Last week, we talked about remedying the content and stylistic inconsistencies often found in large documents — specifically, the importance of getting a handle on how your final document should look before you begin writing. This week, we narrow the focus to talk about how to bridge the gap between your vision and the final product.
That’s where templates, style sheets and style guides come in handy. They allow you to create the stylistic elements you want and to apply them uniformly throughout the document to ensure unparalleled consistency. We provide an overview of these tools below, without detailing how to create them (online tutorials abound on how to create templates and style sheets in Word, and we’ll talk in a future post about how to develop your own style guide).