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Erynn16B8
Erynn16B8
Participating Frequently
November 2, 2022
Question

Formatting book manuscript

  • November 2, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 194 views

Hello!

I am designing a book and the editor has included bracketed styles in the Word file. I'm wondering if there's a way to signal to InDesign to style these according to my Paragraph/Character style palettes. Here's an example of the Word document.

 

Thanks so much! This would be life-changing.

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

E
Community Expert
Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 2, 2022

Took me a while

 

If you use the Find/Change  by list script could it be modified?

 

So find

\[e.14\]|\[RT\]\K.+

Change to

ParaStyle

Find

|\[HN\]\K.+

Change to 

Parastyle

 

Of course you'd need to run a Character Style find change - there's a script called PREPTEXT that can do that. (jongwares site is down I can't find it (RIP))

 

However, you should be able to find the text- the next paragraph then apply the style.

 

It's a bit rough and ready and probably needs a gifted scripter to get it working right. 

 

Just my idea.

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 2, 2022

I strongly think this step should be done in Word. For one thing, not every paragraph has a formatting tag — they seem to be following the old Linotype practice of "switch to this font here" — so even if a script were perfected, it would miss all of the successive paragraphs of each type.

 

Word would be much faster with on-the fly macros as needed and a fairly fast pass through applying what looks like a limited number of styles using shortcut keys. And I would be very suspicious of the structure, as well — as in use of soft returns and multiple white spaces and so forth that really should be stripped out before import to ID.

 

All in all, it's an ms that looks to be from someone who is more used to handing paper copy to "a typesetter" and may have many doc-file issues that would make ID choke on trying to do clean formatting.

 

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    November 2, 2022

    I would do this in Word. Write a macro or two that reads the style code, applies a named style, and then deletes the code. (From a work copy of the ms, of course.)

     

    Then do a managed import with style matching.

     

    I'd do a multiple white space strip while in Word, as well.

     

    ( IMVVVHO, this is a dork move. The author/publisher should have just applied styles from a carefully managed and named set, instead of putting in typesetting codes like they did in 1924. 😛 )

     

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