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You have used Word or something similar before, so writing should be simple, yes? Well, most of us have not tapped into all of Word’s capabilities. You’ve probably just typed your text and maybe applied some character styles to it such as italics or boldface. As a paragraph-based word processor it enables a lot more sophisticated treatment of your text, enabling you to format titles, headings, body text, sidebars, lists, and other elements easily, most of the time with one click.
In this section:
Working with the Pearson Template
Working with the Pearson template
This discussion is based on Word 2003 running on Windows XP. Yes, we are one of those corporations that always uses the software that is a version behind the most current one. Not to worry if you are a Word 2007/Windows Vista user though. Read Adding and Attaching Templates in Word 2007, which will give you the 411 on working with global templates using Word 2007 on Windows XP or Windows Vista. Using templates in Word 2008 (Mac) and OpenOffice is similar, and usually we will not have problems working with these other platforms. When in doubt, try sending a test document to your editor before submitting your first chapter.
The first thing you have to do to work with our global style template is put it in the directory where Word expects to see it.
Using Windows Explorer, go to your hard drive and access the Documents and Settings folder.
Drill down, first clicking on your user designation and then on Microsoft, Application Data, Templates. In other words go to the Documents and Settings\Microsoft\Application Data\Templates folder. Put the global template in the Templates folder.
Next you want to attach it to your document.
Open the document.
Choose Tools, Templates and Add-Ins, and click the Attach button. You will get a file opening dialog.
Navigate to Documents and Settings\Microsoft\Application Data\Templates and click on the global template file (Proftemplate_61104.dot, PTG_IndyNovember05.dot, or something similar). Then click open. You should see a new tool bar added to your toolbar area.
Applying styles is easy.
Use the pull-down menus in the new toolbar to access the various styles. Just put your cursor in the line/paragraph you wish to style and then pull the menu down and select the style you want.
You can also get access to the styles form Format, Styles and Formatting. This adds the Styles and Formatting pane to the right side of the window. To apply a style from there, simply put your cursor in the line or paragraph you wish to style and, under Pick formatting to apply, click on the appropriate style. To apply a style more globally, select the text you want to apply it to and click on the style you want. From this pane you can even select all the text with a particular style and change it.
Styles are also available from the Formatting toolbar as a drop down menu.
If your styles do not seem to be applying properly (the text does not change to reflect the style), go to Format, Theme, Style Gallery. On the left choose the global style template that you attached to your document. Styles from the global template should work just fine now.
File naming conventions
We generally try to keep this simple. Typically you want to use something like xxyyyzz.ext where the xx denotes the chapter number, the yyy a three letter abbreviation reflecting author initials or book title (work that out with your editor). For figures, the zz represents the figure number. And of course the .ext is the file extension. So 01cjz.doc would indicate the first chapter from somebody with initials cjz, while 01fig02.tif would represent the second figure in the first chapter, in TIFF format.
Writing/formatting code
Code is typically typeset in a fixed width (also called monospace) typeface. There are styles in our style template for code that utilize such fonts. In some cases there are different styles for different kinds of code listings. There are also styles for code that appears in regular body text paragraphs. Utilize these styles to make sure your code comes out the way you want and expect it to. Note that you should never use tabs in code. Use blank spaces instead. Do watch for line wrapping problems.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the undocumented use of others ideas or expression. It easy enough to avoid plagiarism. Write in your own words. Don’t use somebody else’s. Definitely do not cut and paste material from documents or web pages. When you do use other peoples’ ideas, credit them by citing their work. If you need to use their exact wording, put it in quotation marks or use block quotes. If you need to use their diagram, get permission to use it. Don’t use large amounts of their work even when you properly cite them. If you use too much you may violate copyright.
You don’t have to be concerned about plagiarism if you are discussing common knowledge. Common knowledge is typically defined as knowledge that most people have. For example, if you are talking about objects in the sense of object-oriented programming, you don’t need to dig up the citation for whoever coined that term. What an object is in the object-oriented sense is common knowledge among programmers.
The consequence of plagiarism can be serious. They range from legal proceedings, to financial penalties, to loss of reputation. Make sure you exercise due diligence when it comes to crediting the work and wording of others.