July 2005

Welcome to the July issue of Word Power, and hello to this month's new subscribers.

No apologies for the blatantly two-wheeled theme this month - just a tiny counterbalance to the usual lack of coverage of one the world's great sporting events - the Tour de France. What these guys do - every day for three weeks - verges on the superhuman. But in the UK media, cycling's still virtually invisible, and you'd never guess that it's supposed to play a significant role in both health and transport long-term strategies.

But enough of this ranting ...

In this issue:

• The Abergavenny connection - this month's featured freelancer is Abergavenny-based playwright Charles Way.
• An extract from Jane's Training Journal review of Anita Houghton's take on career development, Finding square holes: Discover who you really are and find the perfect career
• Questions on business writing - we answer readers' queries arising from our Grammar Slammer series of features
• Word Smart - the second part of our series of articles on how to improve your business communications by becoming a smart Word User.
• News of Word Smiths' publications.

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The Abergavenny connection - Charles Way

Since he began in 1978, Charles Way has written over 40 plays, many of them for young people. These include Sleeping Beauty, The Search for Odysseus, A Spell of Cold Weather – and Red Red Shoes, which won the Arts Council’s Children's Award in 2004. His plays for adults include adaptations of Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill and Independent People by Halldor Laxness.

How did you first get into writing for the theatre?

I trained as an actor and got a practical understanding of how theatre works and also discovered that I couldn't act. I then worked for several small-scale touring theatres where I was able to practice the craft of writing plays. Wrote some really bad ones.

Your plays have been performed by many theatre companies in every part of the world. What do you think it is that gives them such universal appeal?

The plays that get performed abroad are often based on universal tales like my version of The Odyssey. The play needs to be able to withstand the vagaries of translation, and be full of action - in the deep sense of the word action - ie the characters need to be different at the end of the play than at the beginning, to have moved intellectually, and emotionally. This often involves dying - which is universally dramatic.

What is your greatest achievement to date?

Just staying in the business and enjoying sitting for many hours in small office without air conditioning.

A lot of people reading this are writers and designers. Could you outline for us a typical process that you might go through from the first idea to the finished production?

The idea I usually steal from someone else - thus reading is the best form of work in the early stages, until something takes shape in the head and heart. Having got the essential concept, I work on the story - like a game of consequences. Then I sit and tend to dream a lot - picturing the play its characters, its major moments - and what it feels like to be someone else. It's at this stage that it looks like no work is being done and one is asked to mow the lawn. I write a rough, instinct draft then labour on many drafts. Finally I get to understand what my subconscious has been telling me all along - and know what the play is about.

What main problems do you encounter as you work, and how do you deal with these?

Cash flow, obviously, and the need to sell work, not only write it. In terms of creative problems - I generally use other people to solve them for me. Actors are very useful for this and unbelievably, if not disgracefully, cheap. They are also very honest when asked to act a poorly written scene or line. The practice of theatre solves most problems if you allow yourself to see the obvious and to change what you thought was your best idea.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

I am working on a play about Pirates, and an operatic version of The Emperor and the Nightingale. In November I am directing my own version of The Tinderbox by HC Anderson at the Gardner Arts Centre in Brighton.

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Review: Finding square holes: Discover who you really are and find the perfect career

By Anita Houghton

Extract from Jane Smith's Training Journal review

I have to admit to some initial scepticism at the prospect of yet another career development book. As a self help addict, my shelves are already bulging with manuals involving everything from parachutes and springboards to adventures, dreams and giants. Surely these others have said all there is to say about boosting our self confidence and taking control of our lives? But how wrong you can be ...

Throughout the book Houghton shares her personal coaching process, so that you can work through it on your own, or with your personal coach, or with a group of friends. The style is personal, engaging, informative and inspiring.

The underlying principle of the book is that, before you can identify the right career, you first have to get to know and understand yourself. This is why the bulk of the book deals with the 'broad based groundwork': our reasons for working, our personality type, the things that are important to us and what we have to offer.

If I have a criticism, it is that the book doesn't really go beyond the foundation. Once you have identified your ideal career, you are more or less left to your own devices. The short chapter on action planning covers only goal setting and time management, with little on implementing the plan or overcoming further obstacles. Perhaps we should be reminded that actually achieving the dream involves constantly reviewing the plan in the light of experience, never giving up, taking a positive view of failure and thinking ever more creatively about ways of reaching the identified goal.

Anita Houghton mentions her own career difficulties and the significant career change she made from doctor to careers counsellor and coach. Maybe it's this experience, as well as her work with clients, that gives the book its special appeal. Yes, we have heard a lot of it before - but Houghton's innovative and refreshing cocktail of elements makes this a valuable addition to anyone's library of self help manuals.

Details

• Publisher: Crown House, USA
• ISBN: 190442484-8
• Paperback, £9.99.

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Word Smart - Part 1: Using and creating style sheets in Microsoft Word

In this first part of Word Smart, I want to convince you that style sheets really are the key to life, the universe and everything. I’ll show you how easy they are to set up and use, and how they can add a professional consistency to your letters, reports and other documents. In these features, I don’t intend to duplicate Office Help, but rather to focus on some of the areas sidelined by Microsoft’s documentation.

Style sheets are a common feature of most word processing and DTP packages, and you may already be aware of their power and convenience. Using style sheets gives a consistent, structured format to your documents - as opposed to the time consuming, unreliable method of applying the desired attributes manually to each paragraph.

Why use style sheets?

Using a style sheet will benefit both you and your organisation.

The advantages for you are that:

• Applying a style is quicker and less susceptible to error than local formatting. You will know exactly how each element of the workbook - headings, bullet points, normal, case studies, quotations etc - should appear
• Styles make editing easier and give you more control over your document. By modifying the style sheet, you will instantly change the formatting of all the text in that style — no matter how big your document. If your Heading 1 style is blue, and you want to make it red throughout, all you do is change the Heading 1 style to red
• Using styles makes it easy to experiment. If you modify a style and you don't like the effect, click Undo (in the Edit menu) and all your changes immediately disappear.

The main benefit for your organisation is that there will be greater consistency between different documents - leading to a more uniform 'house' style for all its publications.

Features of style sheets

If you are not currently using style sheets, here is a brief list of their main features:

• A style sheet consists of a list of style names
• Word provides certain built-in styles (eg Normal, Heading 1, Heading 2, etc), which are available whenever you create a new blank document.
• You can also define your own custom styles (eg styles for bullet lists, quotations, case studies, etc).
• There are two types of style, paragraph styles and character styles.

Applying paragraph and character styles

Paragraph styles define both font attributes (eg typeface, font size, colour) and paragraph attributes (eg alignment, tabs, space before & after, line spacing, 'keep with' options). For example, the Heading 2 style might be 16 pt Verdana Bold, align left with 24 pt space before. To apply a paragraph style: click anywhere in the paragraph; scroll to the desired paragraph style in the Style Box (the drop-down list at the far left of the Formatting toolbar) and release the mouse button.

Character styles only define font attributes. To apply a character style: highlight the text you want to apply the style to; scroll down to the desired character style in the Style Box and release the mouse button.

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Keyboard commands

Many people find it easier and quicker to apply styles by keyboard commands. To set up a Shortcut Key for a style: go to the Style dialog box (in the Format menu); highlight the style; click on Modify; click on Shortcut Key; type in the desired key or key combination; click OK. You might, for example, choose Option+F1 for Heading 1, Option+F2 for Heading 2, and so on - with Option+F5 for the Normal style.

Another way of applying a style from the keyboard is to add a one or two letter shorthand suffix to the style name by modifying the style name in the Style dialog box. The suffix must be preceded by a comma - so Normal becomes Normal,n - Heading 1 becomes Heading 1,h1 - and so on. Then, to apply the style, click in the Style Box (or use a keyboard shortcut to access the Style Box) and type the shorthand suffix (don't type the comma).

Creating and altering styles

The Style Box is where the action takes place. As well as being the usual means of applying styles, you can also use it to create your own styles or change any of the built-in styles.

• To create a style: position the cursor in a previously formatted paragraph; type a name for your new style name (which mustn't be the same as the name of an existing style) into the Style Box; press Enter. Your new style will now appear in the list of available styles in the Style Box.
• To alter an existing style: make the desired changes; select the altered characters or paragraph (if you're changing a paragraph style, make sure you select the whole paragraph, including the hidden paragraph mark); click in the Style Box; press Enter; in the Modify Styles dialog box which appears, choose 'Update the style to reflect recent changes'.

Alternatively, you can create and alter styles in the Style dialog box, which you'll find in the Format menu.

Coming up in Word Smart part 2

In next month's feature I'll look at some of the most useful custom styles, how to turn off the default Word settings that can interfere with these and how to save your customised style sheets as templates.

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Questions on business writing

In the first six issues of Word Power, we looked at some of the basic points of language and punctuation that many people find difficult in their business writing. This series was well received and gave rise to a number of comments and questions. We thought you might like to read some of these questions - and our answers.

Here's one from MT of Wrexham.

"I'm really confused about capitalisation - what are the rules?"

You only use capitalisation in the following circumstances:

• At the beginning of a sentence
• At the beginning of a piece of direct speech: she asked, "Where's my mobile?"
• For proper nouns: President Bush, Mr Jones, The First World War, Plymouth University
• For the first and main words of any kind of title: Far from the Madding Crowd, War of the Worlds, The Chelsea Flower Show, Bishop of York
• At the beginning of a line of verse
• At the beginning on each item of a bulleted list - if this is the convention that you've adopted or are working to.

Capitalisation is correct only for specific items or people. For example, you would refer to:

• A president, but President Bush
• A manager but the National Sales Manager
• A dog but Molly.

Please send us your questions on any aspect of business writing or using word - and we'll do our best to answer them.

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Word Smiths publications

Unlock the secrets of successful reading

Want to read faster and retain more of what you read? Jane Smith – one of the UK’s leading Speed Reading trainers – shares her secrets in Speed Reading for Success. This information-packed audio CD – rather than a book – is the ideal way of learning the techniques.

"All of the tracks are short and to the point, easy to understand and provide practical and invaluable information, making this a product you don’t want to be without."

Kellie Fowler, Mind Tools website

"A little bit of genius that will help you learn speed reading with ease ... an excellent idea and I wish we had thought of it first."

New Archaeology (USA)

"I would recommend this resource to anyone who needs to get through lots of material quickly and efficiently."

Training Journal (UK)

Speed Reading for Success is fantastic value: order it from Amazon for only £10.39.

Decision Making for Success

This e-book's obviously filling a need, because it's proving a very popular download. It's currently available free. Just click here.

In the pipeline

• Coaching & Mentoring for Success
  This audio book - 2 CDs) with accompanying book - is linked to NVQ standards and will be launched in the Autumn. Watch this space!
• Memory Skills for Success
  This sister publication for Speed Reading for Success is still in gestation, and will be published early in 2006.

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