Simple Steps To Templates

Templates are what word processors, and really what any and all software use when you click "New". Software programmers are told by marketing what the "typical" customer wants to see when they open a new document (spreadsheet, blog page, etc.). A preset font, color scheme, line spacing, margins, box sizes, look, presentation, tool access, and so on.
I don't know about you, but oftentimes, what "they" have pre-programmed as "normal" is far from useful for what I need and want to do. Prior to my "A-ha" moment of remembering that built into all programs is the ability to create my own template, I spent a LOT of time clicking boxes and pulling drop down menus down, so that I could use and type how "I" wanted to, and what I was comfortable with.
For example, I prefer to type in Georgia. It is a serif font (the kind with the feet at the top and bottom of each letter). It is a larger, wider, and bolder font than Times New Roman, which was *the* default for years. Currently the default template font in Word is Calibri, OpenOffice is Times New Roman, and Zoho Writer is Roboto. Both Calibri and Roboto are sans serif fonts (the kind without the feet).
I also prefer to have my line spacing at 1.15, with 4 pts of extra space at the end of my paragraphs to separate them visually, and my margins a .5". The word processor defaults are: Word with 1.08 line spacing, 8 pts after each paragraph, and 1" margins; OpenOffice with single spacing and no extra space after paragraphs and .79" margins; Zoho Writer with 1.20, with no extra spacing after paragraphs and 1" margins.
Now, that may not seem like such a big deal, but imagine typing your 80K word novel in OpenOffice, using their defaults, only to find out you need to submit your book in Arial, double spaced, with .75" margins. And we all know the horror of highlighting hundreds of pages of text in order to fix fonts. And even though margins and paragraphs and line spacing *can* be changed globally... do you know how to do that?
And if you do, did you know you don't *have* to do it that way? There are ways of going inside your styles to change everything.

Read the entire article in the June 2021 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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