Document Formatting

Formatting Software

	Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is the world’s leading word processing software for producing high quality documents in business, academia or publishing. But like any heavyweight software it takes time to master. Whilst it may be relatively easy to type a short, informal document, a large thesis or book requires a much higher level of skill to achieve a truly professional result. Word is so universally accepted for producing straightforward documents that it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing it can’t be used to do the serious stuff – like typesetting a book. The truth is, if you know what you’re doing, in most cases expensive packages like Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher or the LaTeX typesetting system are simply not necessary. Aaron Shepard is a leading authority on self-publishing and says: “If you know the basic principles of typography and book design, as well as the capabilities of your program, there’s no reason a book done in Word should look less than completely professional.”
	Microsoft PowerPoint PowerPoint is one of the most widely used presentation software packages. It is widely used by business people, educators, students and trainers as a prevalent form of persuasive technology. As part of the Microsoft Office family it also shares a lot of capability and features with Microsoft Word. Using Master slides is a good way to set backgrounds and font colours but once a presentation grows beyond a few slides it can be very difficult to maintain consistency between all similar elements on each slide. The painful experience of sitting through a poorly formatted PowerPoint presentation has even been officially added to the encyclopaedia as ‘Death by PowerPoint’.
	Adobe InDesign InDesign is recognised as a premier layout package. It is ideal for creating complex layouts and can readily manage both RGB and CMYK colour schemes. RGB is the scheme used by PCs and most normal printers. Commercial printing requires the use of the four colour CMYK model which is not supported by Word but is available in InDesign. At Wordzworth we use InDesign to create colour book covers and to create magazine style layouts for our customers.
	Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is without doubt, the leading image-editing program in the world. People have even started using Photoshop as a verb “those photos are obviously Photoshopped”. It is used for the creation and manipulation of photos, web and document graphics and even illustrations. Like InDesign it supports both RGB and CMYK colour schemes.
	LaTeX LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. It is a powerful tool for preparing mathematical documents with complex formulae but due to the user having to effectively code their input and compile the document, unless it is used to draft the document initially, converting a document to LaTeX format is extremely labour intensive.
	Wordzworth Formatting Engine Our developers have built some highly specialised tools to ensure both speed and accuracy when formatting documents. Our engine enables us to achieve a number of particularly labour intensive tasks at the click of a button. It is for this reason that we are able to offer such a fast, efficient, accurate service at a great price.