How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon: MS Word Styles

My apologies for all the posts today, but I didn't want to include step-by-step tutorials in this blog post so I made three separate posts. This post is a continuation of my series: How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon.

Let's look at how we can use styles in MS Word to drastically cut down on the amount of time we spend formatting a document. Doing it this way has not only saved me time it has saved me much frustration. For instance, when I publish on Smashwords, I get through the notoriously ravenous Meatgrinder, unscathed, on the first try.

By the way, I'm using MS Word 2007 so all my instructions are for that version of Word.

MS Word Styles 101

All the styles I use build on the Normal style, so the first thing I do is make sure that the Normal style is exactly how I want it.

Modify The Normal Style: Default Settings

Keep in mind that this is just what I do. This isn't the only way of using Word to format a document, but it's what works for me. If something else is working for you, use that. (And please tell me what it is in the comments! I love learning new things.)

If you'd like to step through the following with me but you don't know how to modify a style in MS Word, I've created a step-by-step tutorial: How To Adjust The Paragraph Settings Of A Style In MS Word.

Okay, back? Everyone knows how to change the paragraph settings of a style? Great! Let's do it.

Changing the paragraph settings of the Normal style

The first thing I do is make sure that my Normal style is set to what I call my Default settings. Here they are:

Figure 1: Click to enlarge

In case the image isn't coming through I'll type them in here as well:

Paragraph settings:

Indentation: Left: 0"; Right: 0"
Spacing: Before: 0pt; After: 0 pt
Special: None
Line Spacing: Single

All the other styles we're going to use are built up from the Normal style so it's important we have it just the way we want it.

Creating Our Own Styles

Now comes the fun part! We get to create our own styles based on the Normal style.

If you don't know how to create a style in MS Word that's fine. I've put together a step-by-step tutorial that walks you through this. It has oodles of pictures. You can get to it by clicking here: How To Create A Paragraph Style In MS Word.

myBodyText

This is the style I use for all the text in my manuscript. I base it on the Normal style then adjust these settings (see Figure 2):

Special: First line: By 0.3"
Spacing: After: 6 pt

Figure 2: Click to enlarge

Click OK and you're done!

mySpacer

I use "*  *  *  *" to separate scenes and I like to leave one blank line above it and one blank line after it. But, rather than actually use a blank line I do this with styles. Here's how.

Just like we did for our myBodyText style, create a new style and call it "mySpacer" (or whatever you'll find memorable). For myBodyText we left no space above and only 6pt below each paragraph. Now, though, we want to leave 12pt before the paragraph and 12 pts after. Also, we center the style (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Click to enlarge

Click OK and you've created your second style.

I'm going to pick up the pace now since you're familiar with creating and modifying styles.

myTitle

Create another style, call it myTitle (or whatever you'd like). We're going to use this style to format the title of our book.

(Tip: Make sure you're basing these styles on your Normal style, the one we modified at the beginning of this tutorial.)

Here are the changes I make:

a. Increase the font size two points
I use Times New Roman 12 point for my Normal style so I'll increase the font size here to 14 pt. You may want your title to be even larger, and that's fine. Experiment. You might want to italicize your title, or make it bold. Play around, find out what looks good to you.

b. Center the style.

myCenter

You might wonder why you couldn't just center your text without using a style. I've found that when I do as much formatting as possible through my custom styles, things go more smoothly.

This one is easy, just create a new style, call it whatever you want--I use "myCenter"--and make sure that you center align the text.

myHeader

This is the last one! This will help your document headers come out the way you intend.

Creating this style is falling-off-a-log easy because you've just done it for myCenter. You might wonder why bother to create a new style for myHeader when it's exactly the same as myCenter. Here's why: You might want to do something unique to your header that you don't want communicated to everything you've centered.

For instance, let's say you want your header in bold or you want to decrease the font size. If you were using myCenter for this then those changes would be communicated to every paragraph you'd used that style for. And that probably wouldn't be something you'd want.

It may seem odd at first, but I try to create a new style for every function, ever kind of thing I want to do. You may end up with two or three more styles but, over the long run, I've found it sames me a lot of work.

How To Format A Header For Your Manuscript in MS Word

Oh, one more thing!

You all probably know how to do this already but, just in case you don't, I also want to talk about how to format your headers so that you have that nice name-on-one-side-of-the-page, title-on-the-other look (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Click to enlarge

But that's another tutorial and this post is long enough, so I'll direct you here: How To Format A Manuscript Header Using MS Word: Name On One Side, Title On The Other.

I hope you've gotten something out of this decidedly 'unwriterly' tutorial. Tomorrow when I continue this series on how to format an MS Word document and upload it to Amazon I'll pull everything together and show you my 'master template'.

Other articles you might like:

- How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon
- The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters
- The Starburst Method: What It Is And What It Can Do

Photo credit: "Here comes the sun..." by chantrybee under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Format A Manuscript Header Using MS Word: Name On One Side, Title On The Other

How To Format A Manuscript Header Using MS Word

I used MS Word 2007 for this tutorial.

Just in case this is clear as mud, here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Click to enlarge

We want the author's name on the left side and the title of the book on the right.

Formatting Your Manuscript Header In MS Word 2007

1. Make the headers different for odd and even pages

a. Click the "Insert" tab on the ribbon and then click "Header" (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Click to Enlarge

b. Click "Edit Header" at the bottom of the menu (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

c. Select "Different First Page" and "Different Odd & Even Pages" (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

Don't close the header yet!

2. Type in the headers for the odd and even pages

a. On the header for page 2 type the authors name, last name first and first name last. For example:

Doe, Jane

If there is more than one author:

Doe, Jane; Smith, Michael

b. On page 3 type the title of the book.

c. Select "Close Header and Footer"

That's it!

Update (Jan 6, 2013): 
I've run into a glitch. I've found that MS Word can be cantankerous when it comes to Headers. Sometimes I'll have the "Show different first page" option checked, delete the header on the first page, but instead of it only being removed from the first page it'll also be deleted from the rest of the odd pages.

Here's a work around. Make your first page--your title page--a different section by inserting a "different page" section break. Get into the header (if you're in Print Layout just double-click in the header) and make sure that, for both the odd and even pages, "Link to Previous" is NOT selected.

That should fix it.

Other articles you might be interested in:

- How To Adjust The Paragraph Settings Of A Style In MS Word
- How To Create A Paragraph Style In MS Word
- How To Modify A MS Word Paragraph Style

How To Adjust The Paragraph Settings Of A Style In MS Word

How To Adjust The Paragraph Settings Of A Style

All information in this tutorial applies to MS Word 2007.

a. Bring up the window named Modify Style. (I talk about how to do this here: How To Modify A MS Word Paragraph Style.)

b. There is a button named "Format" in the lower left corner of the Modify Style dialog box (see Figure 1). Press the button.

Figure 1: Click to enlarge

c. From the dropdown list select "Paragraph" (see Figure 2)

Figure 2: Click to enlarge

d. You should now see the Paragraph window (see Figure 3). 

Figure 3: Click to enlarge

That's it!

Other articles you might like:
- How To Create A Paragraph Style In MS Word
- How To Modify A MS Word Paragraph Style

How To Create A Paragraph Style In MS Word

How To Create A Paragraph Style In MS Word

a. On 'the ribbon' you'll see an area marked "Styles", click on the arrow in the lower right corner (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Click to enlarge

b. This will bring up the Styles window (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Click to enlarge

c. On the bottom right of the Styles Window there is a button with what looks like a double "A" on it (see Figure 3). That is the New Style button. Click it.

Figure 3: Click to enlarge

d. This will bring up the window: Create New Style from Formatting (see Figure 4). That's it!

Figure 4: Click to enlarge

Other articles you might like:

- How To Modify A MS Word Paragraph Style

How To Modify A MS Word Paragraph Style

Two Ways To Modify A Paragraph Style

This information pertains to MS Word 2007.

Modifying an existing paragraph style is easy. There are two ways you can so this.

1. First way to modify a paragraph style:

a. Go to the "Home" tab on the ribbon, find the "Styles" area.

b. Click the arrow in the lower right-hand corner. This will bring up the Styles Window (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Click to enlarge

c. Hover the mouse pointer over the style you wish to modify. A down-facing arrow will appear on the far right (See Figure 2).

Figure 2: Click to enlarge

d. Click the down-facing arrow and select "Modify" (See Figure 3).

Figure 3: Click to enlarge

That's it!

2. Second way to modify a paragraph style:

a. Go to the "Home" tab on the ribbon, find the "Styles" area.

b. Hover your mouse over the style you wish to modify and right click on it.

c. A menu will appear. Select "Modify".

That's it!

Photo credit: "Tagging: Maldives Style" by nattu under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Check Your Writing For Adverbs And Other Problem Words: MS Word Macros

Today I'm going to do something a bit different. I'm going to talk about how you can augment MS Word's ability to check grammar. Yes there are professional editing programs that do all this, and more, but sometimes you don't want to copy and paste your story into an online editor, especially if it's a 100,000 word novel!

Before I bought my new computer I had a macro for MS Word that highlighted "ly" adverbs, as well as other problem words, that clutter up your writing. For instance, "very", "that", "much".

I love the quotation, attributed to Mark Twain, "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

Unfortunately, when I transfered my data over to my new computer I forgot my macros so they all went to the great macro heaven in the sky. Now keep them in Dropbox, lesson learnt.

This post has two parts. First, I'll show you the macros I use and then I'll go through how to use them in MS Word.

Let's get started!

The Macro: Finding "ly" Adverbs

The following macro will highlight all the "ly" words in your manuscript. I wanted to make it highlight the entire word, but at the moment it only highlights the "ly" part of it. Oh well, it works! The original macro, written by Subcortical over at Stackoverflow, can be found here: Microsoft Word Macro for highlighting multiple words.

Sub highlight_ly()
   Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.Highlight = True
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "ly"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchSuffix = True
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

Here's another macro that finds, and highlights, words that often serve only to clutter text. The original macro was written by Subcortical and can be found in the same article I linked to, above.

Sub highlight_targets()
  Dim range As range
  Dim i As Long
  Dim TargetList

  TargetList = Array("very", "that") ' put list of terms to find here

  For i = 0 To UBound(TargetList)

    Set range = ActiveDocument.range

    With range.Find
    .Text = TargetList(i)
    .Format = True
    .MatchCase = True
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False

    Do While .Execute(Forward:=True) = True
    range.HighlightColorIndex = wdTurquoise
    Loop
    End With
  Next
End Sub

Using the macros

I have MS Word 2007, so keep that in mind if you're using a different version.

1) Go into MS Word and click "View" on the ribbon.

2) On the far right of the ribbon you'll see MACROS. Click it.

3) A Macro dialog box pops up. Type in the macro name "highlight_ly" and click CREATE. This will bring you into the Microsoft Visual Basic editor.

4) Copy this text:

   Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.Highlight = True
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "ly"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchSuffix = True
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Now paste it between "Sub highlight_ly" and "End Sub".

5) Save the file (Crtl + S) and exit the Microsoft Visual Basic editor.

6) In MS Word repeat steps (1) and (2). This time instead of typing in a name and pressing the create button, select "highlight_ly" and press RUN. All the words ending in "ly" should be highlighted in yellow.

If you would like to also highlight words such as "this" and "that" repeat steps (1) through (6) only this time for the macro "highlight_targets". Note that the "highlight_targets" macro can be modified to include whatever words you'd like to highlight. All you have to do is include the words in the TargetList array.

I hope that's clear! (I can hear folks grumbling, "Yea, clear as mud!") If you have questions, do ask, and if there are any macros you'd like to share, please do!

Other articles you might like:
- Penelope Trunk: Blogging And Branding
- How To Design A Great Looking Book Cover
- The Best Way To Build A Writer's Platform Is To Write
- Aftermath Of The Department of Justice Lawsuit: Amazon Customers Getting Refunds

Links:
- Here's a great article on the passive voice from The University of North Carolina.

Photo credit: Catherinette Rings Steampunk.

How To Format A Word Document For Amazon's KDP Publishing Program

As anyone who has successfully published a book will tell you, formatting your MS Word document correctly is the key to a successful, low-stress, experience.

One of the best explanations of how to format your Word document in preparation for publishing is in Zoe Winter's book Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming An Indie Author, but if you don't have it, this video by Connie Neal has some great tips: Formatting a Word 2010 Document for KDP.

I agree with Passive Guy's comment on the video:

In the demonstration, Connie applied some styles, then manually centered the text. PG would probably modify the style so it includes a centered text format. Very easy to do.

Rather than using one of Word’s style sets, PG uses a set of styles he has developed for all of Mrs. PG’s books. When he receives a new manuscript, he applies the styles he’s developed to that book. If he wants a different look for the new book, he can modify the styles or add other elements.

He usually begins by formatting the CreateSpace printed copy, always using section breaks instead of page breaks, then uses the result for conversion to ebook formats. It’s not the only way to do it, but it seems to him to be the most efficient.

Another great resource for formatting is Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide. I know, I know, we're talking about formatting your Word document for publishing through Amazon's KDP program, but the basics of formatting are the same regardless of where you're uploading to.

The key, I think, is to "go nuclear" and strip out all formatting from your document and then put it back in, making sure that the only formatting you use in your finished document, the one that's going to be uploaded to Amazon, are paragraph styles. I strip out the formatting by copying the entire text of the manuscript and pasting it into a text file like Notepad (on the PC), copying that text, then opening up a new Word file and pasting the text from Notepad file into it. (Clear as mud?) Sounds like a lot of work, but it's worth it to be sure you've stripped out every last pesky pit of formatting.

Stripping out all formatting will also strip out italics so I've taken to indicating italics in my manuscripts by putting "_" on the left side of a word. For instance, "She _loved chocolate" equals "She loved chocolate". Then I just do a global search and italicize all words that have an underscore as their first character. After that I remove all underscores and there you have it. (This article, Find and Replace Using Wildcards, is terrific)

I imagine there's a far more simple and elegant way of doing the same thing, and if any of you folks have discovered it, please do let me know! :-)

Other articles you might like:
- Lyla Sinclair's 8 Secrets Of Successful Romance Writing
- Indie Books: What Price Is Right?
- Writing Resources