The 3 Essentials When Doing Cleanup

When I do a document cleanup, my routine involves 

1. Changing the font for the document as a whole.

2.  Making sure the quote style matches all the way through.

3. Making sure the margins are 1 inch all around.  

4.  Making sure section breaks are set for New Page and Different First Page applied to the entire document.

5.  Making sure that the document is set for top alignment with the exception of the Cover Page which I set for Vertical Alignment Center.

Because some of the text attributes were applied directly, this is why you will still see mixtures of fonts within the text after you have changed the document font by modifying the Normal style.

As part of the cleanup routine, I select all the text (Control A) and then use Control Spacebar which strips off any fonts that were directly applied so that only the font selected for the document as a whole remains.  Yes, I also make use of Paste Special - Unformatted Text when I want to strip the document down to raw text.

Below is a summary of what I call the 3 essentials.  Keep in mind that with the exception of Control Shift N, we are talking about removing surface formatting and not disturbing the style attributes.

CTRL+SPACE BAR – This removes all character-level formatting—strange fonts, underlining, boldface, italics, etc. 

CTRL+Q – This removes all paragraph-level formatting—out of place indents, line spacing, extra spacing before and after the paragraphs, etc. 

CTRL+SHIFT+N – This returns the selected text to Normal formatting.  

Note:  Before I alter a document in a major way, I always make sure that I have a hard copy printout so that I know where all of the bold, italic and underscore occurred within the document.  I then have the ability to build those attributes into styles and/or create character styles to handle some of the surface formatting that will be more controllable with the use of a character style.

Training from an inside perspective

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Learn Legal - Underscore Applied To Paragraph

Underscore Applied To Paragraph

Many of you seasoned operators and secretaries will find this basic but I assure you that many people don't make the connection when doing tables.

Scenario: You have a number of headings across the top of the financial chart. Each heading is underscored or you have totals or subtotals across the page single or double underscored.

In either event, the Borders and Shading Dialog Box should be utilized to produce the underscore, but many times people (especially newer students and some operators) will associate the lines to the Cell which then causes the following:

1. Even though the line is associated with each separate heading of each separate cell, when you view the document in Print Preview or you print out the document, the separate underscored headings will appear as one solid continuous line since this feature puts the line from end to end in the cell.

2. People then try to remedy this by inserting narrow "buffer columns" that have no underscore associated with them but serve to make sure that the underscores that are beneath the Titles or Numbers are are visually separated from the underscore of the next column.

3. While this is a remedy, it is totally unnecessary because all they needed to do was to apply the underscore or double underscore to "Paragraph" when underscoring Titles or Numbers in a table using Borders and Shading.

4. By associating the underscore to "Paragraph" for your titles and numbers when using Borders and Shading, this feature leaves a bit of room on the left and right of each cell it is applied to. So, when you view the table or print it out, there is a clear separation between the columns and no buffer columns are necessary.

Try it yourself. It works first time and every time. If you are taking a test and you have a financial type table in the test, they will be looking for your use of applying the underscore to paragraph.

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Using Above/Below in Your Cross References

In general, a cross reference (under the References Tab) keeps track of a paragraph in terms of the Multilevel Outline Number currently sitting next to the paragraph that is being referenced.

If the referenced paragraph is moved or if paragraphs are added or removed that come before the referenced paragraph, the paragraph number in the Cross Reference should automatically readjust to reflect the new position of the referenced paragraph.  

1.  Sometimes the attorney will use the above/below feature in addition to the cross references.  Below, a typical cross reference.

Body text body text body text See Section 2.4 Insurance Agreement for more information.

2.  Depending on where you are in the document when you reference the paragraph will determine whether it is above or below the paragraph that is doing the referencing.

3.  To use the above/below feature, first bring in your cross reference.  Reference Type is "Numbered Item" and "Insert Reference To" should be set to "Paragraph".

See Section 2.4 Insurance Agreement for more information

4.  Place your cursor after the text of the cross reference (in this case the word "Agreement") and make sure there is at least 1 empty space.

5.  Go back into cross references, and under "Insert Reference To" change it to above/below.

6.  In the active listing below, choose the same paragraph number. In this article, we would choose Section 2.4.

7.  The cross reference should read See Section 2.4 Insurance Agreement above for more information.  Note that some people place the above/below directly after the 2.4 and some place it after the entire reference as we did in this article.

8.  The "2.4" and the word "above" should be grey if field shading is on and this cross reference will keep track of the current paragraph number next to the referenced paragraph and the position of the paragraph in relation to the paragraph that does the referencing.

www.advanceto.com

Using Above/Below in Your Cross References

In general, a cross reference (under the References Tab) keeps track of a paragraph in terms of the Multilevel Outline Number currently sitting next to the paragraph that is being referenced.

If the referenced paragraph is moved or if paragraphs are added or removed that come before the referenced paragraph, the paragraph number in the Cross Reference should automatically readjust to reflect the new position of the referenced paragraph.  

1.  Sometimes the attorney will use the above/below feature in addition to the cross references.  Below, a typical cross reference.

Body text body text body text See Section 2.4 Insurance Agreement for more information.

2.  Depending on where you are in the document when you reference the paragraph will determine whether it is above or below the paragraph that is doing the referencing.

3.  To use the above/below feature, first bring in your cross reference.  Reference Type is "Numbered Item" and "Insert Reference To" should be set to "Paragraph".

See Section 2.4 Insurance Agreement for more information

4.  Place your cursor after the text of the cross reference (in this case the word "Agreement") and make sure there is at least 1 empty space.

5.  Go back into cross references, and under "Insert Reference To" change it to above/below.

6.  In the active listing below, choose the same paragraph number. In this article, we would choose Section 2.4.

7.  The cross reference should read See Section 2.4 Insurance Agreement above for more information.  Note that some people place the above/below directly after the 2.4 and some place it after the entire reference as we did in this article.

8.  The "2.4" and the word "above" should be grey if field shading is on and this cross reference will keep track of the current paragraph number next to the referenced paragraph and the position of the paragraph in relation to the paragraph that does the referencing.

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MS Word Legal Training - 2007-16 - We Can Make You An Expert

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