Apache OpenOffice Writer for students by David Paenson, B. A. Hons. December 2013 CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Automation 1 3 Document Structure 2 4 First Steps 3 5 Headings 4 6 Chapter Numbering 6 7 Table of Contents 8 8 Outline 10 9 Navigating your Text 10 10 Group Work 11 11 Proofreading 12 12 Paragraph Style “Text Body” 13 13 More on Styles 13 14 MS-Word 15 15 Unnumbered First Pages 15 16 Title Page 17 17 Papers Without a Title Page 17 18 Numbered Default Page 18 19 Roman Page Numbering 19 20 Bullets and Numbering 20 21 Line Numbering 21 22 Cross-References 21 23 Footnotes 22 24 Literature List 23 25 Quotes 23 26 Tables 24 27 Charts 25 28 Snapshot 27 29 Pictures 27 30 Cross Tables (Statistics) 28 31 Extra Long Web Addresses 31 32 Fonts 32 33 Emphasis 33 34 Special Characters 33 35 Non separable combinations 34 36 Shortcut keys 34 37 Mouse Clicks 35 38 PDFs 35 39 Saving your files 35 40 Several files open at once 36 41 Search and Replace 36 42 Auto Spell Check 37 43 Synonyms 37 44 Document Infos 37 45 Labels and Form Letters 37 46 Help 39 47 Getting Apache OpenOffice 39 48 Practice 39 49 Extra Practice 44 1 Introduction I first wrote this short guide in the summer of 2008 (in German) and have been updating it ever since. My aim is to help you as a student over the typical hurdles you will invariably come up against as soon as you are confronted with the task of writing lengthy documents – especially your thesis. So I will not detail all the numerous functions Apache OpenOffice Writer has in store, but instead focus on typical real life situations from the point of view of the student. Nevertheless, a general understanding of the programme is important. It’s a bit like trying of operate a complex machine. If you want it to behave as you expect then you have to master its basic mechanisms. So some theory is necessary in order to tackle individual problems. I would therefore strongly recommend you to take your time and read through the whole document before trying anything out in practice. When finished don’t forget to do the basic exercise right at the end of this manual. After that you will feel confident enough to tackle any formatting job. (Alternatively, if you feel like it, jump right now to the exercise for a half hour warm up, and then read on from here.) 2 Automation Your thesis as well as any other typical document, book or magazine will contain a number of recurring elements such as headings, footnotes, page layouts, the main text body, quotations, literature lists, pages etc. All these elements need to be formatted uniformly. Additionally many of these elements, such as pages, headings, footnotes, lists, illustrations etc. need to be numbered. Lastly, the table of contents, table of illustrations and other such tables can be generated automatically on the basis of existing chapter and section headings and existing illustration captions. These various decisions or settings are all recorded in a few central locations and apply uniformly to the whole document. If you take advantage of all these automations you will eventually discover that you will save an enormous amount of time. Your motto should always be: let the programme do the donkey work. 3 Document Structure When conceiving an essay or thesis you will invariably have in your mind’s eye not only its contents but also its overall structure. The contents consist in the main of the actual text. It is the Text Body which makes up the bulk of the document. The Text Body has its own formatting style, appropriately called just that: “Text Body”. But we will go into that in more detail in section 12. For now we want to deal with the structure of a document. The main means to make the underlying structure visible for the reader is of course the use of chapter and section headings. Imagine for a second walking into your favourite bookshop and stumbling onto an attractive looking book. You open it and see only text, not a single heading. You will very likely feel quite exasperated. This simple anecdote demonstrates how important headings are. They are a kind of key to the text which you as the author want the reader to get stuck into. There are of course first and foremost the main chapter headings, that is Level 1. Then you might want section headings, that would be Level 2 and subsection headings, Level 3, and so on, right down to a theoretical Level 10. These various Levels are usually optically distinguishable one from the other by font size (measured in points, abbreviated as “pt”) typeface (regular/bold/italic) font (e.g. Times/Arial/Garamond/Futura etc.) spacing above paragraph spacing below paragraph breaks (e.g. main chapter headings might all begin on a new page) numbering (optional) It’s best to type in all the headings and sub-headings right from the start and activate their automatic numbering too. Then you have a structure which you can fill in little by little with text. Once you have the headings you can then automatically generate a table of contents. Note also that the decision what is a heading and what it should look like are two separate decisions – the second one building on the first. 4 First Steps When embarking on a new text you will invariably say to yourself: should I concentrate just on the content and leave the formatting till later? Or should I try to format the text properly right from the beginning? The second approach is the right one. Using Styles is so easy there is really no reason why you shouldn’t apply them right from the start. Here some of the advantages of this way of going about things: save time using the Navigator (see section 10) you can jump to any chapter you wish to edit without having to scroll up or down to it chapters and sections can – again using the Navigator – be reordered with just one mouse click you’ll have a better idea of what the final result of your efforts is going to look like 5 Headings As mentioned above you have to tell the programme what is a Heading and what is Text Body. For that you use the following keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + 0 for Text Body (ground level) Ctrl + 1 for Chapter Headings (level 1) Ctrl + 2 for Section Headings (level 2) Ctrl + 3 for Subsection Headings (level 3) Note: It isn’t necessary to mark the whole paragraph beforehand – just place the cursor anywhere within the paragraph and apply the short cut. For those of you who use Macs (I happen to be one of them): it’s not the Ctrl-Key but the Cmd-Key instead. But I’ll leave it up to you to figure out the variations. Linux machines use the same keyboard shortcuts as Windows. ▪ Making Headings Look Nice If you right click on, say, any Level 1 heading, a menu pops up. One of its options is Edit Paragraph Style. Any changes made here will apply to all other Level 1 Headings. Same goes of course for the other levels, indeed for any paragraph style. Here my formatting suggestions for the first three levels of headings: Style Font Size Typeface Spacing above Spacing below Chapter headings (level 1) Garamond 16pt Bold 1.2 cm 0.6 cm Section headings (level 2) Garamond 13pt Bold 1 cm 0.5 cm Subsection headings (level 3) Garamond 13pt Italic 0.8 cm 0.4 cm Table 1: Styles for Headings (just a suggestion) Generally headings should be left aligned hyphenation turned off short ▪ New Page for Each Chapter Heading? If you want each chapter to begin on a new page, then in your style for Level 1 go to the tab Text Flow and check box Breaks Insert. If you would like to avoid chapter headings in the bottom quarter of the page, you can insert a page break beforehand using the short cut Ctrl + Return to shift the heading to the beginning of the following page. Alternatively you could right click the paragraph immediately following the heading and choose Paragraph › Text Flow › Options › Do not split paragraph. Providing the paragraph in question has a certain length (i.e. just about a quarter page), it will “pull” the heading immediately above along with itself to the next page. Note: you’ve changed the formatting of this one paragraph here, not the overall Paragraph Style! Using this method consistently avoids the necessity to keep on checking the text after adding bits or taking bits out to see if any headings might have landed too low on the page. If the paragraph in question is too short, you can include the one following it by ticking also Keep with next paragraph. ▪ Blank Lines? When in a hurry it’s tempting to just add a couple of blank lines before a heading and another blank line following a heading. This is definitely not the right way to go about things! It really is paramount to work systematically in the way described above. If not, the “sticking” effect – that is, the fact that headings always keep together with the paragraph immediately following – will simply not function. Change any undesirable spacing within the paragraph style using suggestions in table 1. ▪ How Many Levels? I would recommend a maximum of two numbered heading levels. 1 Chapter 1.1 Section 1.2 Section 1.3 Section 2 Chapter 2.1 Section 2.2 Section 2.3 Section etc. Per level you should have at least two headings. If you have a 2.1 heading then you should also have a 2.2 heading, a 2.1 all alone would definitely be a mistake. If you are going to use a third or even fourth level, mainly for optical reasons, then leave these unnumbered and don’t include them in the table of contents. The number of levels you include in the table of contents is your free choice (see section 7). I myself have used two levels in this document, but only actually included the first one in my table of contents and I also only numbered the first level. Think about it: if you have too finespun a numbering structure you’re suggesting to the reader an equally finespun logic which might not actually exist in the social reality you are trying to describe. Note: For the same reason I would recommend refraining from using graphics with arrows pointing in all directions in order to visualise a complex reality. For three reasons: i) a graphic suggests that reality can easily be reduced to some simple graphical structure, which is often not the case; ii) at least one dimension is mostly missing, i.e. that of time – a double arrow for instance doesn’t tell you which interaction starts first and how long the interval between the two interactions is; iii) it is often said that one drawing expresses more than a thousand words – but this isn’t necessarily the case; a photograph or an architectural plot, perhaps, but even a photograph needs interpreting, and this is where human language developed over a period of tens of thousands of years is simply unbeatable; but the real problem is that of contestation: precisely because a picture is supposed to “express more than a thousand words” it robs the onlooker the right to answer back; planting a picture in the middle of a text is the opposite of engaging the reader in dialogue. Avoid overlong chapter headings. Best short headings with some explanatory text immediately following. Don’t forget long headings also appear in the table of contents in their full length. ▪ Some Settings Under Tools › Options › OpenOffice.org Writer › Compatibility I would recommend unchecking three choice boxes: Add spacing between paragraphs and tables; unchecking this option ensures that the set spacing below a paragraph and the set spacing above the paragraph immediately following it do not get added together; instead only the larger of the two spacings takes effect Add paragraph and table spacing at tops of pages; unchecking this option ensures that headings appear right at the top margin, without the usual set spacing separating them from a previous paragraph Expand word space on lines with manual line breaks in justified paragraphs; unchecking this option ensures that inserting a new line using short cut Shift + Return will not expand the words on the previous line right up to the right margin; instead they will be left aligned even in a paragraph with justified alignment Having removed these three ticks don’t forget to press the button Use as Default so that these changes apply also to any future documents. 6 Chapter Numbering Numbering of headings can and should be completely automated. This has for one the advantage that if you decide to add or remove headings or move chapters and sections around or even change the level of a heading from level 1 to level 2 or vice versa, you won’t have to renumber them manually. Furthermore you can do this moving around of chapters and sections using the Navigator – you don’t have to mark text, cut it out and reinsert it in its new location! Another advantage is when working in groups. The various participants all activate automatic numbering, then they all get together and insert their various contributions into a new, empty document and finally, with the help of the Navigator, they order the chapters into their final positions. (See Chapters 9 and10 for more details.) Automated numbering is switched on using the menu Tools › Outline Numbering (see illustration 2). Normally you will opt for simple 1, 2, 3 style, but it could just as well be A, B, C style or Roman style. It’s also possible to mix styles, that is, have Arabic for the first two levels and a), b), c) for the third – whereby the closing bracket is simply a “Separator After”. When using 1, 2, 3 style it is common to Show sublevels. This means that heading 5.2.7 for instance will appear exactly as “5.2.7” and not simply as “7”. When mixing styles, you could have level 2 with sublevels shown (for instance “5.2”), but leave level 3 without showing sublevels (just “c)” for instance). You might want to turn numbering off for particular headings, for example your introduction at the beginning and your literature list at the end of your thesis. You can achieve this by pressing the third button on the pop-up menu (see illustration 3). Be careful not to press the second button, because this would switch on/off numbering for all headings of that particular level! Note: For chapter and section headings it is important to use the method described above. Do not simply activate numbering (or bullets) directly in the menu as suggested in illustration 4! This latter alternative is useful only for short lists, but not for chapter or section headings! Under Position (see illustration 5) make sure Width of numbering is sufficient to contain the whole number (e.g. “5.7.2”) plus some spacing so that the heading number stands out nicely from the heading text – even if you happen to have a heading spanning several lines. 7 Table of Contents Having told the programme what are your headings and having activated their automatic numbering, you can now go on to inserting an automatically generated Table of Contents: Insert › Indexes and Tables › Indexes and Tables. In the pop-up menu you can Evaluate up to Level of your choice. In this present document I have chosen to evaluate only up to Level 1 and so to ignore section headings. To update your table of contents simply right-click on it and choose Update Table/Index. ▪ Alignment As you can see in illustration 8, the table of contents by default contains the following four Entries: Chapter number: E# Entry: E Tab stop (usually right aligned and with dots as filling): T Page number: # So as to achieve an even alignment as in illustrations 6 and 9 you need to add a Tab stop in between the E# and the E, leaving the Tab stop position at 0.00cm (the actual position will be defined later on in the style pertaining to that table of contents’ level). Note: If you happen to inadvertently insert an entry you don’t want, just click on it once and press Del. The next step is then to right-click all the Contents levels of your table of contents one after the other and to Modify the Indents & Spacing both Before text and that of First line. The individual settings for indenting will depend on the kind of chapter numbering you have chosen. For instance if you have a), b), c) style for your third level, that is subsections, and have decided not to Show sublevels, then of course you will need less room than for example for the much longer “5.7.2” kind of numbering (again see illustration 9). The important concept to keep in mind is that you need the positive indenting to bring the cursor to its first position for the actual entry E, and a negative indenting to accommodate the chapter number E# (see illustration 9). This only works of course if you have automatic chapter numbering switched on. Using this method, even headings spanning more than one line (not really to be recommended) will align nicely: the second and subsequent lines of the entry will all appear below each other and not below the number of the entry. Note also that when choosing your indentation it’s better to go for generous values. If you choose too small values, then your numbering won’t fit in and you will find your right dotted tab will appear before the entry instead of between entry and page number. Indent before text Negative indent First line Spacing before paragraph 1st level 0.80 cm -0.80 cm 0.4 cm 2nd level 1.80 cm -1.00 cm 0.1 cm 3rd level 3.00 cm -1.20 cm 0.1 cm Table 2: Indentation needed for first three levels when using full sub-levels like "5.7.2" ▪ Other Indices and Tables Other indices can be generated apart from the table of contents. The same steps apply – you only need to change the Type to whatever is required, e.g. an Index of tables or an Illustration index. The various tables, illustrations and so on in your text need to have a Caption, which will then appear in the index. 8 Outline Sometimes you are expected to hand in an outline of your work in advance of the actual homework or thesis. You can use chapter headings for this purpose, then generate a table of contents as described above though removing the last two entries (punctuated tab stop and page number), leaving just chapter number and name. 9 Navigating your Text From the menu View choose Navigator (or simply press F5). The Navigator looks a bit like a table of contents, but it serves a completely different purpose. Whereas the table of contents is part of the document and will get printed along with all the rest, the navigator is not part of the document. Rather it is an electronic key which allows you to navigate through the document and even change the ordering of chapters around. Now press the + next to the category Headings. You will then see all your existing chapter Headings. Clicking on any one of them will highlight it. Double-clicking on it will bring you right to the corresponding passage in the text. So it’s not necessary any more to scroll down (or up) to it. A click on the Double Arrow Up-Icon will move the whole chapter including subsections, footnotes, illustrations etc. up – what OpenOffice calls promoting a chapter (see illustration 11). So chapter 5 for example will swap places with chapter 4. Conversely using the Double Arrow Down. Using the Double Arrow Right will lower the level of a chapter heading down to a section heading, for instance chapter 5 to section 4.x. Conversely using the Double Arrow Left.* Apart from headings, the navigator also lists graphics, tables, hyperlinks and many other objects you can easily jump to with a double-click. Note though that graphics are automatically named “graphics1, graphics2, graphics3” and so on, so it’s difficult to keep track of what these names stand for exactly. But you can right click any graphic and choose Picture › Options. Here you can replace the given name “graphics x” with a more descriptive one. (The list is unordered, so giving a descriptive name makes it much easier to jump to a given picture.) Unlike the table of contents, the Navigator updates itself automatically. The Navigator is especially useful in the context of group work – see section 10. 10 Group Work More and more students have to give in group papers. Up to four or even more authors might be involved. To facilitate the joining together of the various contributions do the following: enable automatic chapter numbering (see section 6) make sure all participants use the “Text body”-style for the Text Body and under no circumstances the “Default”-style! be sure to completely avoid any manual formatting, always apply styles and make sure all members of the group apply the same styles with the same names for the same purposes and with the same formatting; this is just a matter of one off coordination within the group when you set off – though adjustments can of course be made later on (see Section 13 to discover an easy way to export a style for later use by yourself or others) Joining the various contributions in one document is then only a matter of a few minutes: dump all the contributions in any order into an new, empty document using the Navigator change the ordering of the chapters as appropriate create your front page and generate your table of contents ▪ Individual Headers for Each Contributor? Sometimes the lecturer wishes to know at a glance who has made what contribution. One way to achieve this is to give each of the authors their own Page Style and name them accordingly – “Shila” for Shila, “Leila” for Leila, “Mark” for Mark and also one for the whole group called “Group”. Activate the Header for each of these page styles. This involves the following steps: open Menu Format › Styles and Formatting (F11) click on the 4th icon to the right for page styles right-click on the Default-Style and select Modify… make all the appropriate changes applicable to your standard default pages, e.g. a left margin of 3cm and of course a header (or footer) to accommodate page numbering place the cursor somewhere in your text and double-click on the page format “Default” to actually apply it to your pages on the top right hand corner of the pop-up menu click the small black triangle pointing downwards and chose the first option New Style from Selection give your new style the name of one of the group members, say “Leila” go back to your document and place the cursor at the very end of the last piece of text belonging to the whole group go to menu Insert › Manual Break and choose the newly created Style “Leila” (see illustration 13) place cursor in Leilas Page Header and write her name, press the tabulator one or two times to move the cursor to the right margin and Insert › Fields › Page Number repeat the procedure for all group members ▪ Checking the final result Having the final result checked by one or two persons in the group might be a good idea. More on that in section 11. 11 Proofreading You will probably want someone to have a look at your thesis or any other really important paper before handing it in. At the same time you would most likely also want to see any changes or suggestions he or she might have made before either accepting or rejecting them, and not simply rely on blind faith. I myself do that regularly with other translators I cooperate with. This function is called Edit › Changes › Record. After getting your document back you can then Edit › Changes › Accept or Reject any changes made to your document. Alternatively you can right-click any marked passages and choose Accept Change or Reject Change. If several people are involved in the production of one document, each one should have registered their name under Tools › Options › OpenOffice.org › User Data. Any changes made by any one of the correctors will carry not only date and time of the change but also the name of the corrector. Each corrector will have his or her own colour marking. 12 Paragraph Style “Text Body” Now at last we can talk about the Text Body, the real substance of any text. Like all other elements, the text body has its own specific paragraph style, appropriately named “Text body”. By default Text body allows for a Spacing below paragraph of 0,21mm, which is exactly 6pt – which in turn is exactly half the hight of a standard 12pt font. This very modest spacing is nevertheless enough to highlight the start of a new paragraph. It helps to lighten the overall impression.* Other settings for your body text might well be Line spacing of 1.5 lines, Alignement justified and Text flow › Hyphenation › Automatically. Automatic hyphenation is important in order to avoid large gaps in case a long word doesn’t fit at the end of the line and gets moved to the next line so that the remaining words sprawl right up to the right margin. Two rather enigmatic concepts are those of Orphan control and Widow control. The former stands for the minimum number of lines a paragraph at the bottom of a page must contain if it is not to move in toto to the following page. The latter stands conversely for the minimum number of lines a paragraph appearing at the very top of a page must contain below which it will “pull” lines from the previous page. Note: Do not use the paragraph style Default for your text body! Default in fact should not be used at all! It’s there to fix general settings applying to all styles, amongst others headings and tables. For the latter you simply wouldn’t want a Line spacing of 1.5 lines, Alignement justified and Text flow › Hyphenation › Automatically. This caveat does not apply to Default Page Style, only to Default Paragraph Style. Paragraph Styles can be arranged hierarchically, the one inheriting its settings from the other and thus building a kind of dependency tree, though dependencies can be broken at any point, allowing for full flexibility. 13 More on Styles We have already applied paragraph styles for headings and for the text body. Other elements such as footnotes, quotes, literature lists and so on all have their own styles. You can also create new styles as the need arises. Paragraph Styles make life so much easier. They allow for complete uniformity of all types of text. So for instance all your indented quotes will look the same. Time saving is immeasurable: instead of having to scan the whole text for possible formatting mistakes you simply change the style in one central location, and all the elements belonging to that style get changed with it. You get to the style list through Format › Styles and Formatting or else simply by pressing F11. At the very bottom of the list you can choose if you want to list all possible styles or only the ones you have applied so far. You can change any existing style by right-clicking it and choosing Modify. You can create a new style by right-clicking on any existing style and choosing New. Using the small black triangle on the top right of the pop-up menu you can create a New Style from Selection, meaning a new paragraph style or page style based on the paragraph or page on which your cursor is situated at present. Paragraph styles are no doubt the category most commonly used. But there are other categories: Character Styles (which I use here to highlight Menus Courier Bold 10,5pt), Frame Styles, Numbering Styles and – most importantly as you shall discover later – Page Styles (for instance for landscape format or for the first non-numbered page or pages). ▪ “Default Formatting”? Under the menu Format you will see the option Default Formatting (Ctrl + m). This term should not be confused with Default style! If you apply Default Formatting to any marked text, it will loose any formatting you may have applied to it manually and take all its formatting exclusively from the Paragraph style of the same name. This is very practical for “cleaning” purposes, e.g. after having imported a file from Word full of hidden formatting you want to get rid of. ▪ Exporting Styles for re-use later on You can export a style so as to be able to reuse it at some later date or even pass it on to other users (useful for group work). To do that, go to Menu File › Templates › Save and choose an appropriate name. In order to import a style you have saved, go to Menu Format › Styles and formatting and there choose the small black arrow pointing downwards in the menu bar. Here press Load Styles... You will be presented with a list of styles. Here you can choose which categories you would like to import and if the imported styles should overwrite existing styles (again very useful for postformatting group work). 14 MS-Word In case your lecturer insists on being provided with a Microsoft Word document, just export your document to Word by choosing File › Save as and then selecting File type › Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP. If on the other hand you have just imported a Word document full of inconsistent formatting, mark the whole thing with Ctrl + a, turn the whole text into Text body with Ctrl + 0, then make sure all old formatting disappears completely with Ctrl + m and finally format your text from scratch using styles. Note that instead of starting completely from scratch, you can delete or replace existing styles with others. For that just go to Edit › Find & Replace › More Options and tick Styles. Note: I strongly recommend not using Microsoft Word. We all know how popular MS Word is, almost everybody has it though not necessarily legally. Some people will argue, “Well, you must use it, because it’s the ‘standard’.” Or they might say: “Well, you know, later on in my work place I will probably have to use it, so I might as well get used to it now.” In reality Word is not a standard; in fact the programmers have practically trampled on long existing standards developed over the centuries; instead Word menus offer a whole palette of pretty buttons you can press, with such non-committal names as “intensive quote” which are anything but standard concepts in typography. Also the “.doc” format is not an open standard but proprietary of Microsoft. And why waste your time now using an inadequate programme simply because later on in life you might have to any way? It’s a bit like the kindergarten argument: “Get the kids used to harsh discipline now because it will make it easier for them during military service.” I for one see it the other way round: enjoy life as much and as long as you can, and that will give you greater stamina to resist any misery in store for you later on. 15 Unnumbered First Pages You will surely want your text pages to be numbered but need to leave your first page(s) unnumbered. Also you would like your first text page to start with number 1. The solution is really quite simple. All you need are two separate page styles: i) the Default page style with activated header or footer to accommodate the page number ii) a First Page style with no header or footer. There is one little catch though and that is that the First Page style normally expects to be immediately followed by a Default page. You have to change this setting. Also this default page would normally automatically be numbered according to the actual number of pages preceding it, but you want it to take number “1”. Here is the solution: go to menu Format › Styles and Formatting (F11) press the 4th icon from the left to open the list of Page Styles right click First Page and choose Modify under the tab Organiser › Next Style change the Default to First Page; this means that our very first First Page will be followed by an endless number of First Pages until you choose otherwise right click the page style Default and choose Modify under the tab Header tick Header on (alternatively choose the tab Footer and tick Footer on) to accommodate your page numbers having completed this preliminary work, place the cursor in your very first page, i.e. the title page, and double-click the page style First page you have just modified (styles need to be applied with a double-click – changing a style doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to use it) then go to your last First Page (probably the one containing the table of contents) and place your cursor after any text on this page go to menu Insert › Manual Break and choose Default Style choose Change page number starting from 1 It’s basically the same method we already came across in section 10 on Group Work in which we described how to use individual page styles for each author in a work group. Similarly you could create a completely new page style and call it “Roman” and change the numbering style from Arabic to Roman to accommodate a forward or an introduction (see illustration 19). ▪ Separate Document for the First Page? Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to insert simple page breaks using Ctrl + Return as well as to switch page styles and restart numbering using Manual Page Breaks it is quite obvious you don’t need separate documents for the different parts of your text. In fact, separate documents have a whole number of serious drawbacks: you can easily loose track of which documents belong to each other on your hard disk it makes it very difficult to create a single final PDF-document for publication or mailing purposes most of the automation possibilities cannot be put to use 16 Formatting Title Page The title page is the only page where you won’t need to use styles and can, indeed should, do everything manually. This is because the title page is unique. Using styles would only create extra work. The only exception would be if you were working in a publishing house producing loads of optically identical title pages – but this is not the kind of situation we are dealing with here. I would go for the following settings: choose as base font Garamond size 14pt 24pt bold should be fine for the main title, 20pt standard for the subtitle reduce Line spacing to 1 and any Spacing Above paragraph or Below paragraph to 0 – just press a number of Returns to regulate the placing of lines 17 Papers Without a Title Page For short papers, say 6 to 10 pages, you will probably not need an extra, unnumbered page for the title. Rather all pages will be numbered and you will only need one page style for the whole document, namely Default. Instead of a standalone title page you will simply reserve the first quarter or so of the first text page for general information on the document: title course number lecturer’s name author(s) student ID date and lastly a separator line Please do not confuse this leading paragraph with a Header. A Header gets repeated on each page, your lead paragraph only appears once on the first page and not on subsequent pages (see illustration 17). 18 Numbered Default Page As already mentioned, the Default page needs to be modified in order to accommodate page numbering. For this you can either activate a Header or a Footer. Footers used to be very popular, but many students now prefer headers to accommodate not only the page number but also extra information such as his or her name and matriculation number. To insert a header go to menu Format › Styles and Formatting, choose the 4th icon for Page Styles, select the tab for Headers and tick Header on. There are a few things you can do to make the header look nicer such as adding a line between header and text: for this click on More. Other important page settings pertain to the margins. Click on the tab Page and set the margins to the following values: 3cm for Left margin (to make room for perforation), and 2cm for all other margins.* Having done this, your page will now have an empty Header (or Footer). To insert the page number in the Header, place your cursor inside it and go to Menu Insert. Choose Fields › Page Number. Note that you do want Page Number and not Page Count – the latter stands for the total number of pages your document contains. You will probably want your Page number to be right aligned. In this case just click on it once and press the button for right alignment in the menu (see illustration 18). The Header can contain other information besides the Page number. You might want to Insert › Fields › Other › Document › Chapter › Chapter number as well as Chapter name. You would leave this information left aligned and press the Tab key to shift the page number to the right margin. Every time a new chapter starts, the Header will change along with it. 19 Roman Page Numbering Roman page numbering for the introductory pages following the title page is quite easy. Just place your cursor on any default page properly formatted according to your taste and then open menu Format › Styles and Formatting. In the menu bar choose the fourth button from the left to open the list of Page Styles. Now click on the small black triangle pointing downwards on the top right-hand corner and choose option New Style from Selection. Since we previously activated the Page Style button, our new page style will be based on the momentarily active page, i.e. the Default Page where the cursor is, and will import all its properties (if the button for Paragraph Styles had been clicked, then the new style would have been a paragraph style based on the paragraph where the cursor was). Now simply name your new style “Roman” and, under the tab Page, select Format › i, ii, iii, … (see illustration 19). As soon as you insert Page numbers in the Headers of your newly created Roman style page, these will appear as expected as “i, ii, iii, …”. The Table of contents will also display Roman numbers for these pages. This is basically the same method we already came across in section 10 on Group Work when you wanted unique Headers for each member of the work group. Note: OpenOffice insists on turning any page with an uneven page number into a right page just like in any magazine. So if you insert, say, a manual page break at the end of page 3 and tell the programme to restart page numbering with a 1, it will insert a blank page to “carry” the page number 4. You can choose, if you want, not to print this blank page by unchecking Print automatically inserted blank pages under the tab OpenOffice.org Writer in the print pop-up menu, but you can’t actually delete this page. 20 Bullets and Numbering Listings can be really nerve-racking. You write a “1.” at the beginning of a paragraph, write some text and then press Return, and off you go: an indented list gets launched and you have no idea how to get out of it. So out of sheer exasperation under the menu Tools you go to AutoCorrect Options › Options and uncheck the box Apply numbering – symbol: * and the programme stops bothering you. That is actually a pity, because this automation can make life much easier, not more difficult. The main advantage is you can add elements in the middle of your list, and they get correctly numbered, or you can move elements up or down, and here again the numbering is automatically updated. Also you can move elements to a lower level in the numbering hierarchy or up one level with just one mouse click. So leave the aforementioned box checked. Here in detail: 1. Tools › AutoCorrect Options › Options check the box Apply numbering – symbol: * 2. after typing “1.” and some text and pressing return, the next paragraph automatically begins with “2.” a. you can of course move a paragraph or even a selection of paragraphs down one level, like here b. and you are by no means obliged to stick to a 1., 2., 3.… style of numbering; instead you could choose a., b., c.… style like here c. for that choose the right-most button in the floating Bullets and Numbering menu (the one called Bullets and Numbering) and under the tab Numbering type choose the type you would like for that particular level you’re in d. in order to move down one level, choose the right arrow in the pop-up menu; the left arrow moves it up one level e. using the double arrow up or the double arrow down you can move a paragraph including all its sub-levels up or down 3. to stop automatic bulleting press the first button in the pop-up menu (the second button to stop automatic numbering) and to insert a new paragraph without a number choose the symbol in the middle (as in illustration 21) … and to insert a new line without creating a new paragraph simply press Shift + Return 4. just pressing a simple Return will resume numbering where last left off Note: In case numbering is “broken”, i.e. starts again with a “1.” right in the middle of the list, you have to place cursor on wrongly numbered entry and delete the numbers or bullets backwards with the Back key and then repress Return in order to take on again from there. You might have to repeat this operation several times until you’ve found or stumbled on the broken step. A bit fiddly, but it does work. 21 Line Numbering Line Numbering comes in handy for interviews, so you could say: “See interview line 78”. The stumbling block here is: How do you get only the interview text numbered but not the rest? Also, you don’t want a number for every single line, but probably only for every third line. Lastly, you might possibly want numbering to restart from 1 at the beginning of each separate interview. Here is how to go about it: change the Paragraph Style of Default by right clicking on it and choosing Modify; go to the tab Outline & Numbering and untick the box Include this paragraph in line numbering; this ensures that as a general rule you don’t want lines to be numbered create a new Paragraph Style by right clicking on your Body Text Style and name it “Interview”; modify your new style by going to the tab Outline & Numbering and ticking the box Include this paragraph in line numbering; this ensures that only lines in your “Interview” Style paragraphs get numbered lastly go to Menu Tools › Line Numbering and tick the box Show numbering; here you can also change the Interval from 3 to 5 lines, untick the box Blank lines; as from now the programme has the general permission to number lines, but only for those styles where numbering is enabled mark the interview passages and double-click on the menu entry “Interview” to apply this style to your interviews: now just the lines of your interview passages will get numbered in case you have several interviews, you would very probably want each one to begin line numbering at 1; for this, just right click on the first paragraph of each of your separate interviews and choose the menu Paragraph (not Edit Paragraph Style!), go to the tab Outline & Numbering and tick the box Restart at this paragraph 22 Cross-References When writing long documents it’s often desirable to be able to say something like “see chapter xx on page yy”, whereby the actual numbers might well vary as you add or move chapters around, so you wouldn’t want to write “see chapter 12 on page 36”. Pointing to an existing chapter Heading is easy. Simply go to Insert › Cross-reference › Cross-references and choose Headings in the left hand column. In the top right-hand column pick out the Chapter Heading you would like to refer to. In the bottom right-hand column you can select whether to refer to the page number the heading is situated on or the number of the heading itself (provided you have activated numbering for headings of course) or even both, then confirm with Insert and Close. In similar fashion you can point to tables or illustrations, as I have done here, choosing either the number of the illustration or the number of the page it’s on or even both as in: “Please refer to illustration Number on page Page”. For this to work meaningfully you need of course to provide your illustrations and other objects with numbers, which is done quite automatically by simply right-clicking them and choosing Caption. Write a short text, the programme will take care of the correct numbering (so Cross-references will always point to the right object, even if you add or delete other objects in the meantime). 23 Footnotes You add a footnote from the menu Insert › Footnote/Endnote › Automatic. This way the programme takes care of numbering automatically. Even if you move footnotes around, their numbering will be automatically updated. On the whole it’s best to do without footnotes. You might want to use them to point to further reading or arguments by other authors, which you don’t want to deal with directly in your main text. But for this endnotes might be a better solution than footnotes. What you most certainly won’t need footnotes for is for literature sources. Just put these in the shortest form possible in brackets, not forgetting page number, and that’s it. Then have a literature list at the very end of your thesis with all required information. So in your text you might write: (Wilson 2005 : 27) in case you are only referring to one of his writings (Wilson 2005a : 89) in case you are referring to several of his writings of the year 2005 (Wilson et al. 2005 : 99) in case you are referring to a work co-authored by Wilson All further information such as: Wilson, John, “The Role of Early Kindergarten Education” in: Quarterly Journal for Child Pedagogy, 2005-3, Frankfurt am Main, Germany you would then put in your literature list at the end of your paper. Avoiding footnotes has the advantage of not forcing the reader to jump to the bottom of the page and back again thus interrupting the flow of reading. Pages without footnotes are also optically more pleasing. Last but not least it means less typing for you and reduced likelihood of making mistakes. Footnotes have their own Paragraph Style, based on Default. So they will appear with Single Line Spacing. This exemplifies why it is indeed best not having used (and modified) Default style in place of Text Body style. In OpenOffice Writer you can jump from one footnote to the next using the up and down arrow keys. In case you only have a couple of footnotes, it’s better to use a single Character instead of Automatic Numbering, e.g. a *. 24 Formatting your Literature List A literature list could look something like this: Fredrickson, George M., “Racism: A Short History”, Princeton, 2002 Keevak, Michael, “Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking”, Princeton, 2011 Thielen, Marc, “Jenseits von Tradition – Modernität und Veränderung männlicher Lebensweisen in der Migration als Provokation für die (Sexual-)Pädagogik”, in: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 6/​2010, Beltz-Verlag Note here that the first line begins at left margin, but subsequent lines are indented. For that you could just use the style Text body indent. I myself prefer creating a new style called “Lit”, so I know exactly what it’s there for. To do that, right click on the style Text body and choose New. Go to the tab Indents & Spacing and set the Indent Before text to 0.75cm and the Indent First line to -0.75cm (i.e. a negative number). This way the author’s name stands out more clearly. It’s also possible to sort this list alphabetically by marking the entries with the mouse and then going to the menu Tools › Sort and pressing OK. Note you can use this feature of Negative indent for other kinds of lists, dictionaries or even interviews. Having the name of the interviewer and that of the interviewed person stand out makes it easier to locate the beginning and the end of each part of the dialogue. 25 Quotes Short quotes need “double quotation marks” to set them off from the rest of the text. Longer ones need a paragraph of their own – usually indented and possibly in slightly smaller font size. If you have a line spacing of 1.5 for your Body Text, you might want to choose a slightly smaller one of say 130% for your quotes. Ellipses in square brackets […] are used as a stand-in for left-out parts of your quote. Square brackets can also be used to insert explanatory words into your quote, but which are not actually part of the original. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. (Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859) Take care that these fill-in words don’t in any way alter the meaning of the quote! An ellipsis without square brackets you would use for words left out already in the original quote or for symbolizing incomplete utterances. ‘Single quotation marks’ you would use for quotes within a quote. ▪ When to Quote? Use quotes sparingly. If you are say simply reproducing the views of an author on child education in your own words, then there might well be no reason for any direct quotes. If on the other hand you want to dwell on one of his or her theses or formulations which you find especially controversial or difficult to interpret or even in contradiction with other statements by the same author, then you would want to quote the passage in question. 26 Tables You insert a Table under the menu Table › Insert › Table. You will be asked to determine the number of Columns and the number of Rows. Though you can always add or remove columns later on, it’s best to choose the right number of columns right from the start so as to avoid extra work. How wide or how narrow you would like each individual column to be you can determine using the mouse pointer. As for the number of lines, it really doesn’t matter, because adding or removing a line (clicking on the green line of the automatic pop-up menu as in illustration 22) doesn’t affect the overall formatting of your table. Other decisions which you can take are if you want the table to be “splittable” in case of a page break. Whereas it is advisable not to split very small tables containing only a few lines, you would in case of a table with a large number of lines want to Allow table to split across pages and columns so that it can flow over onto the following page. In this case you would also want the title line(s) to be repeated on each page by ticking the box next to Repeat Heading. If you happen to insert a table you don’t need and want to delete it, just right click on it and choose the menu Table › Delete › Table. Branch Great importance Lesser Importance No Deployment All branches 83,8 15,2 1 Education and Research 91,6 7,5 0,9 Software & Consulting 91 8 1 Telecommunications 89,6 9,1 1,3 Media & Marketing 83,3 16,7 0 Social & Welfare Departments 75 25 0 Administration 70,8 26,1 3,1 Banking & Insurance 69,7 27,3 3 Industry 67 31,9 1,1 Table 3. Source: http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Open-Source-ist-in-den-Unternehmen-angekommen-224504.html (Extract of survey carried out by the magazine Heise on the deployment of open source software based on 1312 valid records from 3500 companies asked to participate in the year 2009 – answers in percent) In order to insert a caption at the bottom of the table, simply right click it and choose Caption. This Caption will automatically be provided with an incremental number, making it easy to insert cross-references to it from other places in your text. You can also create tables without visible borders, for instance for your curriculum vitae (date in the left column, rest of text in the right column) or for the purpose of excerpting. If you want several adjacent columns to all be of the same width, mark them with the mouse, right click on the greyed out surface and choose Column › Space equally. 27 Charts You can present the information contained in Table 3 in the shape of a Chart as in illustration 23. Here is how to go about it: mark the whole table (rows and columns) using mouse in the menu choose Insert › Object › Chart: a new chart gets created in the pop-up window choose the kind of chart you want (e.g. bar or pie chart) and add a title) confirm your choices pressing Finish right click on your Chart to provide it with a meaningful (numbered) caption. if you would like a light yellow coloured background like in illustration 23, triple click anywhere on the area (until it appears with a grey border), then right click on same area and choose Format Chart Area; under the tab Area you can choose a colour, and under the tab Transparency you can make it lighter by applying say 80%; on the whole, light colours are better, especially if you are printing on a transparency Note that as soon as you click on a graph, the symbols on your menu change, offering you a number of shortcuts. Be careful not to clutter your page with too many graphs and illustrations. OpenOffice Writer is not a programme for designing magazines – use the freeware “Scribus” for that. Its great strengths lie in dealing with lots of text with a few graphs thrown in. In case you do come across the problem of one graph partly covering another, add one empty paragraph below the first graph and make your second graph Anchor to this new empty paragraph. Every graph or frame needs a separate anchor point! Anchoring graphs to paragraphs is the standard behaviour. But you could anchor it to the Page, so that it stays fixed and doesn’t move up or down with the paragraph. 28 Snapshots Illustration 24 on potential reasons for slipping into poverty is not a diagram taken directly from the internet using a right click. Rather it is part of a larger page, in fact a PDF document, so no right clicking on it is going to be of any use (though more modern PDF documents do allow for right-clicking and copying embedded images). Instead you need to position the document on your screen so you see the whole of the relevant part you would like to later cut out and insert. Then press the Print Screen button on your keyboard to send a copy of your screenshot to computer memory. Then launch the freeware programme “xnview” (very useful, fast and simple programme for all sorts of photo manipulation) and insert your screen from memory (menu Edit › Insert as new Picture). Within xnview you can now mark with your mouse pointer the rectangle you actually need and press Shift + x. This shortcut has the effect of cutting everything out outside your marked rectangle and leaving only the part you need. Then press Ctrl + a to mark all that remains and Ctrl + c to copy that into memory. Go back to your thesis and press Ctrl + v to insert it into your text. Finally add a Caption. 29 Pictures In a similar way you can insert pictures from your hard disk: go to Insert › Picture › From File and choose the picture you want. You can also directly scan a picture, though I would suggest you do this via the freeware programme “xnview” we talked about in section 28, which allows you much more freedom to manipulate your picture, for instance increase contrast or get rid of parts you don’t want. You can also insert a picture directly from the internet by right clicking it and choosing Copy. Back in your text simply insert it using shortcut Ctrl + v. Again, don’t forget to give all your pictures a Caption, so you can easily refer to them from within your text (Cross-reference) and have them added to your table of illustrations. 30 Cross Tables (Statistics) OpenOffice Calc is not in the league of a specialised statistics programme like SPSS or its open source alternative PSPP. Nevertheless you can use it for statistical purposes, one of the most popular being Cross Tables. Cross Tables are used to illustrate the (presumed) dependency of one variable upon another. ▪ Example of survey using two categories and percentages Sex Level of rejection in % F 81 M 34 Total 62 Table 4: This Cross Table shows that women reject violent videos to a greater degree than men In a fictional survey we asked 12 people, men and women, to tell us on a scale from 1 to 10 how much they abhorred violent videos. We expressed the scale of 1 to 10 in percent. The aim was to see if there was any significant variance between women and men. The raw results are listed in table 5, and the dependency table appears in table 4. Here is how to go about it: 1. Mark the two columns of interest, i.e. “sex” and “extent of rejection” in the raw data table 5, copy them into memory, go to the module Spreadsheet (menu File › New › Spreadsheet) and there insert the contents of computer memory using shortcut Ctrl + v. 2. In your spreadsheet you again mark the two columns and go to menu Data › DataPilot › Start and confirm Current selection. 3. Drag and drop the button “Sex” onto the white area Row Fields and drag and drop the button “Level of rejection …” onto the white area Data Fields. 4. Press Options and choose Average. Confirm OK and again OK. 5. Your new Cross Table makes it appearance on your spreadsheet. 6. Mark it and go to menu Format › Cells and open tab Numbers; here choose Category Numbers with Decimal place of “1” and Leading zero also of “1”; confirm with OK (see illustration 26). 7. Copy your new Cross Table into computer memory. 8. After returning to your text file use menu Edit › Paste Special › Formatted text [RTF] (keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + v) (this will insert the raw numbers of your table instead of an image file of the same, thus allowing you a free hand for further formatting of table within your text file). Questionnaire Sex Level of rejection in % 1 M 20 2 F 80 3 F 70 4 M 30 5 F 90 6 F 80 7 M 80 8 F 100 9 M 0 10 F 60 11 M 40 12 F 90 Table 5: Results of a fictional survey of men and women as to the degree of their rejection of violent videos in percent ▪ Example of survey involving yes/no answers If it had been a Yes/No survey, for example to the question “are you mainly right or left handed?”, as in table 7, then you’d do the following: 1. Copy the two right columns “sex” and “handedness” from the raw data in table 7 into memory and insert them into your spreadsheet. 2. In your spreadsheet again mark these same two columns and go to the menu Data › DataPilot › Start and confirm Current Selection. 3. Drag & Drop the button “Sex” onto the white area Row Fields. 4. Drag & Drop the button “Handedness” onto the white area Column Fields and also onto the white area Data Fields. 5. Under Options choose Count instead of Sum and press More and there choose as Type the option % of row. 6. Copy the resulting Cross Table into computer memory. 7. Back in your text file insert the contents of computer memory using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + v and choose the option Formatted text [RTF] (so as to obtain a formatable table) Sex Left handedness Right handedness Women 14% 86% Men 60% 40% Total Result 33% 67% Table 6: Cross table comparison as to handedness dependent on sex Questionnaire Sex Handedness 1 M R 2 F R 3 F L 4 M R 5 F R 6 F R 7 M L 8 F R 9 M L 10 F R 11 M L 12 F R Table 7: Right- and Left-Handedness and Sex (raw data) 31 Extra Long Web Addresses Web addresses tend to get longer by the day. So you could end up with a line like the following: Please refer to: http://uk.search.yahoo.com/long_chain/long_chain/long_chain/long_chain/long_chain/long_chain/ The way the three words “Please refer to:” have been spread out over the whole line is not really very pleasing. Also you would rather prefer the URL to start on the same line and not one line below. So it would be nicer to instead have: Please refer to: http://de.search.yahoo.com/long_chain/long_chain/long_chain/long_chain/​long_chain/long_chain/ To achieve this do the following: under Tools › Options › Language Settings › Languages tick the box next to Enabled for complex text layout (CTL) place the cursor after any “/” where you would like to have an optional line break inserted and activate the menu Insert › Formatting Mark › No-width optional break if you have loads of URLs you can automate the process by Finding & Replacing (in the menu Edit) all occurrences of “/” with your new combination of “/No-width optional break”; conversely, in order to prevent “http://” from breaking at the end of the line, you can Find & Replace all double occurrences of “/No-width optional break” with a “//”; you could apply the same logic to the underscore “_” and other such typical URL characters 32 Fonts Fonts play an important role in making the text more legible. There are millions of them around, but two main categories always come up as alternatives for Text Body. On the one hand there are the Serif Fonts, then you have the Sans Serif Fonts. The Serif Fonts are characterized by semi-structural details at the tips of the strokes. You could name these “base lines” or pedestals, most of them coinciding with the base line of writing as in the case of the letter “i”, a few being higher up as in “w” and another set placed below the line as for letter “p”. These have the effect of giving the letter some optical stability on the horizontal axis and also reducing the gaps between letters, thus making them to a degree “fuse together” so words become more compact. The overall effect is to increase reading speed as you tend to seize the word as a complete unit, your eyes jumping from one word to the next, rather than from one letter to the next. So, for Text Body, do use a Serif font such as Times New Roman or Garamond. For large titles, posters, flyers etc. on the other hand, fonts without serifs such as Arial or Futura (Futura comes in all sorts of varieties) are very elegant. Times New Roman 40 pt Garamond 40 pt Arial 40 pt Futura Lt BT 40 pt AaBbCcDdEeFfGg (Times New Roman 12  pt) AaBbCcDdEeFfGg (Garamond 12 pt) AaBbCcDdEeFfGg (Arial 12 pt) AaBbCcDdEeFfGg (Futura Lt BT 12 pt) Taking a closer look at our two Serif Fonts, Times New Roman and Garamond, you will notice that the latter is somewhat finer and rounder in overall shape. This increases the legibility even more. A page full of Garamond text will appear lighter than one full of Times. On the whole avoid using different fonts. In fact you can stick to just one font for the whole text and use Garamond even for Headings – just varying size and Typeface (Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic). If you do mix Serifs with Sans Serifs, aim at choosing good combinations: Garamond harmonizes better with a Futura Light than with Arial being of similar proportions and similar weight. If you are using a page format of A4, you will probably want a font size of 12pt (or 11pt in case you do opt for Arial, which is by nature larger). If producing a pamphlet size A5 you can reduce the font size down to 11pt or even 10.5pt. The better the printer and the quality of paper, the more you can reduce the font size without the text becoming illegible. Some teachers – at least over here in Germany – insist on very detailed specifications so as to force students to produce only a certain amount of text. Instead of saying: “Please write 10,000 characters plus/minus five percent, they specify font size, font type, margins and number of pages. This is really an unfortunate misuse of formatting for control purposes. 33 Emphasis If you want to emphasise a passage, use Italics. In the old days of mechanical typewriters you couldn’t do that. So instead people would hammer over the text two or three times to achieve boldness, or they would underline their text, or possibly choose to s p a c e o u t the passage or opt for CAPITAL LETTERS. Theoretically they could use any combination of these. Nowadays this is not necessary any more and it moreover disturbs the flow of reading. Italics have the advantage of sticking out just enough to be noticed without disturbing the overall picture. 34 Special Characters To insert Special Characters, go to menu Insert › Special Character. If you need a particular character or even a complete string of characters very often, say “[…]”, and don’t want to keep on typing out the sequence, you can mark it once, go to Tools › AutoCorrect Options and type in on the left hand side under Replace a simple sequence of simple letters such as “xxx”. Then press New and confirm with OK. Now your off. Every time you write “ xxx ” with a leading space and a space after, it will automatically get replaced by a “ […] ”. 35 Non separable combinations Combinations such as “Mr. So-and-so”, “Dr. Who”, “§ 120”, “$ 120,000”, “26 %” and so on should stick together. You wouldn’t want for instance the $ sign to appear right at the end of the line and then have the $ amount starting on the next line, instead you want both to appear next to each other and in case of lack of space to move together to the next line. This “sticking together” is achieved by using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + Space between the two elements instead of a simple Space. 36 Shortcut keys OpenOffice Writer has a bunch of shortcuts to make life easier: Ctrl + 0 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Text Body Ctrl + 1 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 1 Ctrl + 2 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 2 Ctrl + 3 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 3 Ctrl + 4 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 4 Ctrl + i marked text will be italicized Ctrl + b marked text will change to bold Ctrl + m marked text will loose all individual formatting – only the paragraph style will remain active Ctrl + s save file Ctrl + p print file Ctrl + f find or replace text Ctrl + c copy marked text to computer memory Ctrl + v insert contents of computer memory Ctrl + shift + v same as above, only you can choose to insert text with reduced formatting Ctrl + x cut out and move marked text to computer memory Ctrl + Return start a new page Shift + Return start a new line (but not a new paragraph) Ctrl + - insert an optional hyphen – the word will be hyphenated here only if it doesn’t fit on line Ctrl + Shift + Space insert a non-breaking space Ctrl + Shift + - insert a non-breaking hyphen – + Space long hyphen “–” . + . + . + space ellipse “…” 37 Mouse Clicks a double-click will mark a whole word a triple-click will mark a complete sentence a quadruple-click will mark a complete paragraph a right-click will offer you a context menu click-hold-and-pull on a marked area allows you to relocate it in combination with Ctrl you can mark several non-adjacent passages in combination with Alt you can mark a rectangular text block (meaningful only if you are using mono-spaced characters) 38 PDFs PDF (Portable Data Format) developed by Adobe is an open, operating system independent format. It is very popular for distributing documents because they can’t be so easily manipulated and – at least most of the time – come out the same on all printers and look the same on all screens. PDF files can even be further protected from being printed or saved or even from being opened without a password. To create a PDF file from your document, just press the PDF symbol in the bar. Using freeware PDF24 you can further manipulate PDF documents, for instance delete individual pages or insert additional pdf-files. 39 Saving your files Here you really can’t be careful enough. Please heed the following rules: limit yourself to alphanumeric characters and underscores and only use minuscules; avoid spaces; the reason is, different countries and different operating systems can have problems displaying, ordering, saving and opening files if you use non-basic characters, spaces and capitalization* save your work regularly, about every five minutes; save your work each time with ascending number appended (my_thesis_01, my_thesis_02, my_thesis_03 …); mail your text to yourself regularly; don’t rely on memory sticks – they easily get lost or suddenly stop functioning for no obvious reason; if you are using a stick, do so only to transport data; don’t write and save directly onto a stick; instead always use your hard disk and at the end of your work day, after having closed all files and programmes, you can copy your stuff from the hard disk to the stick – and vice versa at the beginning of a work day in a different location; note: ascending numbers are extremely useful if you are working together with someone; you send him or her your file_05 and they send you back file_06 (with their name as part of file name); that way you know that the file has been through their hands and has been changed since last version 05 use file names which you will recognize even three months ahead; a name such as “essay” is not specific enough; “essay_child_poverty_prof_brown_stud_mary_05” is much better; this example specifies the kind of document (essay), the subject (child poverty), the name of the professor you are writing for (brown), your own name (mary) and the latest version number (05); also store your files in appropriate subdirectories (/uni, /personal etc.) if your teacher wants a Word file, that’s no problem; just go to File › Save as and choose as File type “Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP”; newer versions of MS Word by the way can open, manipulate and save OpenOffice files 40 Several files open at once We already had the opportunity to work with two windows open at the same time, one for our text and the other for statistical calculations in the spreadsheet. Nothing prevents you from having as many windows open simultaneously as need be for instance to be able to copy certain passages from the one file into another, e.g. literature entries from literature database into your text. This work method is often used in group work though not necessarily (see section 10). 41 Search and Replace Under Edit › Find & Replace (Ctrl + f) you can search through your whole document for a particular string of text. If you happen to have mistyped a complicated name, you can use the menu to replace the wrong spelling with the correct one. I myself often use the search tool to find markers in my text, where I’ve left off late the evening before or where bits are still missing (I like to use “###” for that purpose). You can also use this menu to replace a style with another style (select More Options). Using More Options you can also search for and delete specific text elements such as empty lines. You use Regular expressions to accomplish this task. So in the search field you would type the regular expression “^$” and then press Replace all. 42 Auto Spell Check In the menu bar you can activate AutoSpellCheck (the ABC-Button or using F7). Any misspelled words will appear underlined in red. Lots of these words are in fact not necessarily misspelled, the programme simply does not have them in its dictionary. To add an unknown word to the standard dictionary right-click it and choose Add › Standard.dic. You can edit the standard.dic with an ordinary editor, adding one new entry per line. After restarting OpenOffice standard.dic updates itself and becomes available with the added entries. 43 Synonyms Under Tools › Language › Thesaurus (Ctrl + F7) the programme lists quite a few alternatives. 44 Document Infos Sometimes you might want to store general information about your file, such as author names. To do this, go to File › Properties › Description/Custom Properties. Also you might want statistical information on your file, such as number of words or number of characters. Choose the tab Statistics for that. The latter information can be accessed more directly under the menu Tools › Word Count. 45 Labels and Form Letters This is not what you are going to need for your studies. But perhaps in the course of a traineeship or at your work place you might be asked to organise a bulk mailing. It’s really quite easy: 1. First open an empty spreadsheet and use the first line for the Column Headings; these might be termed “Name”, “Street”, “City”, “Telephone number”, “Mobile number” and “Email”; the lines below you fill out with all relevant information using one line per person; when done, save the spreadsheet under some meaningful name such as “addresses”; the file ending .ods will get attached automatically. 2. Now again open a New File, only this time a Database; choose the option Connect to an existing database and select Spreadsheet from the drop-down menu; confirm Next, locate the spreadsheet you saved in previous step and open it; confirm Yes, register the database for me (this only means that you can communicate with the database from any open file); remove the tick from Open the database for editing, since you don’t want to edit your addresses but simply read the information contained in the spreadsheet; press Finish, give your new database the same name as your spreadsheet (the file ending .odb will get attached automatically, so the two are separate files in spite of having the same name) and save; now close your new database, which doesn’t contain anything anyway, but is rather just a “window” through which you can reach your addresses listed in the actual spreadsheet. 3. Now create a new labels’ file: go to the menu File › New and select Labels; under the tab Labels select your Database from the drop-down list and again the pertaining Table from the next drop-down list just underneath the first one; at this point you will be presented with only one option, namely “sheet1”, because your spreadsheet only contains one flat list of addresses; now choose your first Database Field (“Name”) and transport it with the left arrow to the white area on the left; press Return for a new line, then transport your next Database Field (this time “Street”), and press Return twice to leave an empty line before inserting your last Database Field, which is “City”; the other fields (Telephone, Mobile and Mail) are of no interest to you for the purpose of your bulk mail. 4. Open the tab Format and insert the values listed in table 8 (for an A4-paper with 3 x 8 labels) (see also illustration 27). 5. Press button New document. 6. At this point a new page will appear full of Field names (see illustration 28), which, as soon as you choose to print your document – whether directly to a physical printer or to a file – will get replaced by the actual names, streets and cities of your spreadsheet. Horizontal pitch 7,00 cm Vertical pitch 3,70 cm Width 7,00 cm Height 3,70 cm Left margin 1,20 cm Top margin 0,60 cm Columns 3 Rows 8 Table 8: Sizes and spacing for a 3x8 layout paper size A4 To create a bulk letter you basically follow the same steps. So for instance after writing “Dear  ”, you simply go to Insert › Fields › Other › Database. Under Type select Mail merge fields and under Database selection select your address database › sheet1. Pressing the + next to sheet1 will open a list of all your fields (Name, Street, City etc.). Click on Name and now all the names will be inserted automatically one after the other, one per each copy of your letter, after the “Dear  ”. 46 Help Under the menu Help you will find all the help you need. While hovering with your mouse pointer over any button or menu, you will also be offered shorter or longer “tips” depending on your settings in Tools › Options › OpenOffice.org › General. Using Google you will very often find very useful and concise help too. 47 Getting Apache OpenOffice Just go to openoffice.org and download the appropriate complete installation file for your language and your operating system. Installation shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Afterwards, under menu Tools, you can modify a few settings such as your preferred font. 48 Practice 1. Download non-formatted practice file “prax-en.txt”: go to openoffice-uni.org in the English section Right-click on file [txt] choose option save link as choose location Desktop confirm you want to Save your file 2. Open practice file with Apache OpenOffice: go to your Desktop right-click on your downloaded file choose option Open With choose programme swriter when asked confirm West European Encoding 3. So as to avoid losing your work save your file anew in OpenOffice format: open Menu File › Save as… choose File type › ODF Text Document (.odt) confirm with Save 4. Apply paragraph Style “Text Body” to your entire text: mark the complete text using keyboard shortcut Ctrl + a apply paragraph style Text Body using shortcut Ctrl + 0 while text remains marked and to make absolutely sure that all manual formatting is definitely removed go to menu Format › Default Formatting (shortcut Ctrl + m) unmark your text by clicking anywhere in text with left mouse key 5. Modify your paragraph style Text Body: right-click any paragraph choose option Edit Paragraph Style… (not Paragraph…) note that pop-up menu displays “Paragraph Style: Text Body” in top bar make following changes: under tab Indents & Spacing increase line spacing to 1.5 lines under tab Alignment choose Options › Justified under tab Text Flow activate Hyphenation › automatic as well as Orphan Control and Widow Control 6. Format your chapter headings: open menu Format › Styles and Formatting (shortcut F11) in the pop-up list of paragraph styles right-click the style Heading 1 choose the option Modify under tab Indents & Spacing make following changes: increase Spacing › Above paragraph to 1,2cm increase Spacing › Below paragraph to 0,6cm under tab Font choose: Font › Garamond Typeface › Bold Size › 16pt (simply overwrite % sign with the letters “pt”) repeat these last steps for paragraph style Heading 2 (i.e. second level) but using these values instead: Spacing › Above paragraph to 0,8cm Spacing › Below paragraph to 0,4cm Font › Garamond Typeface › Bold Size › 13pt 7. Activate automatic Outline Numbering for the first two levels of Chapter Headers: Open menu Tools › Outline Numbering in the left column Level choose level 1 in drop-down menu Number choose option 1, 2, 3 … repeat these steps for level 2 ensure that Show sublevels is set to 2 confirm with OK 8. Mark chapter headings: place cursor in first chapter heading “Introduction” remove existing numbering (“1”) as well as space press shortcut Ctrl + 1 to apply paragraph style Heading 1 repeat these steps for first five main chapters (including chapter “Headings”) within chapter 5 look out for subheadings and apply style Heading 2 using shortcut Ctrl + 2 (make sure any existing numbers and spaces are removed beforehand) 9. Format your title page: mark the contents of your title page including the date “2013) (please don’t use your mouse for this but instead the up and down arrows in combination with shift key) open menu Format › Paragraph… (not the menu Format › Styles and Formatting!!) under tab Indents & Spacing apply following values: Line Spacing › Single Spacing › Below paragraph › 0cm confirm OK with contents of title page still marked centre justify all with button Centred in top bar increase font size from 12pt to 14pt unmark contents of title page by clicking anywhere in text mark the main title of your title page (“Apache OpenOffice Writer for students” and increase font size to 32pt apply typeface Bold to your main title increase centre word of main title (“Writer”) further to 48pt 10. Prepare formatting style for first pages: open menu Format › Styles and Formatting in menu bar choose fourth button from left for Page Styles under tab Organizer choose as Next Style › First Page (this will allow you to have more than one non-numbered “first page”) under tab Page increase Margins › Left Margin › 3cm confirm OK 11. Apply formatting style “First Page” to your title page: place your cursor anywhere in your title page in your list for Page Styles double-click on style First Page (only by double-clicking it do you actually apply this style to the first page – in previous step you had merely prepared your style for the first pages) 12. Insert new page after title page: place cursor directly at bottom of title page (to the right of the date) and press shortcut Ctrl + Return in order to begin a new page 13. Format Default Page Style (for text pages): open menu Format › Styles and Formatting again choose fourth button from left in menu bar for Page Styles right-click on the page style Default choose option Modify and make following changes: under tab Header activate Header › Header on under tab Page increase Margins › Left margin to 3cm confirm OK 14. Insert table of contents: place cursor directly at beginning of second page (under the blue line) open menu Insert › Indexes and Tables › Indexes and Tables… confirm OK 15. Modify your table of contents: right-click your table of contents choose option Edit Index/Table under tab Index/Table reduce Evaluate up to level down to 2 (so you could well have three or more levels of chapter headings in your text but only the uppermost two will actually appear in your table of contents) under the tab Entries place the cursor inside the white space between the entries E# and E click once on the button Tab stop (in case you by mistake insert more than one Tab stop, you can delete it with Del key) click on button All confirm OK 16. Format your table of contents: right click any level 1 entry in your table of contents choose option Edit paragraph style… under tab Indents & Spacing use following values: Indent › Before text › 0,8cm (positive value) Indent › First line › -0,8cm (negative value) Spacing › Above paragraph › 0,4cm Line spacing › Single Confirm OK repeat these steps for table of contents second level entries but with following values: Indent › Before text › 1,8cm (positive value) Indent › First line › -1cm (negative value) Spacing › Above paragraph › 0,2cm Line spacing › Single Confirm OK 17. Insert break between last unnumbered page and first numbered page: place cursor immediately underneath your table of contents (in case you might not be able to fit cursor in because numbering of first chapter stands in the way, change latter’s format from Heading 1 to Text body temporarily, insert a new line and change it back again to Heading 1) open menu Insert › Manual Break… › Type › Page Break choose page Style › Default click Change page number insert value 1 (default anyway) confirm OK in case you have at this point a blank page too many, just delete it with Del key 18. Add numbers to your default page: place cursor inside header open menu Insert › Fields › Page number right align your newly inserted page number using appropriate button in menu bar to ensure that all numbering is up to date open menu Tools › Update › Update all 49 Extra Practice format a few passages as “Interview” making sure its lines are numbered but not the lines of any other text (see chapter 21 for further details) create a simple table and insert a chart based on this table (see chapter 27) Enjoy saving precious time with Apache OpenOffice Writer!