Examples of Consistent Styles (any!)

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I’m not sure if this is a sensible question, but here goes!

I have “taken over” a set of fairly large (50+ plus pages) documents used for training courses. These have a quite extensive set of consistent styles. The unfortunate choice of 9 pt Arial Narrow for the Normal style appears to have been done to get lots of words on the page. It seems more sensible to change this to a larger size, such as Arial 11 pt or Arial 12 pt. So I need to increase the sizes of the “Heading n” (and several other) styles accordingly.

But it occurs to me that there might be ways of differentiating between Headings and other emphasis styles other than the usual ones of bolder fonts (like Arial Black or Impact), larger point sizes, italics, expanded text, thick horizontal lines preceding the heading, and so on, that I haven’t come across.

Has anyone any suggestions about where to look to see examples of Styles, that might give me some ideas?

Thanks!

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John,
Don’t know if your from UK but there is a British Standard available as a reference for technical authoring (amongst other things). I don’t have the numbers immediately available but when I am next at my office (a.m. tuesday 11th) I shall post details.
Or try search engine for British Standard authoring technical documents or some such.

Also, when you change the styles, if you make sure the “Heading n” is a style based on normal, when you change the normal style the Heading n will change also. Be afraid.
Alan Edwards
Cheshire
UK

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I presume you’re referring to BS 7649 “Guide to the Design and Preparation of Documentation for Users of Application Software”? This doesn’t appear on the face of it to be really what I’m after — and I don’t fancy paying a mere

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John,
I’m afraid your sarcasm is lost on me, I work in the technical document industry so I’ve seen and heard just about every angle from clients, customers and operatives alike. I think my job title is probably one down from accountant on the boredom scale and one up from undertaker on the job satisfaction scale.

However, BS 7649 was not the standard to which I refer. I am familiar with BS7649 from my programming side but it is not in my immediate library.
BS5261part2 – Copy preparation and proof correction is one of our references, and part one is recommended and I quote: “The preparation of typescript copy for printing, so that it is clear in presentation and consistent in style, is dealt with in BS 5261 part1”
Additional reading for a start may be: http://www.rbs0.com/tw.htm – Technical writing by Ronald B. Standler
Hope this helps.
Alan
cheshire

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Alan – I’m sorry, but I wasn’t intending to be sarcastic! I was simply saying that since you (apparently) had the relevant standard, and I didn’t want to pay

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Hi, John. If I’m reading right, then maybe a trip to this Word MVP Org page may be just what you’re looking for.

Good Luck!

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Thanks, Karen, that is a good reference which i will print off. What it is to know what one is doing! John

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Karen, having printed this off and read it last night, I can say that it is an excellent reference, that I wish you’d told me about ages ago! I shall explore the site further… Thanks again! John

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