Using macros & style sheets to aid in document layout

With the advent of “desktop publishing” and laser printers, writers are increasingly expected to do complicated formatting tasks. For example, technical writing students are required to lay out as well as to write brochures and other documents; Master's and doctoral candidates must follow an intricate set of formatting guidelines formulated by Graduate Studies offices; and authors are frequently called upon to provide publishers with camera-ready copy of book and article manuscripts to save the cost of typesetting.Consequently, this trend has created two new demands on writers — first, they must devote additional time to layout, and second, they must use at-times complicated and always time-consuming features of their word processing packages to do the formatting. In other words, it has become a requirement that authors be computer craftspeople as well as subject-matter experts.Yet, most students and faculty do not have the additional time needed to format a document and thus use time that really belongs to a careful final editing of the document for layout. Both groups could benefit from enhancements available from simple macros and style sheets.Our presentation will focus on how macros and style sheets can help writers save time and avoid frustration. Using our WordPerfect (IBM PC) and Microsoft Word (Macintosh) “UDThesis” layouts (thesis and dissertation macro/style sheet packages) as examples, we will discuss how we went about developing them, how we tested them, and the problems we've discovered along the way. In addition, we will describe the type of support necessary to help writers create their own macros and style sheets. Finally, and perhaps even more importantly, we will demonstrate how several writers have taken these UDThesis layout packages and have adapted them to their own particular uses. Our goal, ultimately, is to provide staff at other academic institutions with ideas about easier ways to help their users do increasingly complex things.Scenario 1: You've finally finished all of your classes and can now devote your time and energy to researching and writing your thesis. You've been looking forward to this time, and you've got so much to say that all you'll have to do is sit down and type, right? Wrong! All of a sudden you look at the formatting guidelines for theses and discover that while you're writing, you have an elaborate (and sometimes mysterious) set of formatting procedures to follow. For example, your entire document must be double-spaced except between paragraphs where you must triple-space, and within quotations, footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographic references where you must single-space. In addition, a double space always follows an indented block quotation except when it completes a paragraph, when it is followed by a triple space. Of course, if you plan to graduate after December 1990, you must use a newer set of guidelines that does away with all triple spacing between paragraphs except when an indented block quotation ends the paragraph.Scenario 2: It's one week before your dissertation defense and two weeks before your dissertation is due in the Office of Graduate Studies. Plenty of time to do a thorough final review to check the content, accuracy of quotations, grammar, etc.; finish the formatting; and then print out a clean final copy on a laser printer, right? Wrong! Among other formatting considerations, you discover that typing up the simple-looking title and approval pages is not as simple as you think because you have to keep measuring and reformatting to get all of the necessary information on them, because you can't remember in which order the signature lines have to be placed, and because you don't know how to spell the Provost for Graduate Studies' surname.