Introduction . . .

Like most Word users, you know that Microsoft Word is perfectly acceptable for writing letters, memos, reports, and other short documents. Perhaps you have used MS Word to write magazine articles and book proposals, but you have never attempted a project as serious or as involved as designing a self-published book.


If you are writing a document that is essentially "disposable," you will generally give less thought to formatting than you would if you are writing a manuscript destined for printing, binding, and eventual sale.


Out of the box, Word is well suited for most users and the majority of the documents they will typically create. When I write a letter or a few pages of text to be emailed to others, I seldom worry about formatting because the document is essentially disposable.


If you are submitting a magazine article, your editor will almost always provide you with manuscript guidelines and you must generally adhere to them. The guidelines provide writers with strict specifications that define the mechanical structure of their manuscript. That is, the font, font size, margin width, and the line and paragraph spacing you are to use when you prepare your final draft for submission.


Most, if not all of the formatting decisions have been made for you and generally speaking, you cannot deviate from the editor's specific requirements.


Therefore, you probably do not need to worry about Microsoft Word templates and styles when writer's guidelines are available.


Most editors offer writers a set of very specific guidelines, so creating a universal template that is suitable for all magazine articles and every editor's specific requirements is quite often a waste of your time.


Writers could make educated guesses based upon what they read on a writers web site or perhaps what they have learned from previous experience, but let's face it: when you want to sell your material to an editor, you must follow his or her specific guidelines.


If you design a template, that uses 0.5" margins on all four sides and text set to single-spacing; you will need to change it if the editor demands 1.5" margins and double-spaced text. If your template's default font is "Arial" and the guidelines say "Times New Roman" or "Courier," you must change it.


In some cases, you might be asked to email your manuscript as plain text added to the body of an email reply. So all of your carefully planned formatting decisions do not matter in the least.


You could, I suppose, think of writer's guidelines as a kind of manuscript template. Just keep in mind that there are technical differences between using an actual Word Template and simply following a set of guidelines to manuscript preparation. Templates define things like fonts and margins, as do the written guidelines.


In some cases, your publisher might supply you with a manuscript template for your specific brand of word processor. Quite a few publishers now offer templates and in most cases, you dare not violate the template's formatting or you might not sell your work.


Lulu Press and other POD publishers offer the user some general guidelines; Lulu Press offers several Word templates for a variety of formats and sizes, as does Café Press.


Failure to follow their guidelines and recommendations could result in a bad looking book, but never a rejection, unless your manuscript would be impossible or difficult to print.


On the other hand, just because you are the designer and it is likely that your book will be printed exactly as you designed it, this does not mean that you are free to use any formatting style you wish.


For example, using colored fonts is usually a waste of time because most POD printers and publishers print all interior pages in black and white. Colored fonts might lead to large blocks of text that "disappear."


If you decide to use yellow rather than black color fonts, the text might be hard to read because the color will be rendered in grayscale. Worse yet, not be visible on the page when your book is printed.


You must always consider the reader. Smaller fonts (6-8 point) used in your body paragraph text could result in a book that is difficult to read. As will the extensive use of cursive or ornamental fonts. Not to mention, large blocks of text set to all caps are almost always a problem for some readers.


Templates are Difficult To Use?


That is where this book comes in. Templates provide visual consistency and accurate formatting. Some users purchase special templates or their publisher will send them a template that they are expected to use. In some cases, the user expects that the template will automatically and properly format the manuscript.


It does not always work this way, so it is quite important that you understand templates and styles. Templates often make the difference between a book that looks homemade and one that looks professional.


After applying a special template, something might look wrong and the new user might not know if their template is working properly or perhaps they think that the template is corrupt.


Perhaps there really is a problem, or perhaps something in the template is conflicting with one of Word's default settings you are not aware of.


Until you know how templates should function, you might not be able to tell why something unexpected has happened.


Once you finish reading this guide, you will know exactly how to properly use a Microsoft Word template. You will be able to easily modify Word to achieve your goals. You will also be able to create new templates from scratch.


Some templates do not always work the way the user expects them to work because the user has not formatted or prepared their text properly. In some cases, the writer's manuscript might not look like the screen shot (if the developer provided one) offered by the template's creator, because the writer does not fully understand templates and how they are used.


Once you install a template (yes, templates must be properly "installed") and you create a new document, you might notice that some unfamiliar toolbars suddenly appear; a bunch of macros, macro toolbars, odd little buttons, and editing/formatting toolbars might also suddenly appear.


This happens because the developer has added these things to his or her template. I am currently using a template that was sent to me by my publisher. When I open it, four new toolbars appear. Until I read the "Read Me" document, I had no clue about the functions of the buttons.


I can well imagine how confusing this might seem to the new Word user that have never seen sweeping changes to the look of their copy of Word. Some toolbars the users have never seen can appear and in many cases, the user really does not know what to do.


Always remember that templates do much more than simply hold formatting information.


The buttons marked "CITE," "TOA," "IDX," "PGE," "K-BAR," and "TOC-6" that suddenly appear can be confusing if you do not know what they are and what you are supposed to do with them. This is especially true if the template designer has not offered a document that tells the user how to use the template and what to expect.


In some cases, when the user starts to use a template, the Macro Warnings dialog box opens. After some trepidation, they might hope for the best and click OK. Suddenly, their copy of Word changes.


It is supposed to change and you must always remember this: not every macro is bad and does malicious things. Still, some Word users often wonder what is going on.


Some users I talk to simply assume that they have a virus or other problem because the "document screwed up my copy of Word." I am not suggesting that you should always disregard a macro/virus warning because it is vital that you know what is happening or could happen when you open a Word document containing a virus.


Just be aware that sometimes Word will tell you that the template or document contains macros and there really is no problem. The macros are essential in order for the template to work properly.


Book Design is A Much Different Matter


Now you are taking on a much larger project. You are not only the author, you are also the book's designer and you are designing a product that will be sold directly to the reader. Your book must not only be well written, it must also be well designed and it must look good on paper. Your book will likely be printed and bound.


There is a world of difference between simply writing a manuscript and carefully designing a book that looks great. A book that people actually want to purchase.


If you were to happen across a bad looking book at your local bookstore, would you buy it? If it were hard to read, would you keep it or return it to the store? Always make sure that your printed book looks good.


For many Word users, achieving a nicely formatted book can be quite tricky because new Word user will often have many questions that are not easily (or always) answered in the Word help files.


Word often gives you several different ways to accomplish the same task. Occasionally, the user is left confused.


The writer's book design somehow never seems to look like they see it in their mind's eye; many Word users have simply decided that Word is not a very good program for page layout and book design. They often decide this because they do not understand Word and its features.


Some people believe that using a page layout program like PageMaker, QuarkXPress, or Microsoft Publisher will be easier or perhaps better because costly page layout programs will somehow make all of the hard decisions for them. That is to say, a properly formatted book will be automatically generated with little or no user intervention.


Text goes in, a beautifully designed bestseller comes out of the printer. I wish it were always that easy.


Unless you follow a few rules common to Word as well as most page layout programs, creating a great looking book can still be quite a challenge, regardless of the tools you decide to use. There is always something to be said for artistic sensibility and following a few time honored design rules.


It can be just as hard to design a great looking book using a page layout program, as it can be to use Word for page layout.


Poorly designed books do not generally please your customers. The typical reader might not know how you produced your book. Chances are, they do not care, either. All they know is your book does not look as good as they think it should look and in some cases, they might make assumptions about you, the writer.


When your book fails to meet the customer's expectations, you almost always lose. Your book might be returned and that could hurt your reputation, leading to fewer sales of your next book. I do not know about you, but whenever I read a book by an unfamiliar author, I will likely purchase the writer's next book, if I am pleased.


If I believe that some pages are missing because the page numbering skips from page 45 to page 67, I wonder what the writer or publisher might have omitted. Sudden changes in text size or style tells me that the text that suddenly looks different might somehow be important.


Sometimes, it is nothing more than inconsistent formatting and carelessness.


Authors using traditional publishing houses are not (usually) concerned with the look of their manuscript because the publisher's designers will ensure that the author's book looks "pretty." Moreover, the publisher's designers usually do just that. However, since you are self-publishing your book, you must not only be concerned with your book's content, but also, how your final product looks. You are not just the writer; you are the designer.


Unless you hire a designer, you will be making almost every formatting decision on your own.


My goal is to help you create a nice looking book using Microsoft Word and to understand some of Word's basic features you may not be familiar with. Word is an excellent program for creating nice looking books, despite its detractors. All it takes is a little effort on your part and a basic understanding of Word's key features.


By the time you are done reading this guide, you will know almost everything you need to know to create attractive Word templates and better looking books. You will no longer need to purchase templates from other developers. You might eventually become a template designer, creating nice looking templates to help other writers.


Word vs. QuarkXPress, PageMaker, And All the Rest


Despite what some users might say or believe, Word is an excellent page layout program for the majority of users. Granted, dedicated page layout programs do indeed have a place, but do not sell Word short. It is quite capable of creating a nicely formatted book.


Since you already own a copy of Microsoft Word, you really do not need to spend the money for new software.


I really cannot argue against page layout programs; again, they do have a place. It is my hope you will at least give Word a chance. Word might be all you ever need.


Some of Word's detractors find Word unacceptable for page layout; I suspect that is because they do not fully understand the program. Then again, some people "hate" Microsoft Publisher and PageMaker. Every software package has its share of supporters as well as detractors. Many of the complaints I hear quite often have to do with how Word behaves; rather, how Word misbehaves.


With a few simple changes, the problems some users are always fighting usually disappear and Word becomes far more user friendly.


Countless Word users have used the program for years, yet they are unfamiliar with the basic concepts I will teach you. The basic features that make Word do exactly what you want it to do. The basic concepts that will not only make Word well suited for laying out a great looking book, but will make it easy to format your book rapidly, with absolute consistency, from page to page and chapter to chapter.


Perhaps you find Word's quirks adorable or you simply think that Word is behaving as it always behaves, and with the usual Word related problems. Some users simply learn to accept something they do not like rather than fight the program.


When you change a paragraph and that change is reflected throughout your entire manuscript, you start to scream. Do not worry, all Word users scream from time to time.


Some users might type three dashes or asterisks and a line suddenly appears across the page. This does not always mean that Word is behaving badly. Sometimes, the user does not understand that they have told Word to create those unwanted lines.


To be brutally honest, it is not always a matter of Word making its own decisions. The user is sometimes to blame because they have "asked" Word to do some of the irksome things it does. Word carries out many of these decisions because the user has not changed Word's default behavior.


Change a few settings and Word will stop being so "helpful." With a few changes, the Word user will be much happier.


To be fair, sometimes Word will become quite unreasonable and yes, sometimes Word documents do become corrupted. I am certainly not suggesting that Word is always perfect.


Just remember this: sometimes odd and quirky things happen and Word is doing exactly what the user has "asked" it to do because the user has not changed one of Word's many default settings.


Incidentally, some of Words helpful features can actually lead to possible (some experts say eventual) document corruption. Some of the features Word provides in order to be more helpful are well known sources of problems like corrupted documents. Some "Master Wordsmiths" still wonder why Microsoft did not drop some of these "helpful" features years ago.


We will address these problems and their simple solutions a bit later in this guide.


There are many features and settings to explore buried deep inside Word that many users never change or consider. Sometimes, Word's default settings are enough to drive the Word user crazy.


With a little basic understanding, most problems will disappear and Word will behave as you think it should behave.


You will be free to create those three asterisks without Word assuming that you want to create borders, thereby creating those unwanted lines.


At the very least, you will understand what is happening when Word does what it does, and you can decide if you want Word's help or not.


If you are planning to design a book using Word, the program must first be tamed. As it is installed, Word is quite useless for book layout and page design. At least in my opinion.


Microsoft's "Problem"


The problem Microsoft (actually, all software developers) faces when they develop and upgrade software is in trying to understand how the typical user will use the program. They need to know what features to add, delete, and make obvious.


Or, what features can be safely buried deep in a dialog box that some users might never find, use, or investigate; some features might be of very little interest to most of the user base.


According to Microsoft's research, a majority of Word users do not use styles and templates, even though they are Word's most useful features.


Beginners and Power Users will always have different needs and their level of experience will almost always be different. I mean, chances are, you can work with Word for decades and never need to open the 'Visual Basic Programming Interface' included in every current copy of Word.


In case you are curious, press "Alt-F11" and have a look.


Microsoft cannot simply assume the customer knows everything there is to know about Word, so Microsoft must make Word as useful as possible, for the broadest range of users, without over complicating the program.


Right out of the box, the beginner must be able to easily use Word, yet it must include features that help those with more experience and different needs. As with most software packages, Word must be easy to customize and configure.


Sometimes, Word's default settings will cause the user considerable aggravation. Quite often, the new Word user does not know what is happening and how to solve the problem. More importantly, that many things can be easily changed, switched on, and turned off. Word users should never become aggravated because most problems can be easily eliminated with a few simple changes to Word's default settings.


I have seen years of frustration disappear with one or two simple options changes.


Unfortunately, some Word users do not always understand that some settings can and should be changed or which dialog box to look at. In addition, many of Word's dialog boxes can be reached in different ways.


For example, you can go to "Format>Paragraph" and change line and paragraph spacing, or you can right-click in your document and select "Paragraph" and get to the same place.


Sometimes, the Word user simply assumes that when Word does something odd, it is because, well, that is how Word is supposed to work. I have talked to quite a few Word users that are experiencing problems and some of these users assume that Word is either buggy or poorly designed, all the while unaware that their problems can be eliminated altogether.


Dig Deep


I am going to ask you to dig deep into Microsoft Word's various features and make a few simple changes that will help you in ways you might not immediately appreciate. Once you understand how Word thinks, the beast will be much easier to work with. Word might still try to change something, but at least you will understand what is happening.


Word is a most capable word-processing program. The new user can usually start using it out of the box. Yet, it is feature rich enough for the power user that depends upon Word every day to accomplish tasks that the typical user will never need to worry about.


Once you learn a few simple tricks, Word will seem like a brand new program and your negative view of Word, as a respectable page layout program will begin to change. In fact, by the time you are done reading this guide, you might actually know more about Word than many Power Users.


You will soon discover, as many others have, that Word is well suited for creating great looking books.


Sometimes you will read that Word has a problem with long documents. Not true. Well, in most cases it is not true. Documents containing almost a thousand pages can be easily created and edited using Word. Granted, you will require loads of memory if you are working on a book with several thousand pages.


For that matter, a book that is heavily illustrated with large graphics files and full color high-resolution digital photographs is not a problem for Word, if you make a few basic changes.


Chances are, you will likely never need to create a document that large. For most users, three hundred page epics are a snap to create and edit using Word; your layouts can be as complicated as you like.


By the way, if your book is heavily illustrated, there are settings you can change that will immediately reduce your manuscript memory requirements, thereby lessening the chance for a crash. Long and heavily illustrated documents can be quite easy to work, with despite what some "experts" have to say about it.


On the other hand, there are settings some do not understand, that will cause a relatively small document to slow to a crawl and make editing a real chore.


If, for example, you turn on "Background Repagination" and set your "Save Auto Recovery" time interval to a low number, a three-hundred page document can be difficult to work with, as Word is constantly repaginating your document and saving your 'Auto Recovery' information every minute.


Your document will appear to lock-up and it will stop responding as these things happen in the background.


To make matters a bit more confusing, some dialog boxes and the available settings will change depending upon the view you are working in. Not all Word views are equal. Word (97) gives you five possible ways to view your document: Normal, Outline Layout, Page Layout, Outline, and Master Document. There is also another "view" called the Document Map.


When something unexpectedly changes, familiar commands can disappear from the "View Options" dialog box. When you are in "Outline View" and you go to "Tools>Options," you will be presented with a slightly different set of options than if you are in "Normal" view and you view the options available for that specific view.


This guide is by no means the ultimate guide to Microsoft Word. It was not written to explain every possible feature you will find buried deep within the many dialog boxes and settings that Word makes available to the user to change how Word functions.


Your version of Word might be different than my version, so command locations and options might be located in different places. That said, you should be able to accomplish many of the same tasks I describe with very little effort. Your settings and dialog boxes might be slightly different than mine, but the general concepts will be the same.


By the time you are done reading this guide, you will have a clear understanding of the essential features and changes that will transform your copy of Word. You will be amazed at what Word is truly capable of doing with just a few simple setting changes, tweaks, and with a basic understanding of styles and templates.


The information contained in this guide will go a long way towards helping you tame Word and making it function exactly as you want it to function. Best of all, nothing I will explain is complicated or difficult to understand. Or change back, if you do not like the results.


This Guide Covers Several Key Areas


Microsoft Word is a complicated program and it is capable of performing many tasks you might never need to worry about. My goal is to get you up and running so the document you upload to Lulu Press, Cafe Press, or other POD publishers will be properly formatted; it will look exactly as you designed it to look.


Even if you are not a self-publisher, many if not most of the documents you routinely create will quite likely look much better, when you understand and use some of Word's nifty features.


Word Styles are Vital


As you may or may not be aware, some POD publishers require that you use what are known as "Word Headings and Styles." Understand that these styles can be easily changed and modified in almost every possible way, if the standard formatting is not to your liking.


Some users will never modify a basic Word Style. The user simply assumes that what Word offers is all that Word offers. Take it or leave it.


Headings and styles are extremely important and they make creating good-looking documents almost effortless. Styles and templates will almost guarantee that your document is properly formatted and your layout will be absolutely consistent throughout your book.


Without using headings and styles, some Word tasks cannot be easily accomplished. Some automated Word features are impossible to take full advantage of if you do not use the proper heading and subheading styles.


According to Microsoft's Usability Studies, the typical user will not use or modify templates and styles. When they do use a style or template, they tend to stick with Word's default settings.


I have not asked Microsoft about that statement, but I absolutely believe it, based upon my personal experiences in dealing with many long time Word users.


I know users with more than ten years of experience that do not know about much about templates and styles. Some of these people are writers and self-publishers.


If you want to include a TOC (Table of Contents), you must use Word's styles and headings, because Word looks for text formatted with specific heading styles when it compiles your TOC.


You could always create a TOC manually, but there is no need to do so, since Word makes it easy to automatically create, format, and insert an accurate TOC. All it takes is a few mouse clicks and a highly accurate TOC will be placed exactly where you want it placed.


When your book changes, your TOC can be automatically updated to reflect any changes with a simple click of your mouse.


Additionally, you have complete control over how your TOC will look. There is no need to accept the default TOC styles provided by Word. Your TOC can be designed to look as plain or as fancy as you wish.


Although Word provides you with almost every tool you will need to accomplish most tasks, some things are next to impossible to do if you do not understand how to use and apply styles. When you use Word styles properly, it is easy to make global changes to your document, with the click of a button.


Avoid Direct Formatting


You will also save considerable time, effort, and aggravation when you use styles rather than direct formatting. There will be no need to make dozens of individual changes throughout your manuscript, hoping that you did not overlook something because you used direct formatting.


Direct formatting simply means that you are manually selecting a block of text, a single line, an individual word, a page number, a dropped cap, or the entire manuscript; then selecting the desired font, font size, and font attributes manually from Word's default formatting toolbar.


In other words, just like you have always done, using the commands and settings available from the Word Standard Toolbar.


Let us say that you want to change your headings from Garamond to Arial and you have better things to do than track down every heading or subheading in your manuscript.


When you format your manuscript using templates, all you need to do is make one simple change to the specific style in your template and you are finished. It really does not matter if you are writing a ten-page book of poetry or an eight hundred-page epic thriller. The desired changes will occur instantly, effortlessly, and globally.


Suppose that you want to add more space between some paragraphs and leave the other paragraphs alone. Again, make one simple change from one dialog box and you are done. There will be no need to go through the entire document and manually reformat your fonts and then add or remove the excess spaces manually.


The bottom line is this: Word is a most capable page layout program that should never be sold short. Once you understand a few essential concepts and make a few simple changes to your default settings, will be able to easily accomplish almost any task.


Bob Maxey

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