Level 2: Jedi

So the last post told you about font formatting and headers/page numbers. This post takes you to the next level of convenience—because that’s really what this is about. When you use the techniques Microsoft Word is expecting, you can get the application to work with you instead of feeling like you’re working against it.

Use styles for chapter headings

Why? Because you get at least two cool features: jumping around easily in your document using the navigation pane and automatically starting each chapter on a new page.

Here’s the top of my navigation pane in the full manuscript when I use Heading 1 as the chapter heading style:

By default, Heading 1 is a larger and possibly different font, but I updated the style to be the same font (instructions also in previous post), just without first-line indentation and centered instead of left-aligned (from the Modify Style dialog, in the lower-left corner choose Format > Paragraph).

I mentioned a second cool feature, which is this: I also clicked the all-important button to force automatic page breaks.

No more hitting enter until you get to the next page, or even Ctrl-Enter that might get deleted accidentally. I also happen to think it looks nicer if there’s a little more breathing room after the chapter title than after a regular line, so I add space after the paragraph (which gets added automatically without having to double-enter).

But what about the first chapter?

I’m glad you asked! If you follow agent Mary C. Moore’s advice, you know she says to just begin the novel right after the title on the same page. No problem! Put your cursor in “Chapter 1”, then open the Paragraph dialog (Format > Paragraph, Alt+o+p, etc.) and unselect the “page break before” option I showed above. This will change only chapter 1 and not affect the style for other chapters. This is technically a hack (content-level formatting) but it’s good enough for now.

Right-aligned tabs

You’re doing great, but then you have to put the word count on the right side of the page. What is this magic? Spaces? Tabs? A new textbox? All functional hacks (and I don’t turn up my nose at hacks, as I just demonstrated), but for ease of use, you can’t beat the right-aligned tab. As you can see below, where I’ve “shown invisibles” (formally known as formatting marks), I use just one tab and it’s aligned to the right margin.

If you’re using US Letter paper with 1-inch margins, the usual standard in the US, you want to set a right tab at 6.5″. As the link describes, you can do that with the ruler, but I find the Tab dialog easier.

Voilà! Type your name, then Tab, then your word-count. You can also use this technique if you want to have both left- and right-aligned information in your header. Why might you do that? Here’s a teaser for the next post:

(OK look, I feel bad about not including Padawan Obi-Wan in the last post, but I loved that flail GIF, so here’s some more handsome for you.)