Introduction
When it comes to Microsoft Word, almost everyone has an opinion—and it's often negative. You might use this ubiquitous business application every day, but how well do you really know Word? Understanding the styles and formatting function of Word can not only improve the appearance of your documents, but ultimately save you time and money.
In this second edition of Red Pony Express, we look at the value of establishing Word document templates and learning how to work with styles. We’ll also examine the intricacies and controversies of the apostrophe and the ancient history of everyone’s favourite placeholder text, Lorem Ipsum.
Regards,
Andrew Eather
Senior Consultant, Red Pony
Using Microsoft Word Templates
If all the documentation that flows out of your organisation to clients and to the wider public is consistent, clear and pleasing to the eye, you’ve overcome the first hurdle in communicating with your target audience.
So often when material comes our way in the course of a busy day we are looking for an excuse to push it to one side and get back to what we were doing. That’s easy when we are faced with a document that’s a dog’s breakfast of mismatched or misconceived styles and themes—it goes straight in the bin.
But when the material you receive from a source looks polished and professional, you’ll register (often unconsciously) that these are serious people who won’t waste your time.
It can be a simple matter to establish a series of Microsoft Word templates that all your staff can use for correspondence, marketing materials, proposals and tender responses, accounting—whatever the day-to-day collateral that’s part of your business communication. That way, everything that goes out under your name will look consistent and presentable, inviting the potential customer to read on.
When you set up your template, you can define all the styles you want people to be able to use (paragraph text, headings, bullet points, table text, etc.). You can establish exactly how these elements should look, such as the font type, font size, spacing and alignment. You can even set up shortcut keys to apply each style. Once you have a defined template, it is easy for anyone in your organisation to produce documents that adhere to your corporate branding.
Now all you have to worry about is the content.
TIP: You can read a brief but useful overview of styles in Word in this article from the Microsoft website, 'Understanding paragraph, character, list, and table styles'.
Wielding the Apostrophe
No single element of English usage produces such passionate outbursts as the correct use of the apostrophe. The commonest targets of grammarian wrath in this respect are greengrocers and signwriters—probably because their work is always on public display. Most of our own crimes against the apostrophe are committed before a much smaller array of witnesses.
There are two kinds of apostrophe: the possessive apostrophe, which denotes ownership (Betty’s pickaxe, the sun’s rays, Humboldt’s gift); and the apostrophe of omission, which marks the absence of a letter (don’t, that’s, won’t).
But most problems associated with the apostrophe arise with plurals ending in s and the word its. Or it’s.
With plurals
For many of us, the presence of an s at the end of a word triggers an uncontrollable desire to attach an apostrophe. Somewhere… anywhere! When the noun is a normal plural (i.e. with an added s), no extra s is added in the possessive. Just the apostrophe.
So,
boys’ filthy habits
regional councils’ decisions
Sometimes there’s a bit of confusion when adding apostrophes to words or names in the singular that end in s:
tennis’s finest hour
Jesus’s mother
It looks odd and sounds funny, and there are many schools of thought on such usages. Ignore them all and put that second s in!
Finally, there are times when it all seems to go pear-shaped. What’s going on with these?
boys grammar school
womens golf championship
These are descriptive phrases. Boys is descriptive of the school rather than denoting ownership. Womens describes the participants rather than indicating ownership. A lot of the time with this usage, you could make an argument either way. Very confusing.
With its/it’s
Oh, but what about it’s? And its? Well, it is a bit tricky. I still find myself stopping and asking myself a question every time I use it: Do I mean to say it is or it has? Then I stick in an apostrophe. If not, I don’t. Don’t overthink, I say.
Lorem Ipsum
Have you ever come across the dummy text known as Lorem Ipsum? This is the text widely used in the printing industry to demonstrate how a publication will look when it’s printed. But why not use any old slab of English text? Because if the text is readable, people will, er… read it. And that’s not what designers want. Rather, they would prefer you paid attention to the features they have devised to make your book or report look fabulous.
Lorem Ipsum originated in the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Classicists among you will recognise that Lorem Ipsum is Latin text (sort of), usually mixed up with nonsense words to reflect the standard distribution of English words on a page. It has its roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, ‘de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum’ (The Extremes of Good and Evil) written by the great Roman orator and statesman, Cicero.
So what’s it mean then? Well, it concerns, among other things, why you might go to the gym:
Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself [dolorem ipsum], because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
So now you know… and you’ve taken a satisfying draught from the deep Ciceronian well of wisdom.
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