Re: Leader characters?

["Barbara J. Philbrick" <burkbrick -at- AOL -dot- COM>]

Hi there!

>What leader characters do you most commonly use in Tables
> of Contents? I use plain old periods myself and have rarely seen
> anything else other than occasional use of underscores or
> hyphens.

I'm a plain old periods person too. I've also seen no leaders, but I think
that's only appropriate if you can clearly follow the line of text across to
the number (that is, more white space between lines). I _do_ try to use a lot
(isn't that objective!) of white space between them so the page doesn't look
too cluttered. I don't
remember seeing anything else (but you know how it is when senility sets in).

>The reason I ask is that one of our engineers is updating our TOC
>generator and asked me what characters people typically use for
>leadering.  (Imagine that, an engineer actually asking about what
>writers want!)  Anyway, I told him my thoughts and said that I
> would take a poll on TECHWR-L.

I've found quite a few engineers who are actually interested in the writing
and formatting process. I've found that many are afraid to ask until they get
comfortable with you and know that you're not going to make fun of them for
not knowing certain grammar points. I also appreciate it when they forgive me
for my lack of knowledge in engineering!

It sounds like you've gotten your engineers (are we allowed to possess them?)
to trust you!

Barb Philbrick
burkbrick -at- aol -dot- com