Print Formatting the Easy Way: Part One

Author’s Note: This guide ended up MUCH longer than I’d anticipated. Part One comprises the template file download and a quick overview of each of the pages included. The next part will include a deep-dive on the various formatting tricks I use and how to keep things as easy as possible. Enjoy!

I am a truly lazy person.

Now, you might not think it to see me. I mean, look! Writing a blog post! Making this guide! Writing novels! Working!

(hitting the snooze button again)

But my friends, I’ll let you in on a secret. Computer programmers are the laziest people of all–because our entire job, our life’s purpose if you will, is getting someone else (ideally, a computer) to do the work for us.

I don’t want to manually do all this math? Write a program!

I don’t want to manually find all these typos? Write a program!

I don’t want to manually find keywords for all these webpages? Write a program!

(All of the above are real examples from my life. That last one got me a job offer, actually.)

I approach writing in exactly the same way. I don’t want to manually format a bunch of repetitive stuff. I don’t want to fuss with layout. I don’t want to deal with pagination. This is why we invented computers, so I wouldn’t have to think about this!

This is why I present to you now… my guide to Print Formatting: The Easy Way!

Now, this is for MS Word formatting. If you use another program (like Scrivener et al) I can’t help you: I like Word. The guidelines are essentially the same for LibreOffice, Google Docs, etc–any word processing program.

To be honest I feel like the reason a lot of people don’t like Word is that they’re not using it The Lazy Way™. They manually format things and then get frustrated when words move around, don’t look quite right, they can’t find what they need, etc. But this bar:

Holds a lot of features hidden inside to make formatting easy. Let’s use it~

Okay, ready? First off download this handy Word formatting template (right click>save to download it). It’ll open up a file with the Title Page, Copyright Page, Dedication Page, blank page, and First Chapter pages all set up for you!

About the template

There are several predefined styles which I use frequently. If you want to modify any of them, change the font/size/spacing/etc by right-clicking the style, clicking “Modify,” then making the edits in the pop-ups that appear.

Also, this is a layout for a 5×8 sized paperback novel. You’ll need to adjust the page size & margins if you’re printing something differently.

Pages

TITLE PAGE

The Title Page does not have a page number. It is vertically- and horizontally-aligned.

The Section Break is super important when dealing with different layouts (vertical alignments, sections without page numbers, etc). Each time I use a different alignment, I add a section break. I also add a section break at the end of each chapter (more on this later)

COPYRIGHT PAGE

“I don’t need to include this” I can hear someone in the back muttering. Well, you do you, but I include it. Why not?

You can find standard boilerplate online; you’ll need to populate the ISBN once you have it, and add any other details/printing stuff you need.

The copyright page is bottom aligned.

DEDICATION PAGE

The Dedication Page is horizontally-centered, but I just add a few paragraphs at the beginning rather than perfectly vertically centering it. Looks better.

BLANK PAGE

There’s a blank page immediately after the Dedication so that the first chapter starts on the right-hand side.

FIRST CHAPTER PAGE

Here’s where things start to get fun! Part Two of this guide will have an explanation of all the styles, how to modify them, and how it all goes together, but basically–all chapter headers start off halfway down the page (managed via the Heading1 style). The first three words in each chapter are in small-caps (1st3 style). This is the first page with visible page numbering (managed via section breaks).

Please download the template, muck around with it, and see if it can save you any time or grief! (Actually, especially grief).

If anything is unclear or you’d like more examples, just reach out! I love print formatting and I’m only just lying a little bit 😉