Prefs and assume can find this dialog box About the SqueakyClean Writer s Kit Thank you for buying this book As a measure of thanks at the end of this book I ve included instructions on how to access a kit of useful tools called the Squea kyClean Writer s Kit I designed this kit specifically for writers and I hope you get a lot of use out of it This Writer s Kit contains two parts First it contains a suite of ten Word templates including memoirs newsletters magazine layouts novels how to books and manuals which I encourage you to use and customize for your writing projects The second part is a plug in for Word called SqueakyClean This revolutionary plug in automates the techniques covered in Part II simplifying the drafting proc ess and making it easy to rapidly re arrange sentence order within your para graphs Having purchased thi
42. ome finally become extinct We shall see that all these anestions_as indeed is ahvions in resnect ta mnst of them mnst he answered in the Figure 3 The Visual Advantage of Styles The Same Document But With Styles Applied Or this The sample text in these THE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN documents is Charles Darwin s The Descent of Man 1871 The Evidence of the Descent of Man from some Lower Form He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre existing form would probably first enquire whether man varies however slightly in bodily structure and in mental faculties and if so whether the variations are transmit ted to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals Again are the variations the result as far as our ignorance permits us to judge of the same general causes and are they governed by the same general laws as in the case of other organisms for instance by correlation the inherited effects of use and disuse etc Is man subject to similar malconformations the result of arrested devel opment of reduplication of parts etc and does he display in any of his anomalies reversion to gome former and ancient type of structure It might also naturally be enquired whether man like so many other animals has given rise to varieties and sub races differing but slightly from each other or to races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species H
43. ow are such races distributed over the world and how when crossed do they react on each other in the first and succeeding generations And so with many other points The Bodily Structure of Man The enquirer would next come to the important point whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence and conse manths ta heneficial variatinne urhether in hady nr mind haina nrecernsed and www squeakyCleanWriting com 12 Wrangling Styles www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word The document in Figure 2 suffers from visual monotony You cannot immediately see how the ideas in the headings interrelate impeding quick comprehension And as this document grows longer the more the reading gets difficult Imagine reading fifty pages of this It would be an incredible grind and you d probably feel frustrated by the twentieth page unless the writing was fantastic The document in Figure 3 contains styles that add graphical differentiation be tween paragraph and headings I ll bet you could read many pages of this docu ment without much trouble so you can see how the stakes of graphical formatting become more critical as documents grow longer So what do you need to know to create and format documents with these styles In the sections that follow we discuss the concepts of how to work with and con trol styles First we learn about the Style dialo
44. r about people living much harder lives in less industrialized countries we realize that we are privileged and lucky to enjoy the miraculous comforts brought by modern life We know we appear arrogant when we complain about being burdened by messages that advertise an abundance of choices We know we sound whiny when we moan about being torn confused and overwhelmed by all of our privileges and so we also feel awkward and guilty This is a very nasty bind but there s one thing that can get us out of it Style Sty i Modify Style H q Name Style type fee H GIRDER_MainPoint _ Character 1 Based on Style for following paragraph a a Default Paragraph Font B ry F Preview a a 1 s Li Description Default Paragraph Font Font Color Blue elete C Add to template _ Automatically update Shortcut Key Format HJ Cancel Z pply Because you will use this girder style so often it s important to make it subtle For this reason pick blue for your main point color This way your main points will look only a little bit different from your body text Blue has a color density that is similar to black which means it will stand out but still not distract you too much www squeakyCleanWriting com 117 Select light green Word limits the Apply to option to Text when modifying character styles www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with
45. refore to adhere to a strict regimen of paragraph structure required by their readers Paragraphs must follow a basic order of con tents Although there s variation among fiction writers about what comprises a paragraph this is not the case with nonfiction In nonfiction there are established rules about the contents of a paragraph So how exactly does this order go 109 The Contents of a Paragraph www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word When writing paragraphs of nonfiction the single most important thing your readers expect from you is that you illustrate a point a specific point and that you do this quickly This is called your main point and conceptually speaking it is the belt buckle around which dangles the rest of the paragraph Readers will expect this point to be succinct powerfully written and positioned at the beginning of your paragraph often within the first sentence According to the expectation of your readers your main point must be followed by well ordered and meaningful statements that discuss and support your main point This information expands on the main point supports it and bolsters it with examples This is how a basic paragraph structure forms You can easily create a paragraph of nonfiction that transmits ideas quickly pro vided you use a loose fitting layout as follows 1 Provide a succinct and memorable main point early 2 Discuss this main point and expand upon
46. rge sections 64 outline level 58 promoting 56 promoting headings 61 rank and order tools 56 ranking headings 61 show all command 63 tools 56 transposing paragraphs 62 Outlining Framing ideas during 53 Obstacles to 66 Overrides See Style Families P p switch 99 Page breaks inserting 31 32 viewing 34 Page Layout 51 compared to Outline View 55 Pagination 152 Paper size 169 Paragraph formatting page break before 31 Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word setting indents 27 spacing after 29 special 27 Paragraph structure point first 121 point last 123 point middle 123 Paragraphs separating setting indentation 26 Parent style See Styles Families Philbrick Nathaniel 123 Point first paragraph structure 111 Point last structure 123 Point middle structure 123 Productivity writing workflow See Promoting headings 56 Publishing pagination issues 152 Q Quark Xpress 152 R Raconteur See Design systems Rank and order tools 56 keyboard shortcuts 57 Ranking headings 61 Readability text block size 163 Roadmap TOCs inserting 101 Rowling J K 107 Ruler controls of 27 indenting paragraphs using 26 S Scaffolding See Character styles structural elements Sense of order See Grids Sentences separating 25 Shading character styles 118 Shading field code 92 Shenk Joshua Wolf 121 123 Slope See Heading Hierarchy slope See Heading Hierarchy slope See Heading Hierarchy s
47. rs pa tience which is usually ruthless The manner in which you obey the rules for this how well you articulate your points and discuss them will make or break your reader s ability to understand you How do you meet these expectations To learn this we must look at how a paragraph of fiction differs from nonfiction Works of fiction namely short stories and novels are traditionally composed of paragraphs just like nonfiction A question then arises Do paragraphs in fiction differ from paragraphs in nonfiction Yes they re very different The goal of each genre is arguably the same to trans form the reader from one state into another But the manner in which fiction does this the route it takes is completely different from nonfiction The central goal of the fiction writer is to entertain his readers to transport them out of their every day life and possibly to give them a story with meaning But for nonfiction writ ers the central goal is to inform Any entertainment a nonfiction writer brings to her reader is secondary to her goal Therefore the way the nonfiction author writes fundamentally differs from the way a novelist does What are the differences be tween how a writer writes fiction versus how he writes nonfiction How do para graphs differ between these two genres The Freedom of Fiction In many respects fiction is more tolerant than nonfiction Novelists short story writers and free verse poets have fe
48. s while your ideas your beliefs and your verbal style push your writing forward Extras Included In This Book www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word What This Book Skips Word is a feature rich word processor and it includes an abundance of tools Some of these tools often behave in surprising ways which becomes problematic for many writers and leads them to conclude that these features so distract from writing that they avoid Word altogether For me Word s advantages vastly over power its disadvantages and I use them to improve the way I write and the writ ing I produce That said we will ignore tools that are inherently good yet limited in value for engineering thought We won t cover these features Working with tables Formatting tabs bulleted lists or numbered lists Working with sections Setting up and creating indexes Working with drawings and graphics Using Data Merge Working with templates Automating Word with Visual Basic The features we will look at aren t exotic or sexy just useful They have existed in Word for more than 10 years and are unlikely to go away Over its lifespan Word has gone through an astonishing number of revisions and this multitude is compounded further by the different versions between Macs and Windows PCs But we won t cover the differences between these different versions Why None of the variations make much difference to what we
49. s book you are eligible to download and use these templates and SqueakyClean so please be sure to take advantage of this helpful kit Throughout this book I periodically refer to this kit where its automations timesavers and templates come in handy These references look like this So let s get started www squeakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Gripping Your Text www SqueakyCleanWriting com The first step in engineering thought is to gain total control over your text In this first part we take hold over text using methods you may have not realized are built into Word Specifically we ll cover how to Create and customize paragraph styles Use built in heading styles to help you think organize your writing and automate outlining your document Optimize the formatting of headings Use built in headings to create custom tables of contents that can help you see and analyze document structure In this part my goal is to equip you with industrial strength writing tools To ac complish this we become fully immersed into the nitty gritty aspects of how Word works and I suspect you may find this first part to be the toughest of the three in terms of nuts and bolts techniques But you will also profit the most from learning these tools Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word In This Part 1 USING STYLES 9 Why Styles Are Useful 9 Wrangling Styles 13 Applying Styles
50. s right away Why Because they are important writing aids themselves and you can maximize drafting by us ing them early on during the writing process This book is organized differently from most other writing or software books It is broken into three parts with each one representing a different aspect of writing Ina nutshell it consists of three actions Gripping Your Text Write and Shaping Your Page Part Gripping Your Text One of the first stages of many writing projects is arranging topics Accordingly this book places an early emphasis on heading styles the role of subheadings and the graphical arrangement of these subheadings In this part we cover how to use Word s tools to control the visual display of your writing You determine the structure of your document edit your headings and optimize their order You will learn to www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word Put Word s paragraph style features to work in ways that help you think and write more clearly Use paragraph styles in tandem with Word s outline features to improve your thinking and to gain graphic control over huge amounts of text Use features like tables of contents and text editing techniques critical to writ ers and the drafting process Part II Write The goal in this second part is to get you to write more easily pure and simple You ll learn to employ seldom used features that optimize your re
51. t 51 Views and styles link between 53 W White square indentation technique 151 Wrapping text See Page Breaks Writer s block 72 Writers Kit See SqueakyClean Writers Kit 178
52. together to save you time It is a collection of settings that controls graphical typographical and language attrib utes and groups them into a unit that you can apply onto words and paragraphs Once you understand how to use styles you gain a great deal of control over documents The way you think is connected to styles The way you think is affected by the look and layout of your documents and this look and layout is controlled in large part through styles Therefore it s wise to learn about styles and to understand how they work But many writers don t Why Writers Avoid Styles Writers shun styles for three reasons The central reason is to keep documents as simple as possible The motive to KISS keep it simple stupid is a good one don t get me wrong but many writers don t bother taking the time to under stand styles The second reason is styles often seem to multiply out of control They seem to breed become unwieldy and impede the writing process not speed it up So from the perspective of simplicity it makes sense to avoid styles The third reason writers avoid styles is that they believe they are too difficult to apply and modify The refrain I often hear is I can t change them They re too complicated Why do I need them Any advantage to avoiding styles quickly vanishes when documents become complex A short story or fiction writer can usually avoid styles and still write perfectly because they don t nee
53. ut the more often you apply direct formatting the bigger the risks grow Let s say you bold different words 300 times throughout a document When finished doing all this work you realize that maybe it wasn t such a good idea to use bold Maybe a better choice would have been to use italic And now you want to unbold those 300 instances and italicize them What would you do then Select text and make them unbold and italic 300 times All this selecting clicking and formatting creates a lot of extra work This is where styled formatting becomes useful You can accommodate change of mind with styles not with hundreds of clicks but four Styles are an efficient way to apply graphic effects Styles help save time often huge amounts of time Say for example you apply one specific style 50 times When you want to customize this style you don t have to make 50 changes Make only one to the style s definition and Word immediately updates all 50 instances of that style This is much easier than redoing all the for matting by hand How Styles Help Frame Ideas Styles also help graphically organize your thoughts and this as we will see is a big advantage Word offers many options to graphically set up a style and you have lots of freedom about how you want a document to look But more impor tantly your decisions about how to lay out documents affect how you think The appearance of your document plays a big role in how easily you can
54. wer rules to obey when writing Many fiction writers are unfettered by restraints in time brevity and to some extent even grammar Fiction ranges in length from as short as a few paragraphs or lines to mid length as in Paul Auster s The New York Trilogy composed of three 200 page books to epics of almost inconceivable length Two extreme examples of longer works are JK Rowling s Harry Potter series whose seven books total more than 4 000 pages and Stephen King s Gunslinger series which contains nearly 5 000 pages 107 www SqueakyCleanWriting com Engineering Thought with Microsoft Word One rule successful fiction writers must obey is that their writing cannot bore and achieving this takes incredible creativity But barring this one absolute the fiction writer is fettered by no other unbreakable rules In fiction the rules about what exactly constitutes a paragraph are loose at best They are broadly defined and paragraphs can sometimes be broken apart almost arbitrarily A novelist can narrate her sequence of events in one long paragraph without necessarily bothering her reader as long as she renders these events in an entertaining or interesting manner Most readers expect some rambling in a novel and don t heavily penalize the nov elist for it In fact the way fiction writers ramble is one of the aspects of novels that some readers enjoy and many great novelists are famous ramblers The works of Norman Mailer Migu
55. yles Use these templates as a base for your projects and simplify the process of creating a cohesive look and feel for your documents The ten templates included are The Four Design Systems the Mind Alterer the Informer the Raconteur and the Coach Five variations on the Raconteur the Hemingway the Faulkner the Isaac son the Clancy and the Mystic A variation on the Mind Alterer the Montagne A Note about Book Production I wrote and produced this book entirely in Microsoft Word using the tools and techniques I described here No fancy layout applications were used I created all the diagrams and graphics in Microsoft PowerPoint and took most of the screen shots with Ambrosia Software s SnapzPro Version History Version 1 0 22 February 2009 First edition Acknowledgments Special thanks go out to Michael E G Strupp Erin Wilhelm and Donald J Hart man whose comments and encouragement were priceless Thank you 175 INDEX A Adobe FrameMaker 152 Adobe InDesign 152 Anticipatory point 124 Applying Styles 17 Auster Paul 107 Automatically update 100 B b switch 99 Bad Habit Corner 23 24 document structure 34 elements of 23 escaping 23 27 30 separating paragraphs 26 separating sentences 25 Bartholdi F A 115 Based on See Styles Families Baselines fonts use of 144 grids 143 grids in formation of 144 Benjamin Franklin Walter Isaacson 125 126 Blink Malcolm Gladwell
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search