J
John McGhie
This one just whistled past my desk: I thought I would share it with
everyone else. Now THIS is the way to 'encourage' lazy Word users...
Dear <Person>:
The new documents are impossibly bad, and I do mean impossibly bad. They are
among the worst documents I've ever seen.
The problem is this:
Word is a text-flow application. By default, it places the first character
in a document at the upper left corner of the page (for western languages,
anyway), taking into account page margins and the header/footer area and any
indents or alignments or other properties applied to the paragraph that
contains that character.
And from there, each new character is placed to the right of the previous
one until Word reaches the right margin or until a paragraph mark or
linebreak character appears, at which point text automatically flows to the
next line, and the left-to-right flow of characters continues.
Anyone who is serious about editing documents in Word knows that this is how
text flows on the page, and they know how to achieve desired placement of
text on the page without violating this very predictable and orderly text
flow.
For example, a knowledgeable user knows that text can be centered between
the margins by changing the paragraph's "alignment" property. But a foolish
or ignorant user can achieve the same result by introducing a string of
spaces or tab characters to move the text to the desired position between
the margins. A truly foolish or ignorant user can achieve the same result a
variety of other ways with the help of frames, textboxes, tables, or
graphics. The most foolish or ignorant user of all will refuse to
standardize on any single method and instead will rely on a different method
of centering text every time text needs to be centered.
If you're the only one who is going to use a document, it doesn't matter how
you center your text. If you later decide to left justify the text, you can
do so by undoing whatever action you took to center it. If you have an ounce
of concern for your efficiency, however, you will soon learn that some ways
of centering text are more easily and more predictably modified or undone
than others, and you will gravitate toward a method that maximizes your
efficiency.
If other people are going to use a document, then they will help you develop
some concern for efficiency, because the decisions you make about how to
center the text will have a major impact in that case not only on your own
efficiency but on the efficiency of the other users.
The person who prepared your documents is either willfully obtuse or else
has never been forced to experience the consequences of how he or she has
placed text on the page. Rather than exploit Word's built-in, highly
predictable, and completely reliable text flow behavior, the user has
instead used an incredibly complex, unpredictable, and
impossible-to-maintain combination of methods for achieving text placement
on the page.
Ignorance undoubtedly goes a long way toward explaining this, but in the
case of your documents the ignorance involved has been elevated to a new
level of perfection. (Who says perfection can't be improved upon?)
Composed as they are, the documents are impossible to edit, impossible to
maintain, and impossible to combine with other documents with any degree of
flexibility, predictability, or efficiency. If I hired someone to prepare
documents for me, and this is what they came up with, I would either buy
them a book or send them to a class or else fire them on the spot. I would
lean strongly toward the last of these alternatives, because the level of
thoughtlessness involved is truly staggering.
I wish I could be more positive, but your documents are truly the worst I've
ever seen. There is no way that I can even list all the ignorant and (worse)
stupid techniques that have been employed. My favorite is the idea of
implementing page footers by using a floating table and dragging it to the
bottom of the page, rather than using Word's built-in footer capability. But
there are so many examples of ignorance and stupidity in these documents
that it's hard to single out just one for special attention. The combination
is truly overwhelming and renders the documents unusable.
P.S. Please don't think that there is anything special about the problem of
centering text. This is just one of many tasks that confront a Word user,
and so I used it to illustrate the problems present in your documents. If
you could wave a magic wand and eliminate the problems related to centering,
your documents would still have more in common with a dog's breakfast than
an instrument of corporate policy and procedure.
Cheers all...
--
The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]
everyone else. Now THIS is the way to 'encourage' lazy Word users...
Dear <Person>:
The new documents are impossibly bad, and I do mean impossibly bad. They are
among the worst documents I've ever seen.
The problem is this:
Word is a text-flow application. By default, it places the first character
in a document at the upper left corner of the page (for western languages,
anyway), taking into account page margins and the header/footer area and any
indents or alignments or other properties applied to the paragraph that
contains that character.
And from there, each new character is placed to the right of the previous
one until Word reaches the right margin or until a paragraph mark or
linebreak character appears, at which point text automatically flows to the
next line, and the left-to-right flow of characters continues.
Anyone who is serious about editing documents in Word knows that this is how
text flows on the page, and they know how to achieve desired placement of
text on the page without violating this very predictable and orderly text
flow.
For example, a knowledgeable user knows that text can be centered between
the margins by changing the paragraph's "alignment" property. But a foolish
or ignorant user can achieve the same result by introducing a string of
spaces or tab characters to move the text to the desired position between
the margins. A truly foolish or ignorant user can achieve the same result a
variety of other ways with the help of frames, textboxes, tables, or
graphics. The most foolish or ignorant user of all will refuse to
standardize on any single method and instead will rely on a different method
of centering text every time text needs to be centered.
If you're the only one who is going to use a document, it doesn't matter how
you center your text. If you later decide to left justify the text, you can
do so by undoing whatever action you took to center it. If you have an ounce
of concern for your efficiency, however, you will soon learn that some ways
of centering text are more easily and more predictably modified or undone
than others, and you will gravitate toward a method that maximizes your
efficiency.
If other people are going to use a document, then they will help you develop
some concern for efficiency, because the decisions you make about how to
center the text will have a major impact in that case not only on your own
efficiency but on the efficiency of the other users.
The person who prepared your documents is either willfully obtuse or else
has never been forced to experience the consequences of how he or she has
placed text on the page. Rather than exploit Word's built-in, highly
predictable, and completely reliable text flow behavior, the user has
instead used an incredibly complex, unpredictable, and
impossible-to-maintain combination of methods for achieving text placement
on the page.
Ignorance undoubtedly goes a long way toward explaining this, but in the
case of your documents the ignorance involved has been elevated to a new
level of perfection. (Who says perfection can't be improved upon?)
Composed as they are, the documents are impossible to edit, impossible to
maintain, and impossible to combine with other documents with any degree of
flexibility, predictability, or efficiency. If I hired someone to prepare
documents for me, and this is what they came up with, I would either buy
them a book or send them to a class or else fire them on the spot. I would
lean strongly toward the last of these alternatives, because the level of
thoughtlessness involved is truly staggering.
I wish I could be more positive, but your documents are truly the worst I've
ever seen. There is no way that I can even list all the ignorant and (worse)
stupid techniques that have been employed. My favorite is the idea of
implementing page footers by using a floating table and dragging it to the
bottom of the page, rather than using Word's built-in footer capability. But
there are so many examples of ignorance and stupidity in these documents
that it's hard to single out just one for special attention. The combination
is truly overwhelming and renders the documents unusable.
P.S. Please don't think that there is anything special about the problem of
centering text. This is just one of many tasks that confront a Word user,
and so I used it to illustrate the problems present in your documents. If
you could wave a magic wand and eliminate the problems related to centering,
your documents would still have more in common with a dog's breakfast than
an instrument of corporate policy and procedure.
Cheers all...
--
The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]
