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To format your report for ink-on-paper printing, you will use a word processor, that is, a low-end desktop publishing system. The conventions here are well-established: 8 1/5" x 11" sheets, black (or near-black) ink on white paper, generous margins of 1" to 1 1/4". You should create the .doc file using color but you should also look at it in gray-scale (black and white) to make sure that your colors, especially on the charts, don't lose their contrast when they go to gray.
Two formatting features unique to print documents:
running headers / footers
a table of contents, usually on a separate page
A word processor is a computer program that can produce any arbitrary combination of images, graphics and text with type-setting capability. It is more powerful than a text editor like NoteTab but less powerful than a full-featured desktop publishing program such as PageMaker or Quark, or a program like Microsoft's Publisher, which is less powerful but more than enough for most projects.
If you're going to print formatted text, use a word processor. At its fullest, a word processor has enough desktop publishing capabilities to do most of what you would ask PageMaker or Quark to do at their low end. For all purposes other than preparing printed documents, other software does it better. I don't expect word processors as we know them to last much longer.
A word processor also has text
manipulation functions such as automatic generation of:
mail merge - batch mailings
using a form letter template and an address database
index - lists of keywords and
their page numbers
tables of contents - section
titles and their page numbers
tables of figures - caption
titles and their page numbers
cross-referencing section or
page numbers
footnote numbering
new versions of a document using
variables (e.g. model numbers, product names, etc.)
Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has made it easy to "save as HTML". You should not under any circumstances use that feature.
formatting text for printing
low-end desktop publishing - laying out text and graphics
formatting multi-page documents for printing and binding
Increasingly, managers create the report as a Word .doc file and then attach it to an email. Some misguided folks use it to make Web pages (.htm files instead of .doc files). If the whole world ran on only Microsoft products, that might make some sense. But it doesn't, so you shouldn't ever use that feature of Word.
an over-abundance of formatting options
incompatibility with other proprietary programs and even earlier versions of itself
word processor
Microsoft's
Word
Open Office, the free alternative to Word
Open Office's Writer
In older versions of Word, pull down the Format menu and select Styles and Formatting. That should open a new pane. Click "New Style", which should open the New Style dialogue box in the screenshot on the right.
You can use this to make your own style sheet. This will save you a lot of time, not on this report for this course, but on the next report/research paper for your next course.
To start, type in the name/label for your style. This name is up to you, so you can remember it.
For "Style type", select paragraph for regular text as well as heading, subheading, and headers/footers. For tables, lists, and special characters, select that Style type from the pull-down menu.
For "Style based on", you can select one of the default styles to adapt. Otherwise, stick with Normal here.
The next choice is "Style for the following paragraphs". This long list should have the kind of text you're looking for.
In the Formatting section, you can get very specific. If you click Format in the lower left, you'll see even more options for tweaking this style.
In newer version of Word, use the Home menu and the Styles section to do the same things.
color? rule?
font, size, color
|
serifs |
font-family - a group of related
fonts which vary only in weight, orientation, width, etc, but not design |
Text properties - the visual presentation of characters, spaces, words, and paragraphs word-spacing |
font, size, color
position, size, content, purpose
If printed, headers and footers are required in case the piece of paper gets out of order or is separated from its document.
font, size, color if different from text
whether to have any?
if so, size and position / placement
whether to have any?
if so, how many?
size
position / placement
font, size, color
other components (see below)
whether to have any?
if so, how many?
size
position / placement
W3C's Box model
|
width |
margin margin-top |
padding padding-top |
border border-top-width |
In Word,
select Insert | Text Box. Click on the box that comes up. From there,
right-clicking on the various components will let you Format the text
boxes. Note that Fill Effects is available on the Color drop-down menu,
as shown in the screenshot on right.
whether to have any?
if so, how many?
size
position / placement
whether to have any?
if so, how many?
size
position / placement
the 4 B's: bullets, buttons, banners, and bars
A simulation of paper. (like going barefoot with your socks on)
A way to present information with a fixed layout.
A formatted text file that can't be (as easily) edited as a .doc file.
In other words, it is a redundant, practically useless, often frustrating file format that is nevertheless very common because it makes old people (and old-thinking people), especially publishers, graphic designers, and their lawyers, feel as though the world isn't changing as fast as it really is. A .pdf report is comforting.
To control versioning. To control printed appearance. What Adobe calls information integrity and security.
Here's Adobe's marketing pitch: Why PDF?
Open
format
Multiplatform
Extensible
Trusted and reliable
Maintain information integrity
Keep information secure
Searchable
Accessible
The document integrity feature is the one that I think is the most compelling to people.
Adobe Acrobat family of products
open source / free alternatives
The latest versions of Word have options for creating PDF's.
Ziff Davis' PDF Zone
PDF and
Accessibility
by Roger Hudson
Web Usability, August 2004
How to convert other files (.doc, .ppt, and .xls) into .pdf files
Word 2007 has an "export to pdf" or "save as pdf" choice on the File menu if you have the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF
The latest versions of Word have an Acrobat menu on the main toolbar, probably on the far right.
PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.
.doc files only (no .docx files) to .pdf
Browse to your file. Select the language. Click "Convert document". Within a minute, a .pdf version of the document will appear in your browser. Save it to your computer.
.docx files to .pdf
PDF converter - works similarly to the one above but will send you a download link in an email after a couple of minutes.
.pdf files to HTML
Adobe's Online conversion tools
How will these reports be evaluated?
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