Roger,
I'm assuming that by saying "the bullet could be not just a symbol or a
single but a whole word (or even words)" you don't really want a symbol at
all. If I'm right (maybe not -- it's very early in the morning down here),
then I agree with Daiya's aside, and I know others would: forget about
bullet styles for this -- it may complicate other formatting (automatic
bulleting and numbering is flaky in Word; corruption of the document can
easily result.
If you do avoid automatic bulleting, the essence as I see it is that you
want two things (again, I may not be guessing quite right):
1. A paragraph style with say a hanging indent that would result in the
name of the character sticking out to the left of the narrative.
2. Something that specifies the name of a main character, followed by a
colon and a tab that would set the character's name in the hanging indent.
You would do this by creating [1] as Daiya has recommended:
Go to Format | Style, click New to create a new style, check the "add to
template" box to make it available in new documents, but do *not* check
"automatically update."
In the styles definition you would nominate that the following paragraph
(when you press Return) would be the same paragraph style.
Post back if you need more on this.
The 2nd step involves dropping in the name of a main character, within a
paragraph formatted as above. You do that with an AutoText entry; you could
have different entries for different main characters and a generic one in
which you could type in the name of a minor character. Here's how:
Type (without the "" or [ ] or spaces) "Detective Smith [colon] [tab]
[single or double quotation mark]"
Apply your new style to that paragraph. You may wish to e.g. italicize the
character's name.
Select the paragraph.
Choose Insert menu -> AutoText -> New and give the entry a name starting
with an abbreviation, such as "dvs,Detective Smith".
To insert this entry, you type (without the quotation marks) "dvs" then key
Command-Option-v. The text, formatted in your new style, will appear.
There's an even simpler way if you are already in one of your new paragraphs
(and if you nominate that the following paragraph when you press Return will
be the same paragraph style, you will be -- you use AutoCorrect.
Type (without the quotation marks or [ ] or spaces) "Detective Smith [colon]
[tab] [quotation mark].
Select what you have typed.
Choose Tools menu -> AutoCorrect.
In the left ("Replace") box, type an abbreviation. Be careful here --
AutoCorrect will expand this whenever you type it. Maybe limit the chance of
this cutting in in an entirely different context by preceding with "k" (for
"karacter"). So Detective Smith would be kds.
In the right ("With") box, you'll see "Detective Smith:*". Click on the
"Formatted text" button -> Add -> OK.
Now, in one of the new paragraphs, just type "kds" and voila!
Let us know how this suits, or if you need further guidance. You will also
find AutoText and AutoCorrect covered in some notes on the way I use Word
for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your Will", which are available as a free
download from the Word MVPs' website
(
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm).
[Note: "Bend Word to your will" is designed to be used electronically and
most subjects are self-contained dictionary-style entries. Be sure to read
the front end so you can use the document to best advantage and select the
right settings for reading it.]
(The text following "covered in" in the second paragraph above, plus all of
the paragraph above, were inserted by two AutoCorrect entries. And I only
type "autocorrect" -- that's replaced by "AutoCorrect". As you might guess,
I use it a lot -- mostly, as in this case, plain text entries.)
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 7 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================
Actually, I think you can do this.
You need to start with a Numbered style, not a Bullet style, and Customize
it. Then you can put text as a prefix, and set it to no numbers. You would
need two styles, one for suspect and one for detective. This type of thing
works best for interviews, e.g., a Question style and a Response style.
Here are some slightly incomplete directions--you'll probably need to do
some experimenting--I know the technique but have not practiced it.
I would suggest that you create this as a new style. It can be achieved via
Format | Bullets and Numbering, but re-using it may be unreliable that way.
Go to Format | Style, click New to create a new style, check the "add to
template" box to make it available in new documents, but do *not* check
"automatically update."
In the new style dialog, click on the Format dropdown and select Numbering.
Select any style in the Numbered pane, click on Customize, and set your
prefix and no number. Use Format to get whatever other settings you
want--e.g., hanging indent.
Repeat for other style.
You can make life a little easier by setting "style for following paragraph"
to the other one, and probably want both styles based on the same style,
even if you don't base them on Normal style.
If you have never heard of styles, please start here:
http://shaunakelly.com/word/styles/TipsOnStyles.html
And read a few links first.
On 10/16/05 11:41 AM, "Roger Morris" wrote:
I have a wish!
That Word would provide an extended 'bullet" capability for bullet
lists. Namely that the bullet could be not just a symbol or a single
letter but a whole word (or even words).
Consider a conversation or a play or indeed any sort of script/list with
repetitive 'leaders' (bullet words)
Detective <tab> "What is the weather in your area?"
Suspect <tab> "I don't know, I'm hiding"
Detective ...
Suspect ...
and so on ad-inf.
Of course the right hand side could be a multiple lines paragraph.
Just a couple of simple bullet styles would make it easy to automate the
'leader' or 'bullet'. (maybe "leader" is not a good choice of word here
but ...?)
Can it be done?
Sorry about the unlikely story line
