Hi Jim:
Sorry, you have to break the tables into two.
My suggestion is normally unprintable, so I will translate it into the
polite version here, since this is a family newspaper: "Any person too
stupid to realise that, if they cannot see "words" after a table, that means
there will be more of the table on the next page, should not be allowed to
read your book: they may hurt themselves!"
The "... Continued on next page" and "Table 23 (Continued)" nonsense is just
a piece of time-wasting sophistry that does not belong in modern publishing.
But style guides still insist on it, so you have to do it.
You're right, you split the table. However, you need to be sneaky about HOW
you do it.
Lets assume we have:
Table 23 Properties of bad style guides
Item Characterisation Cause
No Sex Boring Stupidity
No Pictures Really boring Laziness
You split the table at the bottom of the first page.
On the second page, you set the top THREE rows to "Heading rows repeat"
Table 23 Properties of bad style guides (Continued)
Item Characterisation Cause
So: Put the caption itself into the first row, a blank row, then the real
headings in the third row. The entire block will repeat at the top of each
page. Add the word "(Continued)".
You then need to make yourself a blank row with "...Continued" in the right
cell, and copy it to the bottom of each page of the table.
Use "Keep with next" on the top two or three rows on each page to make sure
that none of those rows can flip back a page and appear below your
continuation row.
Note that Keep with Next won't work unless you set "Allow rows to break
across pages" to OFF, which you should do anyway for the majority of tables.
Readers should never be asked to chase content across pages.
Make a secondary style "Based on" your Caption style and use it for the
split headers, otherwise you will get an entry in your list of tables for
each page of the table.
Sorry. I know it is a fiddle. Years back, we asked Microsoft to give us a
proper "Table Continuation" function, but at that stage it was too much cost
for too little benefit. We dropped the request some time back, because it's
practically NEVER required these days, once you beat some sense into the
author of the style guide.
Lines and boxes and all the various other "...Continued" navigational
horrors that were foisted upon us by the Information Mapping fraternity have
basically nearly all been thrown out of current practice.
Basically: Any book that has been properly designed and consistently laid
out will be totally self-explanatory to anyone with enough brains to be able
to READ. And those who cannot read are beyond our help.
Information Mapping has some good concepts in it, such as chunking and
flows. But proper technical writing includes them anyway, and if you have
them, you don't need the ugly lines and boxes and continuation lines, which
simply add visual clutter to the page and annoy the experienced reader
Just my rant... Hope it helps
Hello everyone,
My dissertation style handbook requires that when tables continue
across a page, both the Table Number (with continuted) and the column
spanners (headings) be repeated at the top of the next page. I've
formatted all of the titles as captions above the table (so I can auto
generate a list of tables), and set the first row (spanners) to "repeat
as header row at top of each page." But . . only the header row repeats
and there does not seem to be any way to insert the required "Table X
(continued)" title before the table continues. Does anyone have a
suggestion, other than to break all of these tables into TWO tables?
Thanks in advance.
js
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John McGhie <
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Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
