Automatic and unwanted reverting to other fonts and sizes

[Montserrat]

G3 wallstreet powerbook
233 hz
320 ram
0S 9.2.2
word 2001

What to do when text reverts or defaults(?) to a different and undesired
size or font, when an action is taken such as moving a paragraph back into a
previous paragraph using the delete key?

There may have been some previous and intentional paste into the text of a
different font or size, which was immediately selected and converted into
the document's font and size. But that may have been some time past.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Montserrat:

Please read the Word Help topic " What formatting is applied when you copy
text between documents?"

One thing you won't see in the help file, however, is the rules that get
applied when you delete a paragraph mark. The paragraph mark contains the
majority of the formatting for a paragraph. When you delete one, what
"should" happen is that the formatting of the lower paragraph should flow
backwards into the formatting of the upper one.

In practice, the opposite happens. It was decided that having formatting
flow "forwards" was counter-intuitive to users who didn't understand Word's
formatting. So they fudged it. Word makes a copy of the formatting in the
paragraph mark about to be deleted, then copies that forward to the one
below before the deletion.

It helps to know that Word's formatting is a series of properties. When
formatting is moved from one bit of text to another, a Boolean Addition is
performed. That means the formatting of the style is applied first, then
the Direct Formatting is added over the top in Boolean fashion.

For example, if the font is bold and you apply a bold font, you "get"
non-bold, because one set of formatting switches the bold property, and so
does the second. If the property is either "ON" (bold) or "OFF" (not bold)
the copy or move of two formats that both specify "ON" results in the
property in the text being "OFF". It switches twice: ON then switch means
OFF. Yeah, I know... It "is" a bit counter-intuitive.

But don't lose sight of what I said about the style. The style is applied
first. Now the name of the style is held in the paragraph mark. When you
delete the paragraph mark, the name of the style is moved to the paragraph
below.

Now stay with me...

The Direct formatting applied to some or all of the text "within" the
paragraph is now acting on new underlying formatting coming in from a
different style. If both of the paragraphs had the same paragraph style,
you won't see a change. If they didn't, you will. Because of the Boolean
nature of the operation, the change "can" be dramatic.

Which is WHY we recommend that you do all of your formatting with styles.
It takes a day or so to get the hang of working with styles, applying them,
and setting the properties of the styles the way you want.

After that, Word's formatting works for you every time, and you don't get
any nasty surprises. The effort is worth it.

Cheers

G3 wallstreet powerbook
233 hz
320 ram
0S 9.2.2
word 2001

What to do when text reverts or defaults(?) to a different and undesired
size or font, when an action is taken such as moving a paragraph back into a
previous paragraph using the delete key?

There may have been some previous and intentional paste into the text of a
different font or size, which was immediately selected and converted into
the document's font and size. But that may have been some time past.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Before learning about styles and the role of the paragraph mark, to work
around this problem I:
--spent a lot of time pasting as unformatted text (you can record an easy
macro and assign a shortcut key)
--spent a lot of time changing my default font--having noticed that if I
reset the default when I reformatted a doc, text would copy nicely into
other documents later, automatically changing to match what had been the
default in that doc

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Montserrat-

Points well made by John, especially the importance of Styles. FWIW,
though, the way Word works when you delete a para mark has always made
sense to me. The logic being that by deleteing the mark, you are
indicating that the next para not be a separate para and are joining it
as an extension of the preceding text. As a result it seems appropriate
that what used to be a para of it's own now formats as the para it is
being included into.

With the understanding that "finished" docs still need to be revised
from time to time, here is a suggestion that may be helpful when
creating new documents - Avoid the temptation to format "on the fly".
Once the doc is complete, edited, reorganized, spell-checked, etc.,
target the specific areas to be formatted and apply formatting as one
of the last things to be done. Styles help immensely, but even direct
formatting is easier to deal with. If not using Styles, you may also
find it beneficial to apply character formatting first (due to
proportional spacing considerations) & paragraph formatting afterwards.

Another often overlooked point in docs with more complex formatting is
that using "empty" paras to separate those containing text is best
avoided in the first place by using the Spacing Before and Spacing
After settings of the Paragraph Formatting features. Far more control
over doc flow and also helps avoid the type of issues you ran into.

It also helps to take advantage of Paste Special to determine whether
the text being pasted retains it's own formatting or takes on the
formatting of the text it's being pasted into.

Hope some of this is useful |:>)

 

[Montserrat]

CyberTaz
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
matt neuburg, phd = (e-mail address removed), http://www.tidbits.com/matt/

Thanks for the answers.

Montserrat

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Matt:

That's because there's "something" anchored to the paragraph. Usually, a
table or section break, but it can be a tracked change or hidden comment.

This is a kludge they put into Word 97 to try to reduce document
corruptions. The internal "boundary" between a table and a paragraph can
become blurred due to the fact that a "Table" is simply a special case of
paragraph: it's a repeating structure of dependent child paragraphs.
Previously if you deleted a paragraph immediately adjacent to a table, you
could get a corrupt table and thus document.

So they added a cheap-and-nasty fix that declared certain paragraphs to be
"protected". You can't delete them!

this can be rather difficult; sometimes Word won't let you delete a
paragraph mark, and I've never figured out why not). This is one reason
why it is very important to show paragraph marks at all times. m.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi CT:

Points well made by John, especially the importance of Styles. FWIW,
though, the way Word works when you delete a para mark has always made
sense to me. The logic being that by deleteing the mark, you are
indicating that the next para not be a separate para and are joining it
as an extension of the preceding text. As a result it seems appropriate
that what used to be a para of it's own now formats as the para it is
being included into.

That is why they made the change. Users who do not understand the operation
of the Word paragraph, as being an object terminator that contains the
properties of the object, would find the new behaviour "logical".

Those of us who got used to how the Word Document Object Model is "supposed"
to work see this as an exception that reverses the expected behaviour

With the understanding that "finished" docs still need to be revised
from time to time, here is a suggestion that may be helpful when
creating new documents - Avoid the temptation to format "on the fly".
Once the doc is complete, edited, reorganized, spell-checked, etc.,
target the specific areas to be formatted and apply formatting as one
of the last things to be done.

This is actually a very important and fundamental point when moving from
"hacking and chopping" to advanced use of Word. I express it as "Get the
words right first, then format them", but it means the same thing.

While you are changing words, the layout of your document is constantly
changing. There is no point in changing the formatting until the layout is
stable.

Those of us who began in the industry before word processors existed do this
as a matter of course. In those days, changing the formatting was a lot of
work, you wanted to do it only once. Back in the days of hot metal type,
journalists who wanted to change a few words here and there in their stories
after the type was cast in lead, got to buy a lot of rounds of drinks at the
pub until they learned not to do that...

It also helps to take advantage of Paste Special to determine whether
the text being pasted retains it's own formatting or takes on the
formatting of the text it's being pasted into.

In the latest version of Word, if you leave Word>Preferences>Edit>Show paste
options buttons turned on, it will prompt you on each paste.

Cheers
--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[matt neuburg]

Hi Matt:

That's because there's "something" anchored to the paragraph. Usually, a
table or section break, but it can be a tracked change or hidden comment.

This is a kludge they put into Word 97 to try to reduce document
corruptions. The internal "boundary" between a table and a paragraph can
become blurred due to the fact that a "Table" is simply a special case of
paragraph: it's a repeating structure of dependent child paragraphs.
Previously if you deleted a paragraph immediately adjacent to a table, you
could get a corrupt table and thus document.

So they added a cheap-and-nasty fix that declared certain paragraphs to be
"protected". You can't delete them!

Thanks - I always wondered! m.