The benefits of formatting to editors

Formatting “makes it much easier for me to work with the document, it looks professional, and it is much easier for the examiners to navigate” (Richard Steele, in a PEGblog about his take on academic referencing).

Many PEG editors agree with Richard about the advantages of formatting a document before editing it.
Well-formatted documents make a good impression on your clients. They show that you pay attention to detail and care about every aspect of the final product, from content to professional presentation.

The advantage to you, as the editor, is that formatting a document requires multiple sweeps through the text. This gives an overview of what to expect when you start editing.

A well-formatted document also makes it easy for you to quickly locate, edit and move sections, headings, tables, images and other content in your document.

Some editors charge an additional fee for document formatting. So, knowing how to set up templates and use the many formatting features available in Word can also help you supplement your editing income.

9 steps to formatting your document

1. Ask your client for their formatting style guide or template before you start.
2. If they don’t have a template, save the original document under a new name as a template.
3. Some of the formatting elements you will need to include are:
   a. page size and margins
   b. theme fonts, typefaces and sizes
   c. colours for headings, fonts, tables and graphics
   d. styles for headings and text (font and paragraph settings)
   e. page numbering
   f. headers and footers.
4. Switch off Reviewing mode or Track Changes before you start formatting (because the author does not need to approve compliance with institutional requirements).
5. Apply heading styles or outline levels.
6. Apply text styles (body text, bullets and numbered lists)
7. Format figure and table captions.
8. Format a table of contents.
9. Insert a List of Figures and a List of Tables.

(Much of this information originally appeared in a PEGblog: Formatting before Editing 1: Introduction)

Other formatting tips

1. Draft view in Word – wrapping text to fit into a narrow window…
2. Hiding headers and footers – to scroll faster through a document…
3. Scrolling in two-page view – do it in  PDF to see odd and even pages properly…
4. Cross-checking references with in-text citations – use bolding and the Navigation Pane…

Formatting tips from PEG members’ websites

If you are a PEG member and would like your own tips to be included here, please submit them to website@editors.org.za.

• Autocorrect – Use Autocorrect shortcuts if you use the same terms over and over again, especially if they have to be formatted, like PEGboard. They are automatically inserted with formatting as you type …
• Autotext – Avoid retyping and formatting commonly used text, even long passages. Click a button to insert it …
• Captions – A caption usually has three components: a customisable label (like “Figure”, “Table”, “Equation”) plus an ordered number or letter that Word inserts for you (e.g., “1, 2, 3…” or “a, b, c…”), followed by a description …
• Continuous page numbering – after a section break …
• Display grey field shading – You can’t change the text in a field because it changes back as soon as you print the document.  You therefore need to be able to see fields so that you do not change them by mistake …
• Footnotes – Specify both a starting footnote number and whether the numbering restarts in each new section of your document …
• “Headers and Footers” print option – so you have a permanent record of where and when you got the information you are printing …
• Heading styles and the table of contents – MS Word can add an automatic, updatable table of contents to your document – but only if your headings have a style applied. Find out how to apply Headings 1, 2 and 3 …
• How to insert a section break – when orientation, footer wording or page numbering changes or a new chapter starts …
• Keyboard shortcuts – To speed up the repetitive task of formatting reports, create shortcuts on your computer in its Normal template …
• Margins – Shows how the top, bottom, left and right page margins are set up and where the measurements in the Page Layout tab apply …
• Navigation around a document …
• Section breaks – MS Word requires a section break when there is a change to page margins, orientation (portrait or landscape) or size, to footer contents or header contents. Go to the Page layout tab …
• Page orientation (portrait/landscape) – Set pages to long, narrow portrait orientation or short, wide landscape orientation …
• Paper size – The default paper size when you buy a PC or laptop is Letter, used in the US. South Africans should change this to A4 …
• Personalise Display settings – MS Word allows you to personalise many settings under File > Options > Advanced. Scroll through them to see what is available …
• Remove colour from paragraphs – Sometimes a paragraph has white or coloured shading behind the text, even though Word tells you there is “No color”.  It usually happens when text has been copied and pasted from the Internet …
• Reveal Formatting pane – Shows how you can find out what formatting has been applied to the current paragraph …
• See hidden text – Show/hide section breaks, paragraph breaks, page breaks, tabs and spaces …
• Styles in the Ribbon – A fellow editor asked, ‘How do I customise which styles are listed in the Styles Gallery and the Styles Pane?’ …
• Tables of Figures – You can have separate lists of the figures, pictures, or tables in your Word document, similar to a table of contents.  This blog post tells you how to insert a table of figures and how to update it …
• Terminology – Microsoft tabs, groups and command buttons explained …
• Word units of measurement – MS Word’s default units of measurement follow the regional settings in Windows but can be changed …