Editorium Update

Creating Custom Templates

December 26, 2000 – 12:00 pm

Microsoft Word comes with several templates for creating reports, press releases, resumes, and other documents. These templates can come in handy, but, as subscriber David Ibbetson writes, “The best way to use templates is to make your own according to your tastes and needs. Built-in templates can be valuable as a source of ideas, and can sometimes be modified to meet your requirements. An off-the-shelf template is unlikely to be as satisfactory as one made-to-measure.”

This is especially true of templates for editing and typesetting, which Microsoft’s off-the-shelf templates simply aren’t equipped to handle. Their main drawback is not having enough styles, especially for something as complicated as a book, which needs styles for everything from epigraphs to endnotes. If you’d like a template with lots of styles, please feel free to use, modify, and rename the highly generic Typespec template that comes with our Editor’s ToolKit program, which you can download here:

http://www.editorium.com/14842.htm

The other drawback to Word’s templates is that they don’t provide enough variety. In my opinion, nearly every publication is worthy of its own design–one that fits its subject and style. For example, Moby Dick needs a different typeface (something wild and rough-hewn) than Paradise Lost (which calls for something dignified and classical). Book design is a little beyond the scope of this newsletter, so you may want to consult such books as these:

The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst.

The Printed Word, by David A. Kater and Richard Kater.

The Art of Desktop Publishing, by Tony Bove, Cheryl Rhodes, and Wes Thomas.

Desktop Publishing with Word for Windows, by Tom Lichty.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book, by Robin Williams.

The Non-Designer’s Type Book, by Robin Williams.

Besides the templates that you use for final formatting, you’ll also need a template that you use with every document–but only while you’re *editing* the document. That template should include all of the styles you’ll use for final formatting (typesetting) but with typefaces, point sizes, and paragraph formatting that make editing easy. Currently, my favorite typeface for editing is Times New Roman, because its hyphens and dashes are so easily distinguishable from each other, as are its opening and closing curly quotation marks. You can download Times New Roman (and other useful fonts) free of charge from Microsoft here:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm?fname=%20&fsi ze=

To create a custom template, follow this procedure:

1. Create a new document.

2. Paste in a bunch of text that you can play with.

3. Create and format the styles you’ll need, experimenting on the pasted text (this will require time and care).

4. Delete the pasted text, leaving only the styles in your document.

5. Click the “File” menu.

6. Click “Save As.”

7. In the “File name” box, give your template a name that will help you remember its purpose (”Editing.dot,” “MobyDick.dot,” or whatever meets your needs).

8. In the “Save as type” box, select “Document Template (*.dot).”

9. Click the “Save” button to save the template.

I recommend using the same style names in all of your templates, even though the styles will be formatted differently from template to template. Someday when you’re converting hundreds of publications into a giant XML archive (or simply attaching a different template to a document), you’ll be glad you did. I also recommend using Word’s built-in heading styles (Heading 1 through Heading 9), which make it possible to navigate and rearrange whole sections of a document in Outline view.

Once you’ve created a template that you like, you can modify it as needed for other publishing projects, saving it with a new name for each one. After a while, you’ll have a wide variety of templates designed specifically for *your* projects and needs.

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