Same experience here;
the rules keep changing, so I stick with the Keep It Simple
system ;-)
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 6:47 AM, Kracked_P_P---webmaster <
[email protected]> wrote:
> I no longer need to write in any "required style or page format. SO, I
> never got into using styles. But you have a valid point in needing
> students to learn how to use it. The fact that writing "style"
> requirements change every so often. I went to 4 colleges and received 3
> degrees. The problem I had was that every time I went back to college, the
> "standards" for foot notes, indexing, bibilography, and many other things I
> learn in one college English/Writing course changed. I ended up taking
> English and Writing courses several time to learn the new standards that
> the colleges were teaching and required for any paper to be turned into the
> professors. Then there are those classes that require specific formatting
> and styles for their paperwork.
>
> If you create a set of styles, one per class/course/teacher, then you can
> write the documents and then apply the styles needed by the professor, or
> even the business reader.
>
> I myself have run across times where using styles would work for me, but I
> never really learned how to use them correctly. Never took the time.
>
> Tom's and other postings about getting students to "compete" in how fast
> it would be to format a "mangled" text to a predefined style and the others
> doing it the "hard way". Then having the students "compete" in a race to
> see who can create a style from scratch for the document. I bet there
> would be different version created that do the same end results.
>
> The only problem I see with styles is some people may go and make a
> document so complex with styles for "everything" that it creates problems
> for an new user to edit/modify the document with new information or
> reorganize the flow of the document. I had to do that a few months ago and
> it was not easy. It seemed that every possible portion of the document,
> i.e. paragraph text and titles, columns and frames, images and headlines,
> were all defined in such a way that when moving text and images around the
> document, the styles setup would try to define the wrong text or document
> element. The editing and moving of text and images broke the very complex
> styling of the document.
>
> The point is, styles are great in concepts, but some people can get
> carried away with their complexity. I have a book editor friend that I
> email back and forth with. She has some real horror stories trying to edit
> manuscripts that the author wrote using a complex set of styles. So if you
> teach and/or use styles, kept them simple enough that it does not get in
> the way of the next person needing to modify the document.
>
>
> On 04/30/2013 06:56 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
>
>> Hi :)
>> I am a bit bitter about this sort of thing too. Even back when i was in
>> school i could see teachers clearly trying to help people. Unfortunately
>> general attitudes of the kids in the classroom meant that even those of us
>> that were interested in learning the skill had a tough time. It didn't
>> improve at Uni.
>>
>>
>> There have been some excellent suggestions in this list. Perhaps set a
>> mini-competition half the class using 1 technique. Perhaps ask for hands up
>> if they can't cope with using styles, in order to play to the machismo of
>> some. When the results are in ask who can change the formatting of their
>> document fastest.
>>
>> Another idea is to get a horribly mangled paragraph and challenge them to
>> insert it into their document to fit the style of their own work.
>>
>> I frequently have to do this for my company's newsletter and at first
>> found it took hours to try to fix people's messes in Word. In LibreOffice
>> i just pasted as unformatted and then applied styles taking just a couple
>> of minutes at most.
>>
>> However i still think it's easier to teach people things they want to
>> learn. Trying to trick them into wanting to learn about something else is
>> a tough challenge.
>>
>> Regards from
>>
>> Tom :)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> From: T. R. Valentine <[email protected]>
>>> To: LibreOffice-list <[email protected]>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, 30 April 2013, 4:08
>>> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Paragraph styles
>>>
>>>
>>> On 29 April 2013 20:48, Virgil Arrington <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> It pains me to watch people mouse around a document going from
>>>> paragraph to
>>>> paragraph trying to get formatting consistent when all they need to do
>>>> is
>>>> make one change to a paragraph style and "voila", every paragraph having
>>>> that style is automatically changed. Just today, one of my students was
>>>> stunned to watch that work. "You mean I don't have to make the same
>>>> change
>>>> to every paragraph?" she asked.
>>>> There is a better way, and since a university pays me to teach students
>>>> how
>>>> to take advantage of modern technology, I feel it my duty to at least
>>>> give
>>>> it a college try to find a way to explain it to them.
>>>>
>>> Virgil, I think it is great that you are trying to show your students
>>> a better way. I don't understand why there was an accusation (using
>>> 'Nazi' no less — that post seemed full of bitterness) that anyone was
>>> trying to force anyone to use styles.
>>>
>>> Styles are a better way, but some people are resistant to change,
>>> preferring to use a word processor as if it were merely an electronic
>>> typewriter. As the saying goes, 'you can lead a horse to water ....'
>>>
>>> --
>>> T. R. Valentine
>>> Your friends will argue with you. Your enemies don't care.
>>> 'When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food
>>> and clothes.' -- Erasmus
>>>
>>
>
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