[blindLaw] Getting better at formatting

[Laura Wolk]

Rahul,

I use Braille for some of this (detecting bold and extra spaces after
periods), but as for indenting and paragraph spacing, you can fix this
by turning off all auto-indent and auto-spacing options in Word.  I
turn off as many auto-formatting options as humanly possible because
they cause more harm than help.  As for pasting text, there are also
options for this.  I can't recall off the top of my head, but there
are options in word that basically say when copying from other
sources, do you want to retain formatting or change the formatting to
match what you're pasting into.  there are two checkboxes, one when
pasting between word files, and one when pasting from outside word.  I
have them both checked so that the copied text takes on the formatting
of the document you are pasting into.  With pasting, you can also
always use ctl+alt+v to do a plain text paste, if you really want to
be sure.

Unfortunately, I can't recall exactly where these options are located,
but hopefully knowing this can get you on the right track to find
them.

As for extra spaces between words and sentences, as a general rule, I
always do a control+f for three blank spaces in a row before sending a
document around.  If you're only doing one space after periods, you
can do the same thing with a search for a period followed by two
spaces or just two spaces.  I am also almost certain that if grammar
check is turned on it will flag extra spaces after words.

I hope some of that is helpful.

Laura

On 11/26/21, Rahul Bajaj via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> In the last few months, I have been keeping track of the formatting
> changes that others have made to documents I have produced. The idea
> in doing so is to map out the precise formatting issues where I need
> to improve and then to figure out how to minimize my errors.
>
> Here are the common changes that people make to my documents:
>
> A. Text is sometimes inadvertently bolded or not bolded which they fix.
> B. The font color changes from black for some text [when it is copied
> from sources with non-black coloured text], so they have to make it
> uniformly black.
> C. The indenting requires fixing.
> D. There are multiple spaces when there should be only one, between
> sentences or words. Or the spacing between paragraphs is not uniform.
> E. Superscripts somehow inadvertently crop up in the tex.
>
> Do you have any strategies in mind for me to be able to detect and
> rectify these issues on my own? I rarely use features like text
> analyzer. When I do, I get confused by all the information it reports
> and do not know what to do. In particular, it reports the location of
> the proposed change in a very weird format which is hard to
> comprehend. So I only do the following, formatting-wise:
> A. Select the entire text and then select the font size and style that
> I want; and
> b. Bold all headings and italicize case names and Latin phrases, like
> prima facie.
>
> I then send the text to a colleague or intern and request them to fix
> outstanding formatting issues.
>
> I am wondering what process I should develop to minimize formatting
> errors so that I do not have to outsource so much of this task to
> sighted colleagues or interns. Thanks very much for any guidance.
>
> Warmly,
> Rahul
>
>
> --
> --
> Rahul Bajaj
> Senior Resident Fellow,
> Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi, India
> Rhodes Scholar (India and Linacre 2018)
> University of Oxford
>
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