atw: Re: Tables in MS Word 2003

Dear Alison,

Please excuse the tardiness of my response as this is the first opportunity
that I have had in several days to reply to my E-mail.

That aside, you need to remember that Word is a page (even paragraph)
based word processor that stores all of the formatting attributes for a
document file in within paragraph markers (AKA hard returns).

Word files cannot exist without paragraphs.

Even a new, blank Word file must have at least one paragraph marker.
Create a new "document" then press the paragraph marker Show/Hide
button in the Standard tool bar you will see what I mean.
(Word stores all of the attributes for a document file in its final paragraph
marker, which, in earlier versions, used to crash Word if you deleted that
marker - now it just replaces the deleted paragraph with another.)

You can, however, make a table at the start of a document without having a
text paragraph marker before it (it gets moved down after the table) and,
although the table cell markers are kind of paragraphs in their own right
they do a slightly different job.

There is no viable way to remove all of paragraph markers before a table,
mid way through a document, though, apart from having some kind of section
break before it, which is a kind of paragraph marker in any case.

Those markers do not print anyway, so I do not see  your problem.

If you are simply troubled by having a space before a table, just
create a "spacer" style of a 1 point paragraph of any font with
no space before or after it and you can have an effectively invisible
paragraph to use before anything.

As for assigning spacing to a table cell or an entire table, it works best
assigned to a style that you use throughout your table to assure uniformity
or in your table heading row when you use the Format > Paragraph dialog
Indents and Spacing tab and set the before and after spacing in points.
(There are 72 points to the inch / 2.83 points to the millimetre or 28.3
to the centimetre. ) Something that I notice most when checking the
Word / Windows idea of typography, which is totally printer driver
dependent.

For example: You print anything from Word and measure from the top
of the ascender of a font (say the top of a lower case "d") to the bottom
of a descender of a font (say the bottom of a lower case "p") and you will
soon see that the described font size is almost invariably wrong, except
after having the output substituted by PostScript fonts when using the
fonts in such a printer or in Adobe Acrobat - or printing to a 24 pin Oki
printer at an even resolution setting. Somebody wrote some good drivers
for the Oki 390.

Hope that helps more than it confounds or confuses, but the answer to
the first part of your question is a conditional NO, followed by an fervent
YES to the second part of your question.

Regards,

Michael Granat
Write Ideas

At 08:47 29/4/2005, you wrote:
>Good morning everyone =3D )
>
>I'm hoping someone can help me with what is probably a very basic
>enquiry -=20
>
>I'd like to remove the need for hard returns above a table. Is there a
>way to assign spacing to the table style?
>
>  Thanks very much
>
>Sincerely
>
>Alison Biddle

Michael Granat -- Write Ideas*

Plain English Technical Communication.
Advertising Copywriting.
Business Writing.

E-mail:         mailto:writeideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site:               <http://home.pacific.net.au/~megranat/>

*Trading As business #0828673K
  Registered (1987) Corporate Affairs Victoria, Australia.

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

E & OE

**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to 
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to 
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.

To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.

To search the austechwriter archives, go to 
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter

To contact the list administrator, send a message to 
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************

Other related posts: