Global Format and Editing commands

Much of what we do involves words.
One way to avoid redoing and retyping things is to set them up initially so that changes can be made globally rather than by revising things piecemeal.  Consistency in this process becomes even more important when people are collaborating on a large document.

One emerging change in the organization is that more documents are prepared through electronic interaction rather than through dictation and editing on paper.  (My secretary used to refer to that obsolete process as "balloons and arrows")
As an overview on computer skills with large documents, and to emphasize the value of using modern word processing technology, this exercise will give a view of global styles and global editing methods.
Just to make this more interesting, we will work with a book written by Arthur Conan Doyle, miscellaneous stories about Sherlock Holmes, entitled The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

This document is about a hundred fifty pages long,  is made up of several short stories, and is old enough that the copyright has expired.  The electronic text is one of thousands available from Project Gutenberg.

We will modify this document by applying a heading style to each of the chapter heads throughout the book.  The main text will be left in normal style.  We will then show that total document can be formatted by using global style modifications rather than editing of individual headings.  You will also want to add automatic page numbers, and put page breaks at the end of each story.

Just for the fun of it, we can then globally edit the document making the following replacements:

• Replace "Sherlock" with your first name
• Replace "Holmes" with your last name
• Replace "England" with "Missouri"
• Replace "Europe" with the "United States"
• Replace "Watson" with some trusted collaborator's name, such as "Banis"
• Replace "Scotland Yard" with "Olive Street Station"
• Replace Baker Street with your address
• Replace London with your town

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last modified February 28, 1998 ~~ comments and suggestions to rbanis@jinx.umsl.edu