Whether you are a writer or a senior who is struggling with the dissertation, surely you will have to work with a Word document. You may have a lot of ideas that you are looking forward to writing, but your computer skills are not so strong.
However, if you are thinking of making a paper work or an epub format, it is also very important to take care of the layout. If you have no idea how to format a text we have some suggestions.
- Why is it better to format a text document?
The main reason why you shouldn’t ignore formatting is to make the text document graphically compliant with print and / or digital media.
In a nutshell, make it readable by any epub reader or, in the case of paper, prevent parts of the text or images from falling out of the margins and being cut off at the time of printing.
You are right, it’s not a particularly romantic aspect, but don’t worry if you follow the advice you will get rid of this hassle in a few simple steps and you can return to this guide whenever you need.
- How to enable formatting marks.
In the toolbar, click on the “Home” and go to the box relating to the paragraph, here you will have to activate the option that allows you to view the paragraph marks, in this way you will be sure that you have not entered double spaces or hidden characters.
- How to set text styles.
In Word, you can either use the predefined styles or personalize them. Let’s see how to set a style and customize it. In both cases it is important that the formatting is consistent for the entire text document.
Remaining in the “Home” tab, move to the section that is to the right of the section “Paragraph” and you will find the predefined “Styles”:
As mentioned above, you can either decide to set a default style or change it. Whatever you decide, you are going to create a text with internal chapters, to make this subdivision clear I suggest you set the style “Title1” for the name of each chapter. This will also help you in creating the index.
If you prefer to customize it, for example, change the font, size, alignment or color, just right-click on the style you prefer, then in the tab that opens, click on the “Edit” item and once you have made the changes necessary, click the “Ok” button.
- How to insert the page break.
To ensure that your text is well formatted, you have to follow specific editorial rules, for example it is important that each chapter begins on a new page.
To do this, click the mouse where the next chapter begins in the document, then move to the “Insert” tab and click the “Page Break” button.
If despite these suggestions you do not feel confident to do this job and prefer to entrust it to us, purchase our original or translated book formatting services
If you need more information on how to edit a book, please visit our Publishing guidelines.