Word Document for the Website 9/27/09
Minor update 12/19/11
Please follow these guidelines for Word documents submitted to the website for posting. These guidelines will improve readability and conversion and are intended to address text type of documents.
- Use a Word document for postings and send as an attachment. Do not send text within an email for posting on the website.
- Spell check the entire document before submitting and correct ALL spelling and grammar errors.
- Use Arial 12 font, normal. Do not use Times New Roman, Italic, etc.
- Only use bold to emphasize header areas. Do not use bold for all of the text.
- Set margins at 0.5 in. for Top & Bottom and 1.0 in for Left & Right
- Do not use underlines to emphasize text as it can be confused with active links which are underlined.
- Include the http://www portion for all active links. Example: http://www.ironoakshoa.org/ . Be sure that the link is active in your Word document. A blank or Return following the link will usually cause it to be active or use the Insert, Hyperlink function. Test the link to be sure it’s active using Ctrl + Click.
- Use 0” for indents, do not use negative values.
- Use the default line height. Note: The website uses 120% line height to improve readability.
- Clear all leading and trailing blank spaces. To check for blank space Use Ctrl + A to highlight all of the text. You will then see any spaces. CAUTION: Left click to remove the highlight or press an arrow to remove the highlighted area. Any other key will erase your text!
- Clear all unwanted titles.
- Replace any lines with a large number of consecutive blanks with a line return (Enter key).
- Try to use a minimal amount of graphics to minimize load time.
- Insert all graphics and pictures into the text.
- Avoid the use of blanks or tabs to try to align text such as in a title. Instead use the centering Icon.
- Do not make your own bulleted list out of text using spaces and/or tabs to align text. Instead use Words bulleted lists and indents as appropiate to align text.
Note: Conversion of a Word document to the website causes formating changes. For example the document width will be changed to match the website width. Therefore using tabs or blanks to center text will likely result in non centered text. Using tabs, blanks and carriage returns (in the text) to make your own bullet list will likely not produce the desired results.
Changing the Word document width can also produce the same results.
Note: Click on the paragraph mark button ¶ in Word to view paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols.
The above guidelines will help with the conversion of your document to the website.
Some Word documents will contain significant variations to the above such as an Activity document, including some submitted for a Unit function. It that case the document will be converted to an image or pdf file and posted. Any links for a image documents will not be active.
Thanks for your help.