Numbering is Not Possessed
Stuart J Stuple is a program manager on the Microsoft Office Word team who focuses on the formatting and editing experience of long or complex documents. His background is in book publishing and education.
If ever there was a misunderstood feature, it has to be the automatic numbering features within Word. Intended to make it easy to create lists that number themselves, people have on more than one occasion described the experience as out-of-control and unpredictable. They often do this over dinner when they find out I own the numbering experience and I'm always interested in hearing specifics. But I believe that the changes that we've made in Word 2007 combined with just a little knowledge mean that you can tame this feature and create the lists of your dreams. (What? You don't dream about numbering and formatting? Hmm. Perhaps I need to get out more.)
In today's post we'll cover improvements we've made to simple numbering in Word 2007, and in future posts we'll chat about our improvements to:
- Formatting numbering
- Joining and separating numbered lists
- Leveling numbered lists
Simpler simple numbering
The most noticeable change within numbering in Word 2007 is when it occurs. No more waiting for the end of the paragraph but rather as soon as you type the number and a space, your list begins. If you didn't mean to start a list, then a simple Undo removes the "listness" and returns your numbering to plain text. Most people know that Word will recognize Arabic numbers followed by punctuation, such as 1) or 1., but Word also recognize lettered lists (using lowercase or uppercase) and has several automatic bullet symbols (such as *, >, and -).
With Word 2007, recognized lists now use their own style. In previous versions, numbering or bulleting a paragraph didn't change the style associated with the paragraph. Now, the style becomes "List Paragraph." "So, why do I care?" you might ask. Well, this allows us to have a different amount of space between the entries in the list and the surrounding paragraphs. Separating the list from the paragraph before and after the list and at the same time tightening the space between list entries makes the list stand out a bit more and makes it easier to read.
If you want an unnumbered paragraph in the middle of a list, simply press backspace to remove the number. In Word 2007, the text on the first line will continue to line up with the text of the numbered paragraph. If you want the text to line up with the number position, press another backspace. (Press a third backspace and you should be back at the start of the line.)
One trick that's very useful when you have a list that is numbered with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, and so on) and that contains unnumbered paragraphs is that you can pick the numbering back up by typing the next number in sequence. So if you have paragraphs numbered 1) and 2) and then an unnumbered paragraph, you can rejoin the previous list by starting your next paragraph with 3) followed by a space. If you start a new paragraph with a 1), then you'll start a new list.
Give that a whirl and let us know what you think. More on numbering to come…stay tuned.
- Stuart J Stuple & Jonathan
