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Katherine Turner provided some generally good advice on templates,
but I have some important caveats and elaborations to propose: <<1.
Create a template that makes use of the default styles. The default
styles such as Headings 1,2,3 have built-in shortcut keys CTRL ALT
1,2,3. The Normal style also has a built-in shortcut key CTRL SHIFT N.>>
If you're going to the trouble of creating your own template, you
should NOT use the default styles. The problem is that it's easy for
someone to inadvertently reapply the styles from their own version of
(say) the Normal template. In terms of keystrokes, you can assign
exactly the same keystrokes to your own styles via the Tools--
>Customize dialog, thereby attaining all the advantages of using the
built-in styles.
<<2. Default heading styles are automatically selected when using
Adobe Acrobat to convert to PDF.>>
I believe that this is defined based on the heading level property of
the style (which can be assigned when you create the style in the
first place), not hard-coded to use H1 through H3, but have not
tested this. In any event, this may be referring to PDFWriter (which
I don't use) rather than Acrobat Distiller (which I do).
<<3. The default styles are linked.>>
Badly. In what world does it make sense to define the properties of
the heading styles based on the Normal style (i.e., based on body
text)? I long ago stopped counting the number of people who have
written to various discussion groups to complain that they edited the
Normal style and all their headings were suddenly screwed up. In any
event, you can create your own (more intelligent) hierarchy quickly
and easily by defining the "based on" and "next paragraph" properties
for each style when you define the style.
<<4. Any styles that don't meet the template styles can be seen in
the Style and Formatting bar (Word 2003).>>
This depends on how you customize the style display. I'm not using
Word 2003, but in earlier versions, you could set the style list to
show all styles, only the styles in use, or user-defined styles
(those in the template). In any event, it's easy to create your own
toolbar containing your own styles.
<<5. Cross references work for heading styles (but the heading styles
only work if they are the built-in styles).>>
Haven't tested this rigorously, but the usual (and easy) solution is
to define bookmarks for each heading you want to link to. That's
analogous to using "anchor" tags in HTML for jumps within a page.
This approach has several advantages over relying on the default
styles, including the fact that you can create bookmarks using a
standardized, logical, easy to remember system that makes it easier
to define the target of a cross-reference.
<<6. Create a document which explains which the purpose of each style
(this could also be part of the template).>>
In my experience, only editors read such documents, as well as the
occasional new writer who's just been hired. As noted in my previous
message in this thread, the goal is to make your own styles so much
easier to use than the default styles that people have no incentive
not to use them. As in software interface design, the need to
document something is a strong clue that the something is far less
usable than it should be. You can never wholly eliminate
documentation, but you shouldn't depend exclusively on it.
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