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Word processors are powerful tools which are mostly used like very expensive electric typewriters. Remember those?
What follows are eight screencasts that use semantic styling in Microsoft Word (what Word calls Styles) to reveal the software’s remarkable power when working with long-form documents.
I’d say it will take no more than an hour to go through and understand these ideas. But it will be an hour invested that will be paid back many times over in the future.
An introduction to semantic styling and why understanding it is essential for using word processing software.
Documents (not required but here just in case):
Now that your document is semantically styled, how do you make it look the way you want it to while preserving the semantic styling?
Document: 20200916 - semantic styling.docx
How to automatically create a table of contents.
Document: 20200917 - semantic styling.docx
How to navigate a long form document using the document map. (With bonus export to PDF option.)
Documents:
How to use the outline mode in MS word to organise and re-structure your document.
Document: 20200919 - semantic styling.docx
How to create internal clickable cross-references to headings, page numbers and bookmarks. These cross-references update as the document changes (right-click Update Field (cmd-shift-option-U)).
Document: 20200920 - semantic styling.docx
How to create automatic chapter heading breadcrumbs in the header or footer of a long document. These help the reader know where they are in the document.
Document: 20200921 - semantic styling.docx
Now that you understand MS Word styles, this video shows how to create styles specific to any project that are available to you in any word document.
Document: 20200922 - semantic styling.docx
