atw: Re: OT Writing tools

Wow, that TOC is more than a 2 hour presentation. My question related to what 
loomed large in your presentation – the real issues users have rather than the 
issues we imagine they have.

 

Are you thinking of producing a manual or an  instructional guide?  

 

If you are looking for a manual, you might want to look at some of the manuals 
out there that provide this level of content.  My personal favourite is The 
Missing Manual by Chris Grover – worth every penny I paid for the download 
version.  It would be a good doorstop for the IT support department.

 

I purchased a few instructional guides also, but rejected them as, like the 
manuals, they taught functions rather than processes.

 

I decided in my books to teach processes that result in a product – a “learning 
by doing” approach rather than a theoretical approach.  In addition I carved 
down a lot of the content in the interests of creating a moderately sized book 
rather than a doorstop.  I also missed out all advanced features like large 
document management and macros on the basis that anyone who gets into them is 
capable of running an internet search to find the answers for themselves.  

 

I made lots of other potentially contentious but totally pragmatic decisions on 
the way, that may or may not be right.

 

As I publish on-line and print-on-demand, I can continuously change these books 
based on feedback received.  If you think it is not suitable for your needs, 
please tell me off-line so that I can understand what you think is needed 
instead – and how I have missed my mark.  As Word 2007 has at least another 5 
years life expectancy, I still have plenty of time to get it right.  It is very 
easy to re-organise, re-format and re-develop existing material.   It is much 
harder to get something up to publication standard from scratch.

 

Christine

 

From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Elizabeth Fullerton
Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2009 12:16 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: OT Writing tools

 

Hi Howard

 

Here's the TOC, it represents most of the common things I've helped people 
with. Just a caveat - I've tried putting together this doc for several years, 
and never have enough downtime to get it done. I initially had two docs - a 
"how to" and a "best practices", and I bunged them together to create a 
reference for teaching, so the headings could use some streamlining! (Some of 
the sections are still empty - I figured that it was more important to get the 
information into the people, and they could take notes on the empty bits as we 
discussed them.)

 

I started off with the basic settings and the views, and then went onto styles. 
Most of the discussion revolved around styles, unsurprisingly. We also 
discussed tabs/hanging indents (tab-tab-tabbing across the page and onto the 
next line, one of my favourite things!), and bullets/numbering (and using 
outline styles instead of the buttons in the toolbars). Keep With Next, and not 
using manual page breaks. Looking in Normal view to find things you can't see 
in Print Layout. Don't even think about master documents (some people discover 
this exists, and want to try it). How having Change Tracking on with the 
changes hidden can make the document behave very strangely.

 

We spent quite a bit of time on really basic stuff, and I think the group got a 
lot of value out of that. It was actually stuff I kind of take for granted, 
having done this sort of work for years, so I was a bit surprised that I needed 
to explain it! I will need to put more detail in about the paragraph marks 
containing the formatting, etc. We discussed how paragraph and character styles 
work, and why they are good to use, and also style inheritance (as in heading 
levels) (which Word doesn't automatically have in the normal.dot you get when 
you load it up).

 

(Also, I'll let you know how I go with Christine's book for upgrading to 2007.) 
(Assuming I don't end up at 120% billability in the next few days...)

 

 

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399406> Document information  6

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399407> Contact for enquiries and proposed changes  6

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399408> Document control 6

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399409> Purpose  6

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399410> Audience  6

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399411> 1           Overview   7

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399412> 2           Definitions  7

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399413> 3           Resources  7

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399414> 4           Basic settings  8

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399415> 4.1        Displaying full menus  8

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399416> 4.2        Displaying the Standard and 
Formatting toolbars on two rows  9

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399417> 4.3        Displaying formatting marks  10

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399418> 4.4        Displaying field shading  11

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399419> 4.5        Displaying bookmarks  12

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399420> 4.6        Displaying table gridlines  13

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399421> 4.7        Displaying the Document Map  13

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399422> 4.8        Displaying the Styles and Formatting 
pane  14

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399423> 4.9        Turning off smart paragraph selection 
 15

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399424> 5           Views  16

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399425> 5.1        Normal view   16

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399426> 5.2        Web Layout view   17

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399427> 5.3        Print Layout view   17

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399428> 5.4        Outline view   18

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399429> 5.5        Reading Layout view   19

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399430> 5.6        Print Preview   20

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399431> 6           Styles  21

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399432> 6.1        Types of styles  22

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399433> 6.2        Creating a new style  24

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399434> 6.3        Modifying a style  25

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399435> 6.4        Naming a style  26

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399436> 6.5        Applying a style  27

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399437> 6.6        Clearing a style  28

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399438> 6.7        Manual overrides  29

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399439> 6.8        Bullets and numbering  29

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399440> 6.9        Outline levels  32

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399441> 6.10      Copy styles between documents  33

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399442> 7           Normal.dot 34

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399443> 8           Cross references  35

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399444> 9           Customise  36

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399445> 9.1        Keystrokes  36

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399446> 9.2        Menus  36

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399447> 10         Macros  37

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399448> 10.1      How to use them   37

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399449> 11         Master documents  38

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399450> 12         Change tracking  39

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399451> 13         Fields  40

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399452> 13.1      Creating  40

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399453> 13.2      Updating  40

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399454> 13.3      Showing codes  40

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399455> Appendix A: Some handy keyboard shortcuts  41

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399456> Appendix B: Best practices  42

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399457> B.1       Bullets and numbering  42

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399458> B.2       Capitalisation  42

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399459> B.3       Captions / cross-refs / steps and vars 
in use cases  42

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399460> B.4       Cross referencing to steps within use 
cases  42

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399461> B.5       Graphics (inline vs anchor) 42

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399462> B.6       Hyphen, en‑dash or em‑dash  43

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399463> B.7       Keep With Next 43

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399464> B.8       Non-breaking hyphens  43

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399465> B.9       Non-breaking spaces  43

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399466> B.10      Numbered lists using SEQ field codes  
44

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399467> B.11      Printing style definitions  44

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399468> B.12      Sections and page numbering  44

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399469> B.13      Sections  44

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399470> B.14      Spaces and tabs and indents  44

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399471> B.15      Styles  45

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399472> B.16      Tables and figures and captions  45

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399473> Appendix C: Troubleshooting  46

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399474> C.1       Bizarre formatting behaviour 46

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399475> C.2       Deleting bookmarks  46

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399476> C.3       Jason tab  46

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399477> C.4       Updating fields  46

 <outbind://84/#_Toc220399478> C.5       When good x-refs go bad  46

 

 

 


  _____  


From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Silcock
Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2009 11:56 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: OT Writing tools

Hi Elizabeth

 

I'd be really interested to hear some of the most popular questions that came 
up, if you can tell us without too much work. I'm putting together a document 
that includes tips on using some of the features of Word that may cause 
trouble. 

 

We're still using Word 2003 at present. The switch to Office 2007 is supposed 
to be happening sometime in the next few months and that may upset some of my 
work or make it unnecessay (or, I suspect, require me to add many extra 
sections), but I'm not thinking too much about that yet.

 

Howard

2009/1/27 Elizabeth Fullerton <Elizabeth_Fullerton@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Funny you should mention this - last week I presented a "Word knowledge-sharing 
session" to a bunch of my colleagues, discussing most of the things mentioned 
in this trail, and others. I started with the basic setup (non-personalised 
menus, showing formatting marks and what they mean, etc), and went on to the 
common problems I've help-desked people with through the years. It was an 
interactive session, with people asking lots of questions and meandering around 
the basic structure I had set (as was my intention) - I think they got a lot 
out of it, but at 2 hours I think we could have gone longer. Hopefully the 
session will get good feedback and I will be asked to do more - it's in 
everyone's best interests to be more efficient, especially mine, then I get to 
spend less time help-desking!

We're a bit quiet this week, so I've acquired a second laptop, downloaded 
Christine Kent's book on upgrading to 2007 (last time I tried on my own 
computer I suddenly needed to be at maximum efficiency - lost about a day 
trying to figure out 2007, removed it, which broke the dlls on my computer so I 
had to have it re-imaged which  then required about 3 days to get all my 
settings back - so less overall efficiency than I had hoped...)





-----Original Message-----
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Allan Charlton
Sent: Sunday, 25 January 2009 5:18 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: OT Writing tools

Christine
My experience is in line with the comments made by Stuart and Bob,
except that I've known a few people use Publisher quite successfully.  I
don't think I've ever come across anyone who uses the cut-down freebie
Microsoft word processor that comes with a new PC.  My uni students have
all been Word users but were never taught how to use it, which
perpetuates the behaviour that Stuart described.

Allan
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