Word Manuscript -> Book Format

[Guest]

I have an A4 word document, with about 10 styles, chapter & book titles in
headers and page numbers in footers.

I have to convert this document to a 'book' format. This means a special page
size, different font, substitution of styles, probably some changes to the
chapters and the paragraph formatting has to change to justified + first line
indent + exact line spacing/ paragraph spacing.

I tried working with a copy of the existing A4 document and resizing the page
and changing styles but that produced a lot of inconsistencies - and real
problems if you made an changes from the "page layout" menu. So this does not
seem a good idea.

My current plan is to make a new template with the page size and styles set and
add some dummy text to to produce a good working template - and then copy /
paste the text, from the existing document, to book one chapter at a time.

I was wondering, before I embark on this exercise, if there were any drawbacks
with this idea or perhaps better ways of doing this?

All suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,





Steven

 

[Elliott Roper]

I have an A4 word document, with about 10 styles, chapter & book titles in
headers and page numbers in footers.

I have to convert this document to a 'book' format. This means a special page
size, different font, substitution of styles, probably some changes to the
chapters and the paragraph formatting has to change to justified + first line
indent + exact line spacing/ paragraph spacing.

I tried working with a copy of the existing A4 document and resizing the page
and changing styles but that produced a lot of inconsistencies - and real
problems if you made an changes from the "page layout" menu. So this does not
seem a good idea.

My current plan is to make a new template with the page size and styles set
and
add some dummy text to to produce a good working template - and then copy /
paste the text, from the existing document, to book one chapter at a time.

I was wondering, before I embark on this exercise, if there were any
drawbacks
with this idea or perhaps better ways of doing this?

All suggestions appreciated.

If you must use Word, that is the right way to go about it.

If you are serious about getting your book properly laid out, Word is
the wrong program. It is a Word processor. It is not a page or book
layout program. Word's line and page breaks are slippery creatures. Its
typography is up there with the best ransom notes.

It is amazingly easy to pour your doc into Adobe InDesign and fix it
from there. The results will be stunning.
There is a 30 day free trial if you can work fast. ;-)
Work with your printer/typesetter on the detail of margins and
registration marks and fonts and image resolution and colour spaces
before you get too far into the job.

 

[Guest]

If you must use Word, that is the right way to go about it.

If you are serious about getting your book properly laid out, Word is
the wrong program. It is a Word processor. It is not a page or book
layout program. Word's line and page breaks are slippery creatures. Its
typography is up there with the best ransom notes.

It is amazingly easy to pour your doc into Adobe InDesign and fix it
from there. The results will be stunning.
There is a 30 day free trial if you can work fast. ;-)
Work with your printer/typesetter on the detail of margins and
registration marks and fonts and image resolution and colour spaces
before you get too far into the job.

Thanks Elliott,

I am a little concerned about moving over to InDesign as I do not know the
product at all, and I suspect the learning curve is quite steep - though I
appreciate your suggestion.

I need to deliver the book in postscript (via Adobe Distiller) to a Xerox
Docutech printer. I have used Word a few times this way - but not for anything
as substantial as this.

I will download the InDesign 30 day demo and have a look. Do you know any good
tutorial sites for the product?

Regards,



Steven

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, this is a good approach. If you have used styles in the original
manuscript, you can modify the same styles in your template to produce the
results you want in the typeset book.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks Elliott,

I am a little concerned about moving over to InDesign as I do not know the
product at all, and I suspect the learning curve is quite steep - though I
appreciate your suggestion.

I need to deliver the book in postscript (via Adobe Distiller) to a Xerox
Docutech printer. I have used Word a few times this way - but not for
anything
as substantial as this.

I will download the InDesign 30 day demo and have a look. Do you know any
good
tutorial sites for the product?

The tryout has good doco. I did a 48 page booklet with lots of
illustrations and advertisements and fancy setting with the tryout
completely from scratch, but I did know a bit about typesetting. I
still had 20 days of the 30 left to run when I got the near perfect
proofs back from the printers. A novel would have been easier, as long
as the copy was perfect in Word before starting, but a technical book
with diagrams and equations would have taken a lot more than 30 days.

If you are working via Distiller, Word would have a good chance of
succeeding too. You can squash the layout bugs before sending it off to
the printer. It is something like herding cats isn't it?

It's a tough call. InDesign's typography is way better than Word's.
That will be important if you are setting justified. Placing art
perfectly is far easier in InDesign. But it costs a lot of money if it
still ain't done when the trial expires.

 

[Guest]

If you are working via Distiller, Word would have a good chance of
succeeding too. You can squash the layout bugs before sending it off to
the printer. It is something like herding cats isn't it?

It's a tough call. InDesign's typography is way better than Word's.
That will be important if you are setting justified. Placing art
perfectly is far easier in InDesign. But it costs a lot of money if it
still ain't done when the trial expires.

Your description of Word's layout bugs as 'herding cats' is accurate and delightful!

The manuscript is text with only one diagram. It is ideal for Word, and indeed I
need to keep it in Word to make pdf's for sample chapter downloads (which will
need to be A4).

However the printed 'book' format is not A4 and the issue I have is converting
the near-finished A4 document into a book with much smaller pages, different
fonts, justification and so on. Unfortunately Word does not handle this type of
transition very smoothly.

I will download the sample copy of InDesign and take a look at it!




Steven

 

[Guest]

Yes, this is a good approach. If you have used styles in the original
manuscript, you can modify the same styles in your template to produce the
results you want in the typeset book.

Thanks Suzanne,

My problem is this. The manuscript is in A4 format, with appropriate fonts,
justification etc. I need two versions of the document as it will be published
in two formats.

The first is the final manuscript (Word A4) -> PDF for download from the web
site. I can easily do this via Adobe Distiller.

The second, as postscript for printing as a hardback book, with a much smaller
page size, different fonts (hence styles) and formatting.

The issue I am working on is getting the text from the first format to the
second in most reasonable and efficient manner.

What I have discovered, so far, is that it is very hard work making a copy of
the manuscript and then doing via 'Page Setup' to re-size the pages, amend the
styles etc. I need to get the text across into a new document (using a new
template) without bringing over the styles - but keeping some formatting (like
words in italics & bold).

I might be making a mountain out of a molehill here but my preliminary efforts
seem to indicate that there is no easy/consistent way to do this with Word 2000.

Would appreciate any insights you might have!

Kind regards,




Steven

 

[Robert M. Franz]

Hi Steven

My problem is this. The manuscript is in A4 format, with appropriate
fonts, justification etc. I need two versions of the document as it will
be published in two formats.

It's always a tough question: You can actually work with one single
document. If you work very carefully with styles, avoid direct
formatting alltogether, then it's not so hard to change the layout of
the document: You will need two sets of your styles (named alike, but
with different font sizes and spacing, place them in separate templates)
and then you copy all styles from the one or from the other to your
document. Globally changing page format and margins shouldn't bother you
if you can apply the correct styles with a few mouseclicks through the
Organizer. Then, you only once need to make manual hyphenation (use the
CTRL SHIFT -)

The first is the final manuscript (Word A4) -> PDF for download from the
web site. I can easily do this via Adobe Distiller.

The second, as postscript for printing as a hardback book, with a much
smaller page size, different fonts (hence styles) and formatting.

The issue I am working on is getting the text from the first format to
the second in most reasonable and efficient manner.

The other approach would be to use one source document for the content,
which you can load into documents based on different templates.

What I have discovered, so far, is that it is very hard work making a
copy of the manuscript and then doing via 'Page Setup' to re-size the
pages, amend the styles etc. I need to get the text across into a new
document (using a new template) without bringing over the styles - but
keeping some formatting (like words in italics & bold).

Use character styles a lot: Then you can change italics to bold (often a
good idea when changing a paper-oriented document (book) to
screen-oriented (PDF).

I might be making a mountain out of a molehill here but my preliminary
efforts seem to indicate that there is no easy/consistent way to do this
with Word 2000.

Would appreciate any insights you might have!

If you want to stick to Word, maybe the following article can give you
some insights:

Creating a Template (Part II, by John McGhie)
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm

Greetinx
..bob

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You don't want to lose or change the styles; that is, you don't want to
change one style for another. What you want to do is modify the styles. For
example, if your body text is 12 pt TNR in your manuscript but you want it
to be 10 pt Book Antiqua in the book, if you have applied Body Text style,
all you have to do in the book format is modify the Body Text style, and the
changes will be automatic. I assure you this is the easiest approach; I have
converted many manuscripts to CRC for books, and this is what I do: even if
every style in the manuscript is bog-standard 12 pt TNR, provided you have
applied the appropriate style to every paragraph, the conversion is quite
smooth.

 

[Guest]

You don't want to lose or change the styles; that is, you don't want to
change one style for another. What you want to do is modify the styles. For
example, if your body text is 12 pt TNR in your manuscript but you want it
to be 10 pt Book Antiqua in the book, if you have applied Body Text style,
all you have to do in the book format is modify the Body Text style, and the
changes will be automatic. I assure you this is the easiest approach; I have
converted many manuscripts to CRC for books, and this is what I do: even if
every style in the manuscript is bog-standard 12 pt TNR, provided you have
applied the appropriate style to every paragraph, the conversion is quite
smooth.

Thanks Suzanne...this is the tactic I am going to employ!

What about the change of page size....is there a 'safe' way to achieve this - or
am I being just too worried?

Regards,



Steven

 

[Guest]

Hi Steven



It's always a tough question: You can actually work with one single
document. If you work very carefully with styles, avoid direct
formatting alltogether, then it's not so hard to change the layout of
the document: You will need two sets of your styles (named alike, but
with different font sizes and spacing, place them in separate templates)
and then you copy all styles from the one or from the other to your
document. Globally changing page format and margins shouldn't bother you
if you can apply the correct styles with a few mouseclicks through the
Organizer. Then, you only once need to make manual hyphenation (use the
CTRL SHIFT -)




The other approach would be to use one source document for the content,
which you can load into documents based on different templates.




Use character styles a lot: Then you can change italics to bold (often a
good idea when changing a paper-oriented document (book) to
screen-oriented (PDF).




If you want to stick to Word, maybe the following article can give you
some insights:

Creating a Template (Part II, by John McGhie)
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm

Greetinx
.bob

Thanks Robert,

I am going to make a "book" template and change the styles - experiment with
both. Am ploughing my way through the great FAQ you suggested. Much appreciated.

Regards,




Steven

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not sure how this works for a PDF, as I have no experience with that.
When I create CRC for a book, I use a standard Letter page but reduce the
active text area by increasing the margins. I add an outline of the page
size while I'm working to give some sense of the page (this is replaced by
crop marks before I give the copy to the printer). For a PDF I imagine you
would have to change the actual page size, and in order to do this in Word
you may have to have the Adobe printer selected as the default while you're
working on the document. Create a document with the desired page size and
margins (not forgetting the header/footer margins) and then either insert
the manuscript file (if there are no section breaks) or copy/paste it in in
chunks. Be careful not to include any section breaks, as they will contain
page-level formatting.

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure how this works for a PDF, as I have no experience with that.
When I create CRC for a book, I use a standard Letter page but reduce the
active text area by increasing the margins. I add an outline of the page
size while I'm working to give some sense of the page (this is replaced by
crop marks before I give the copy to the printer). For a PDF I imagine you
would have to change the actual page size, and in order to do this in Word
you may have to have the Adobe printer selected as the default while you're
working on the document. Create a document with the desired page size and
margins (not forgetting the header/footer margins) and then either insert
the manuscript file (if there are no section breaks) or copy/paste it in in
chunks. Be careful not to include any section breaks, as they will contain
page-level formatting.

Thank u very much Suzanne. I think my trials did copy over section breaks and
that was the problem! I will try again!


Steven