Document Formatting
What exactly is document formatting?
You’ve typed the words of your document but you’re not yet ready to press the print button. And why not? Because the front cover, headers
and footers need creating, pictures need placing and labelling with captions, the table of contents needs producing, page numbers need adding, references
need to be laid out in a particular fashion, footnotes need to be added in. More importantly the table styles and margins don’t look completely consistent,
the fonts and spacing look untidy, the headings need numbering and the bullets and lists don’t line up between pages. This document needs proper formatting.
And does it really matter?
After spending so much time on the words you want them to be absorbed and enjoyed. An alignment problem here and numbering glitch there might
not sound like much individually but combined your reader is distracted by a document that looks unfinished and words that are difficult
to navigate. The truth is, a book that’s not easy on the eye gets put back on the shelf, a business proposal that looks disorganised doesn’t reflect
well on your business and a thesis submitted without care and attention to formatting is tough for the examiner to read.
So what are my options?
The only way to produce a truly clean, consistently formatted document is to spend a great deal of time understanding the software inside out, making sure there
are no manual fixes, no workarounds, no holding down the spacebar, no forced line feeds, no pictures flicking around and no corrupted templates. All of which is
a tough ask particularly if you have time pressure as well!
But now there is an alternative. Wordzworth Document Formatting will take the problem off your hands and ensure you receive a properly formatted document
you can be proud of. In particular a Wordzworth formatted document will be:
Clean • Consistent • Structured • Attractive • Professional
Below we outline the key steps involved in formatting your document, which, when combined with expert design touches, can turn your document into
something special. After all, your words deserve to look their best.
|
|
Here we had multiple sections of a project written by different authors. Some portrait, some landscape,
some with large margins, most without, some with headers, others none. |
We tidied the pages by making each section consistent, combining all files into a single large project with matching page layout,
margins, headers, footers, landscape pages and columns. |
Different headers, footers, margins, paper size and orientation
Remove Unnecessary Styles
|
This document contained over 200 paragraph styles. Headings were an inconsistent mix of fonts, lists weren’t aligned,
captions were missing and spacing was unbalanced. |
We removed 170 of these styles. Each heading was made part of a consistent set, alignment and spacing looked
even and balanced whilst a set of neat, matching figure captions were created. |
Mixed alignment, spacing, capitalisation, fonts, colours, underlining, bold, italic
|
Unnecessary paragraph marks and spaces littered the pages. Tabs were used to try and create tables,
alignment was skewed and the entire document began behaving unpredictably. |
We removed the extra paragraph marks and forced spaces causing alignment problems.
Proper tables were created to replace those formed from tabs to give a nice, clean finish. |
Extra paragraph marks, forced spaces, tabs used to create tables
|
This document contained 20 numbering styles. Indent and spacing varied dramatically,
most numbers were manually typed, many were non-sequential and some corrupted. |
We collected all numbering styles into a single multi-level outline scheme with sequential numbers,
justified alignment and indentation. This shrunk the original file by 600Kb. |
Manually typed digits, non-sequential numbering, corrupted styles
|
Figure labeling was styled inconsistently, parts of the picture were not aligned, captions were separated from diagrams and figures
had drifted to the tops of pages. |
We styled all the labels identically, aligned and edited parts of the image to make it more appealing as well as fixing
the figure margins, layout, alignment and placement. |
Different shading, colours, margins, captions, cell alignment, figure text style and spacing
|
Each of the 14 tables in this document had different widths, column alignment, cell margins, padding, shading, line and border styles,
some were even distorted images. |
Each table was styled to be part of a matching set, columns were evenly distributed whilst margins, padding,
shading and line styles were applied consistently. |
Varying widths, alignment, margins, padding, shading, lines
|
Reference markers were just manually typed numbers within paragraphs, some superscript,
some subscript, some with brackets and others without. Reference text was just typed out below. |
We created properly styled document footnote/endnote markers where required and inserted the matching
reference text where required. |
Manually typed reference numbers, different styles, endnotes/footnotes mix
|
No proper Table of Contents had been created. Page and section numbers had been manually typed out with
no alignment or consistency and with plenty of errors. |
An automated Table of Contents with hyperlinked page numbers and careful alignment was generated based
on carefully applied heading styles throughout the document. |
Manually typed table, numbers not aligned, inconsistent spacing
Ensure Textual Consistency
|
Each paragraph lacked consistency. Some had fullstops, others none. Some bullets had commas, some fullstops,
some nothing. Some headings had capitals, others did not. |
We carefully went through the entire document making every paragraph, bullet, list and heading absolutely
consistent in terms of fullstops, commas and capitalisation. |
Mixture of fullstops, colons, capitals and spacing
