Formatting with Word

 

Most of us are old pros because we use Word for our manuscripts. Many authors are trying their hand at indie publishing these days. I wanted to give a few tips on formatting a document for publication.

You need several elements in your document for it to be correctly formatted for publication: headings, bookmarks, a table of contents, and hyperlinks.

Adding Headings

Highlight your chapter name or text that will be a heading. On the Home ribbon, you can choose Heading. This will reformat your text with font, size, and color. You can change the style by clicking on the arrow. Or the Design ribbon shows the styles, and you can customize them. For now, it’s easy to use what is already on the Home ribbon. Do this for each section you want in a table of contents—chapters, special pages, titles.

To view the headings all at once, press the Home ribbon and select Find. There is a prompt for Find on the right window. Below it is a tab labeled Headings. Here, the program will list all headings in order in your document. You can see if you missed a number or have two chapter sixes. 

Giving a section a heading creates a virtual table of contents, and you can move sections easily. In the Find window, click and drag a heading title to move the section to another spot. 

Be aware. Inside the document, each heading will now have a black carrot mark next to it. Clicking on the carrot with hide the section under that heading. It might look like your entire chapter eleven disappeared, but Word just stopped displaying that text. Click the carrot again to show the text.

Make a TOC page

To create a true table of contents in your document, create a page and type all the headings from your document. You can use either Page Break or Section Break to create the new page. Title the page Table of Contents. Make that text a heading as well. Now you will need to create links from your list to the headings (chapter titles, etc.). 

Creating Bookmarks

Go to each heading and highlight the text. Click on the Insert ribbon and select Bookmark. The location is marked in the document. Label each bookmark with a title (no spaces) that tells you the bookmark’s location. Something like Ch_1 or TOC (for table of contents) or CPYRT. Click Add. Word creates a virtual list of all your bookmarks. 

Linking it all together

Return to the table of contents page. Highlight a line–let’s say Chapter One. Right-click and select Link from the pop-up menu. Word will open a window asking where to link the text to. On the left is a list of choices, including Inside this Document. Choose that. You should now see all the bookmarks you created previously. Click on the correct place for the link to connect and press Okay. Your listing will be blue and underlined. Press Ctrl and click on the new link. It should take you to the bookmarked location in your document.

Repeat the steps for chapters, special pages, everything to be listed in a table of contents. Once the list is finished, link the chapter headings back to the table of contents. Highlight each heading within the document, one at a time. Right-click and choose Link, then within the document again. Click on TOC (or whatever you called the table of contents page). Then press Okay. Be sure to check all your links to ensure they work.

Your manuscript is one step closer to publication! 

I hope these tips help. I’m available for group or individual lessons on any of the programs on my blog. Contact me at ginnyfrost@ginnyfrost.com. 

 

 

 

 

Editing with Word

 

At a recent chat, some of my fellow authors asked about editing with Word. There were enough questions that I thought I’d put down some common fixes for everyone.

Setting up your document. Different publishing houses have a wide variety of styles required for their final documents. It’s a great idea to start your doc in that required format. It saves work later. Most like a double-spaced, size 12, Times New Roman font. .5 indent. 

Basics

If you’ve already written anything, SAVE YOUR WORK—either Ctrl and S or the little disc at the top of the page. Save your work often.

Word now has ribbons across the top of the page rather than drop-down menus. Click on the words Home, Insert, or Layout to change ribbons.

To select your entire document, either press Ctrl and A or use the Home ribbon, click on the down arrow next to Select, and choose Select All. Everything you’ve written will be highlighted and can be erased with a simple keystroke. If this happens, either press Ctrl and Z or go to the Home ribbon and select Undo (a curly arrow going left). Undo is your friend. Keep him close.

Spacing

With your doc highlighted, choose the Home ribbon again and Paragraph. Click on the small arrow at the bottom of the Paragraph section. This will open the detailed paragraphing menu. At the bottom of the pop-out menu, click on Line spacing. Choose Single, 1.5, Double, and so on. Most editors like double.

Tabs

Editors do not like us to use the tab button and dislike five spaces even worse. This menu is where you can set your paragraph indents automatically. In the center of the menu, click on the down arrow to Indent. Choose .3 or .5 for most professional documents. Press Done when finished. This will indent all your paragraphs automatically. 

Using ***

Another problem writers frequently find is Word placing a line across the page when they try to create a section break. That line Word creates is actually a border. Autocorrect changes your **** into a line automatically. Use Undo to fix this if you can. If you find it later, you can edit it by highlighting the line, and going to the Home ribbon on the Paragraph section. Use the small grid with a line at the bottom. Remove the border by deselecting the spot where Word created the border. Now you can reenter your scene break, and watch carefully that Word doesn’t put that line back in. 

Curly Quotation Marks

Word sometimes puts one in going the wrong direction. Highlight the incorrect mark and go to the Insert ribbon Click on Symbol. Click More Symbols. This pop-up will show various symbols for the font you are using. Choose the correct curly quote and close the menu.

This is also the place to enter an em dash —. Click in the spot where you want to insert the symbol. Again, click on Insert, Symbol, More Symbols. Click on the Special Characters tab. Click on the symbol you want (em dash or whatever) and press Insert. The menu does not close. You can click in other spots if you need a symbol. Click Close when finished.

Section breaks

Click where you want a Section break. Many publishers do not wish you to use Page break. Click on the Layout ribbon and click on the down arrow next to Breaks. Choose from Next Page, Continuous, Even, and Odd. Next page sends the section to a new page. Continuous keeps the two sections on the same page. This one differs from a page break.

Invisibles

Invisibles are symbols that represent formatting marks such as spaces, enter marks, etc. On the Home ribbon, click on the paragraph symbol ¶. New characters will appear in your document. FYI These symbols do not show up in printed material. With the Invisibles on, you can see many formatting problems, such as double carriage returns, two spaces between characters, and more. Many formatting issues can be solved by just viewing these marks. Click the Paragraph symbol again to turn off Invisibles.

Find/Replace

Find is on the Home Ribbon in the Editing section. Using this tool, you can search your entire document for overused words, numbers that should be spelled out, etc.. Find/Replace is great for looking for formatting issues such as two spaces after a period or fixing a character name. Note, try NOT to use Replace All. This can lead to some funky errors, such as replacing the name Ann with Sandy. You might get words like Sandyotated (annotated) or Sandyoed (annoyed). Funny but annoying to fix. Pun intended.

Most fixes for Word can be solved with Undo. You can click the down arrow next to Undo on the Home ribbon to see a list of things Word can undo. Autoformat is usually the culprit of many issues as well. You can go back to an auto-formatted text and click on the blue undo arrow on that one instance of the fix. Sometimes Word likes to think for you, but you’re the better writer.

Hope this helps!

 

Weebly for Authors

 

Weebly is easy to use once you start. I’m still having trouble getting my computer to log in properly with one click. It could be a Firefox issue or my login, but I thought I’d give you a heads-up. Also, it doesn’t let me refresh the login page on Firefox. I have to reenter the website address.

Other than that, I found creating a new site with Weebly easy. Elements were easy to add and rearrange. The color choices were lovely and current. There hasn’t been any of that silly WordPress “Update these themes” every day. The site updates immediately, and the content looks great.

Another plus for Weebly is the connection to Square. Now that Square owns the software, it’s easy to create a store for your merchandise, books, or whatever. I have my Square account set with my book bundles, autographed copies, and my cross stitch bookmarks. Weebly automatically adds a shop page for me with the items with the prices. Through the Square software, you can work out how to charge shipping, tax, and what not. You can edit the page in the Weebly app as well.

Other ideas for Weebly for authors

Note: to turn “off” a page on Weebly, go to Home page, Headings, Navigation, Navigation links, and remove the page from Navigation.

I mentioned having an Event page for any personal appearances, live or virtual. You can add vendor info, location, and items for sale. Then, after the event, you can turn that page off on your navigation menu. That way, it’s only up before an event, and you still have the information if you attend/visit/zoom another time.

Weebly lets you duplicate pages as you build the site. The duplicate page doesn’t need to be live until you’re ready. You can change content/colors/images around before putting the info out there. Have a new book? Then duplicate your book/series page with the new book and turn on the new page when it’s live. (Also, turn off the old page.) Be aware of the link addresses. You may need to change links to this page if you use the duplicate.

This turning on and off pages works great for secret content. My new book coming out in February is a closed-door romance. I write steamy. I plan to put my steamy scenes on non-public pages for readers. Once the book is out, I’ll send the address of the page directly. No one will get to the page without the address. It works great for extra content, deleted scenes, secret cover reveals, or whatever you want to place behind a closed door. If you upgrade your Weebly account, you can even have password protected pages for this content.

Weebly has much to offer with content. Design, not so much. That’s more up to you to create a vibrant page with color and images. It has the advantage of not having to play with the plugins from WordPress. Honestly, I do not know how good the software is at repelling spam attacks. But my good friend D.V. Stone has used Weebly for years, and her site is strong.

We could spend months going through the options for this app, but these posts will start you on a new author site.

Good luck!