The "Word styling" ward of the asylum

February 25, 2010

The "Word styling" ward of the asylum

At Exari we take Microsoft Word styling seriously. Your documents depend on styles not just to look good, but also to remain error-free. With templates, it's garbage in, garbage out. If templates aren't well styled, then the documents you create from them are at risk.

The importance of good styles
Properly styled contracts, letters and other documents ensure:

Your outline numbering remains intact, and updates correctly when changes are made
Cross references and tables of contents are automatically generated and maintained
Changes to branding and look-and-feel can be implemented quickly
It is easy to retain a consistent look-and-feel across related documents

That's why our training classes always include a segment on getting styling right in Word.

Outline numbering - Word's problem child
As anyone who's ever drafted legal documents knows, Word outline numbering is a minefield. This is because Word tries to hide complexity from its users - and outline numbering is unavoidably complex. As Word styles guru, Shauna Kelly puts it, "You seem to go round and round in circles, and never end up with what you want. And just when you get close, it falls to pieces."

It's essential that you use styles for outline numbering. Otherwise, you'll end up spending years of your life fighting Word. (Unfortunately, even when you have set up your styles '100% by the book,' there are still some risks. This last week alone, we've found three new bugs in the way Word's outline numbering handles particular scenarios. Trying to report these issues to Microsoft is worthy of another blog post...)

Conclusion
Any organization serious about streamlining document production must invest in Word styling capabilities. The upfront effort in 'getting it right' will be repaid many times over in the long run.

Have you discovered any tips or tricks that help with outline numbering? Please share in the comments below.

This post was authored by Justin Lipton, Exari's Chief Technology Officer.

2 comments:

Peter DomkeMar 5, 2010 12:57 AM
Yes, you may write a whole book about the problems with Word numbering and the possible solutions. Unfortunately, few users and still fewer managers (or partners in Law firms) are ready to pay attention to this issue.
I've remarked two reasons, which hinder proper styling in law firms today - in comparison with the nineties (when documents were produced in-site and were mostly sent out in paper form or per fax):

(1) The use of e-mail attachments for document exchange hinders company-wide style and numbering policies. Even if you can convice partners to support a style policy, and can convice secretaries to accept it, you're getting in trouble with all documents coming in via e-mail. Mostly, these documents are not styled, the numbering is a mess, and there's no value in it to reformat them. Much more depressing for the users, if proper styled documents are sent out to the client and come back in a deplorable numbering state because of missing Word experience on the other side.
This said, of course a "style policy project" to help the generation of "clean" documents IN the own company can have big cost-saving effects. Up to the moment, when the fifth version of the document comes back.
Footnote: I'm dreaming of a standardization of document formats to support the exchange. However, I've found so much different numberings during the last years that I think it's not possible to work on a standardization. E.g. the DIN numbering (1, 1.1, 1.2, 2, 2.1, 2.1.1) is seen as much too technical by some lawyers. In other circumstances, tradition prevails, and "we have to number this document following the rules of the Bundesgerichtshof", and we're dealing with roman letters and a sort of aa), bb), cc) numbering on level 6.

(2) The second reason which hinders a style policy seems to be the rapid change of teams and partners in law firms today. A partner leaves the firm and goes to another, bringing his team of 5 associates and 3 secretaries with him. They are specialists in XYZ. They bring also in some new clients, and: their contracts, individually numbered. Well, the font and the headers and footers are changed - but the content remains more or less. Of course they must produce *solutions* rapidly, not nice layouts. So these documents are introduced into the document generation process of the new firm, and begin to live there - and gone is the style policy.
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Justin LiptonMar 5, 2010 04:48 PM
All good points Peter.
While you can't control documents that are "out in the wild", I think it's much harder to justify badly styled templates and precedents.
There are also some scary examples we've seen where incorrect styling can change the interpretation of provisions.
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