Hi Chris,
On 22/10/2023 17:18, Chris J. wrote:
A few details might change, but stories submissions to publishers and editors
have pretty much the same characteristics, in the States anyway; 1.00 inch
margin top and bottom, 1.25 inch margins right and left, Times Roman or Times
New Roman font, 12pt, double spaced. Page numbers are helpful and I put mine
right justified in the header and centered in the footer. Most want the title
in the header right side. Some want the chapter title in the header, left side.
Some want a table of contents which I read can be done in Write in the header I
believe.
The first page of a chapter is a little different. There's some white space at
he top (I put 6 double spaced lines), then an a chapter number or title, more
white space (same), then a page by age repeat of the above first paragraph.
One would think this should be possible with a couple of styles.
I can change an existing paragraph style with no problem. But setting up a new
one with the above attributes and getting it defined for entire page/story is
eluding me for some reason. It's driving me nuts to the point that keep a
couple blank formatted pages around as above and just copy them to new stories.
Is there a list of common mistakes I can look at to try figuring out I'm dong
wrong?
All the above requirements, as you suppose, are capable of being placed into
page or paragraph styles. For the example of the first page of a chapter, you
can define a new page style based off the default page style. I find the
easiest way of working is to have the Styles sidebar visible on the right hand
side of the screen, select the page styles by clicking on the little icon at
the top (there are six of these and on my Writer, the page styles icon is 4th
from the left). Then on the Default page style, right click and select New
Style and in the dialogue that opens, proceed from tab to tab to set up the
characteristics you require.
First you'll need to specify that it's 'right side only', then you can set the
top margin to a larger value to avoid the ad hoc formatting you do with 6
double spaced lines. You can also select to have no header on this page (which
may not be what your agents require but is typical for print formats.)
To get more space under the chapter title, you will achieve this by modifying
(or creating a new style) the Heading style you use for these chapter titles.
That is done within the paragraph styles in the sidebar.
All text paragraphs can be set up with single or double spacing. Header and
footer styles can be set up with the various fields you require (chapter title,
book title, page number...). You can create new header, footer, heading and
text body styles from the default versions and give them new names which help
you to remember which is which.
For a lengthy manuscript, it is likely that you will require several page
styles (I have preface, left hand empty, right hand new chapter, regular
left/right mirrored pages for the body of the book, back-matter left/right
pages). Same goes for paragraph styles: first paragraph of chapter (no indent),
regular text body, several list styles, centered text example style ... and so
on. They take a little time to set up but can be transferred to other
documents as you need them.
Using styles will avoid a lot of complications in the coding if you
subsequently require to turn the manuscript into an epub. Ad hoc formatting is
liable to leave an unwanted heap of formatting tokens in the eBook. Once you
get the hang of it, it saves a load of aggro and I find the styles easier to
set up in Writer than in Word.
Philip
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