I’ve written a book 5 years ago, without knowing much of LO.
Now I studied LO (Writer) and I’d like to re-design this book.
How do I start?
Select the entire text (Ctrl+A) and copy (Ctrl+C).
Open a new document and paste-special unformatted text (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V).
Select the entire text (Ctrl+A) and apply paragraph “Text Body” by hitting Ctrl+0 or double-click “Text Body” in the stylist window.
Walk throught the text and find headers.
Apply paragraph style “Header 1” to first level headers (Ctrl+1).
Apply paragraph style “Header 2” to first level headers (Ctrl+2).
etc.
Do not bother about visual look at this early stage. Any font, size, color, indentations, emphasis can be modified later by modifying the respective style.
Many thanks!
I assume that “without knowing much of LO” means your book is direct formatted, i.e. you applied all “decorations” manually at every point you needed them.
A full redesign goes through understanding what benefit you get from using styles. Forget first formatting and think about your book. It has a “structure”: it is not a collection of random words. Your topic progressively develops along a logical line, be it a novel, a letter, a scientific paper or even a catalogue. You, the author, know which role every paragraph and word play in the argumentation and your task of writing your book is to communicate to Writer the role or significance of paragraphs and words.
Styles are the tools to annotate your text with semantic significance.
Don’t be afraid by these pedantic terms. You’ll see that the method is quite simple.
The primary unit o meaning is a paragraph. In principle a paragraph contains a single idea. You use a paragraph style to describe the importance. If your paragraph is a heading (chapter title), you apply Heading n (n being the level of the heading). A main topic paragraph is styled Text Body. You already cover more than 80% of your needs.
Note that I didn’t mention Default Paragraph Style. In Writer styles are organised in a tree-like (pedigree) structure where descendant styles inherit attribute from their ancestor before overriding some attributes. Default Paragraph Style is the ultimate ancestor of all others and defines the common properties shared by all others (unless overridden). Therefore, it should not be used for text because customising it has unexpected effects on others.
Some of your paragraphs depart from main topic: notes (foot notes and end notes are automatically implicitly styles to Footnote and Endnote respectively), comments, quotations, … Then apply some dedicated built-in style or create your own (which you can attach to some dedicated “ancestor”).
Character styles play a similar role inside paragraphs. A paragraph address a single idea but words in this paragraph have a different significance. E.g. a word may denote irony, be a trademark, a foreign word; it could emphasise some importance or understatement, … Then you apply a character style like Emphasis or Strong Emphasis. Again if no built-in conveys the notion, create one.
Your book may be composed of several parts with different layout. For example, you have a cover, followed by a TOC with Roman-numbered pages, followed by chapters with chapter title repeated in the header. The layout of each of these parts is described by a page style. You already have built-in First Page for the cover and Default Page Style for the main topic. Add those for the other parts.
The idea behind this semantic styling approach is to separate your text from its appearance. If you thoroughly and consistently style your text without any direct formatting (I am aware that some direct formatting is inevitable but it should remain exceptional, say less than 1%), you can tune the appearance without ever reviewing your text nor its style markup. You’ll only play with style configuration.
Note you annotate the meaning and importance of your text. Therefore, you should have no empty paragraph because they contain no information. If you already have empty paragraphs to vertically space your text, think about the significance of the paragraphs above and below. Vertical spacing is part of a paragraph significance and is encoded in a paragraph style.
The first task in re-design is to imagine the styles you’ll need. My rough estimates are:
- 5-10 paragraph styles in addition to built-in Heading n, Text Body and those implicit in generated tables (TOC, alphabetical index, …)
- 5-10 character styles including built-in Emphasis and Strong Emphasis widely used
- 1 page style per “part” for simple layout, may reach 3 per “part” in extremely complex layout
Note that field insertion allows to share pages styles between parts, e.g. the same page style(s) cover all chapters. Field insertion is to tool to retrieve information from headings to insert it into headers and footers.
Frame and list styles are more difficult to tame but are also immensely fruitful. If you jhave bullet or numbered lists, refrain from using the toolbar button of Format>Bullet & Numbering. This is direct formatting. The main difficulty with list style (which only address the location and appearance of the bullet/number, not the formatting of the text) is to understand what a list is semantically speaking. A list has a “type” characterised by a list style. This does not mean you can have a single occurrence of this type. A list style defines how a list looks. You just restart numbering at the beginning of the next occurrence to “detach” it from the previous one.
Once you have a first sketch of your style set, configure them in a blank document. Paste your existing book as unformatted text and style everything. If this does not look nice, modify the styles but don’t change your text.
You’re welcome to ask for clarification and explanation. I can be more accurate if you describe the object of your book.
Thank you very much!
Correct.