All-caps feature and TOCs (Word 2000)

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This isn’t a question–just an observation about something the Word programmers should fix. It applies to documents that have (1) at least one heading level in all-caps and (2) an automatic table of contents.

You would think it would be efficient to give the all-caps attribute to the Heading style for the heading level that needs to be in all-caps to be sure it always displays that way. Unfortunately, the all-caps attribute doesn’t get transferred to the TOC style, so unless all your headings on that level are actually all-caps, that TOC level won’t automatically be in all-caps. Thus, you shouldn’t use the all-caps attribute in this situation.

In case you’ve never run across this before, I’ve attached a sample document. The Heading 1 style includes the all-caps attribute, so those headings display as all-caps in the body of the document. However, I deliberately did not actually capitalize all letters in those titles to show what happens when the TOC is run. Of course you could add the all-caps attribute to the TOC style to solve the problem, but I think Word should have this built in.

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And (for the sake of an argument) I would disagree. As you say, altering the TOC style to also set All Caps is a ready fix to your problem and this solution retains flexibility in allowin the user to decide how to format different parts of their document. The converse of having Word automatically work out that the user also intended the TOC to match one of the possible styles that goes into that TOC style restricts the flexibility of the software considerably. And then what would you have the Word programmers do if you built the TOC where TOC 1 gets its entries from more than one style (eg {TOC o “1-4” t “Title,1,Appendix 1,1,Appendix 2,2”}) where only one of the feeder styles used All Caps.

Whilst I can agree that sometimes there is a valid reason for setting some headings in All Caps there is little value in also showing these TOC levels in All Caps. The Headings are rare on the page so the all caps on the occaisional line doesn’t destroy readability so much. In a TOC where all those All Caps are going to be concentrated into a single page then the readability will be considerably impacted. Our ability to ready text quickly depends on the ascenders and descenders on the characters – All caps removes this assistor.

I would finally ask you to consider what is so important about each line in the TOC that all lines must shout so that each can be heard above the other. I think Syndrome (from the Incredibles) said it best “…and when everybody is special, no-one is”.

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Wow, Andrew, I didn’t expect such a philosophical answer on this!

I work in a law firm and our agreements typically have Heading 1 in all-caps with the lower-level headings in title case. Same with the pleadings we do for our litigation department. I like the consistency of having the TOC headings match the document headings. I also believe it’s easier to read the TOC if the main headings are in all-caps, plus I think the reader can more easily get a feel for the document’s structure.

But all that aside, since Word’s automatic table of contents feature simply copies the headings the way they appear in the document, I believe the programmers have an obligation to do everything possible to make that as trap-free as possible. I consider this issue (not transferring the all-caps attribute to the TOC style for a Heading style that includes it) a trap for the innocent word processor.

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Do you expect the TOC to also include the Bold attribute from the headings? Or the Font Size? Or the Typeface? Or the paragraph attributes such as Page Break Before?

How would you expect Word to identify which attributes you want transferred to the TOC style?

StuartR

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Stuart:

Good point. We at my firm prefer our TOCs without bold or underlining, yet we often use those attributes in the headings in the main document, so of course we don’t want bold or underlining transferred to the TOC.

Fred:

Based on Stuart’s excellent point, I think I now agree with you that I’d rather the programmers not transfer any of the attributes from the headings to the TOC. Like you, I often set off the Level 1 headings with Space Before and Space After.

David:

I too hardly ever use the all-caps feature. (The issue came up for me when I worked on a document created by someone else that had all-caps assigned to Heading 1.) Thanks for adding to the comments here.

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Russ,

Another option is to apply All Caps to your headings as manual formatting. This would be carried through to the TOC, but I guess wouldn’t help in this case.

StuartR

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Stuart,

What I plan to do now when I’m given a document that has the all-caps in a heading style is just turn it off and apply the caps manually. At least that way I can be sure that the letters are indeed in all-caps and will be copied into the TOC that way.

Russ

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Any manual formatting that you apply to a heading is automatically copied to the TOC entry, so you can simply turn off All Caps on the heading style and then apply it as manual formatting – this may save you time if there are many headings.

StuartR

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Exactly.

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Or you can do a replace with
Find What: leave text blank but choose from the Format button (after expanding the dialog with More) the Style of Heading 1
Replace With: choose from the Special button “Find what text” and from the Format button “Font | All Caps”

This will reset all of your Heading 1 entries to be manually formatted to be in all caps but the Heading 1 style itself will not have that attribute.

Fred

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Fred,

Sorry for the very late reply–we’ve been swamped at work and I haven’t had a moment to get back. I tried the routine you suggested but it did not get rid of the all-caps attribute in the Heading 1 style. I’ve attached a sample document that I used to test this.

I’m not familiar with “Find what text” under the Special button in the Replace With window. How does that work?

Russ

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The “Find What Text” button inserts ^& into the “Replace with” box. – this causes the replace to use the text that it just found as the replacement text (in other words make no change to the text itself). This is commonly used when you have specified a particular format for the replacement. It can also be used when you want to add something in front of, or after, every instance that you find.

StuartR

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Thanks, Stuart.

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In this situation you don’t need to enter anything in the Replace with box.

The Special button in the Find or Replace dialog is only visible if you’ve clicked More.
“Find what text” is only available in the Special popup menu when the focus is in the Replace with box.

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Hi Russ,

I see that Stuart told you about the Find What and Hans correctly (I think) indicated that you didn’t even need anything in the Replace With Box if you didn’t have anything in the Find What box.

But I’m not sure what you thought my process was going to do. When I look at your document, I see that the Heading 1 style still has all caps. I thought Stuart’s suggestion a few postings up in the thread suggested turning off the All Caps checkbox in the Heading 1 style and manually formatting the headings if you wanted all caps. My suggestion was to use Find/Replace, after turning off the All Caps in the Heading 1 style, as just a quick way to apply the manual formatting if you really wanted ALL CAPS. When you do this, Word creates a format called Heading 1 + All Caps, which seems to be picked up by the TOC process.

Fred

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Fred, I wasn’t thinking straight when I used your find/replace suggestion. As you noticed, I had not turned off all-caps in the Heading 1 style–for some reason I was figuring your routine would take care of that. Once I manually turned off all-caps from the style, your procedure worked just as you said.

Thanks.

Russ

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Russ,

For the times when I want to set off the 1st level heading in the TOC, I format the TOC1 style to have additional Spacing Before and Spacing After values. This works for me. I know that’s extra work on my part as opposed to automatically transferring an attribute like ALL CAPS or Bold from the Heading Style. But as Stuart said, would you also transfer the point size, centering or indent – those are ways of setting off the Heading Style within the text body – to the TOC styles?

For me, given a choice between the MS programmers automatically transferring the heading attributes to the styles and then making someone undo those attributes in the TOC styles (if the programmers even let you do it) as opposed to making me do some extra work to add attributes to the TOC styles for whatever reason to make them different then the corresponding Heading style, I’d rather the latter.

Anyway, that’s my

Fred

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I never use the “ALL CAPS” setting on a style exactly for this reason. If a user wants all caps, type the text in caps. This ALL CAPS setting is more like a “MASK” than anything else. The underlining characters are in the case they were typed in. If you type in a style set to ALL CAPS, then later demote the level heading, yoU CoUld enD Up with a mEss. (as the user does not see the actual case when typing with the ALL CAPS on the style.)

On the other hand, if a user is savvy, and wanted the Headings for Level 1 to be in all caps, but then the TOC for that level in Title Case, the user (who is AWARE of what is going on), could TYPE the heading like this: Introduction to the Case. The heading style, with the ALL CAPS setting on the font (which I said earlier, I don’t normally use) would display in ALL CAPS, but the TOC would come out in Title Case. Some firms do like this look, and this is how it can be done.

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