Styling guide
Before any styling operation, each document requires different levels of “editorial cleaning”.
In the same way as the printed edition, the electronic edition must conform to the typographical rules of use in order to meet the quality criteria defined for editing.
Whatever the language, the font used must be a Unicode font. If non-Unicode fonts are used to produce documents, they must be converted before styling begins.
When a document imported in Lodel has characters in the form of squares (most often), they are probably non-Unicode characters. In this case, the document source must be modified to correct the text using fonts like DejaVu, Verdana, Arial, Arial Unicode MS, etc. Such tools as exist like Greektranscoder or Uniqoder facilitate conversions to Unicode.
Non-breaking spaces
The non-breaking space prevents a word, a set of words, a number, a date or punctuation from being rejected and isolated at the beginning of the next line.
The keyboard shortcut for the non-breaking space is Ctrl + Shift + Space in Word (Windows and Mac OS).
In English, non-breaking spaces are added between elements that should not be separated at the end of a line:
- abbreviations are separated by a space (e.g. 17 kg, AD 55)
- between the date number and month name (e.g. 3 June)
- before Roman numerals at the end of phrases (e.g. World War II)
- Etc.
Removing page, section and line breaks
Many layout elements, often used for the printed edition of a document, must be removed for its electronic edition.
Therefore, care should be taken to remove :
- manual line breaks for formatting purposes within a paragraph (↲) ;
- page and section breaks;
- blank paragraphs, usually between paragraphs, after headings, at the end of text, etc. These blank lines, often intended to air out the text, are of no use for electronic publishing. When importing the document to the site, Lodel considers them as paragraphs in their own right and will assign them a paragraph number;
- Forced hyphenation in Word documents. To do this, open the Home > Advanced Search menu, click on More, then Special, select “Conditional Hyphen”, leave the Replace field blank and click on Replace All.
Présentation des styles
There are four style menus:
- Dublin Core Metadata. This is the essential data for the description of a document, but also optional metadata that can be used if necessary: subtitle, author description, translator, page numbering, etc.
- Outline. This menu offers six levels of headings and the “Separator” style.
- Text. This menu concentrates all the styles necessary for the treatment of the body text.
- Paratext. Allows you to semantize appendices, bibliographies, footnotes, acknowledgements, etc.

Metadata styling
Metadata must be present at the top of the Word document. It is sometimes necessary to gather in this place information scattered elsewhere in the document (author’s name in signature, or description of the author in a note at the bottom of the first page of a document for example) or in other files (summaries at the end of the publication). For metadata styling see : XXX


Titles / subtitles
Make sure that the title of the document :
- is placed at the very beginning of the document ;
- is a single paragraph, with no manual line breaks;
- is displayed in lower case except for the initial. If the title of the document is entirely in upper case, it is possible in Word to switch it to lower case by selecting it and pressing [Shift+F3] ;
- is not terminated by a period.
… And that the subtitle of the document is :
- is placed under the heading ;
- is a single paragraph, without line breaks;
- is displayed in lower case except for the initial ;
- is not terminated by a period.
Authors
Best practices:
- the author should be placed under the title (or subtitle of the document if applicable);
- no note should be attached to the first name/name of ;
- first name and last name are presented in this order and in lower case except for the initial.
Author-related information should be placed below the author in a separate paragraph styled as “Author Description.”
Note: Do not use paragraph breaks within a metadata element. If an abstract contains two paragraphs, it is possible to separate them with a manual line break [Shift+Enter: ↲], instead of a paragraph break [Enter: ¶].
If the document is signed by several authors without institutional precision:
- authors should be mentioned on the same line, separated by commas, or one author per line in a separate paragraph;
- Remove any punctuation or words other than authors’ names (especially the conjunction “and” or the ampersand “&”).
If each author is accompanied by the mention of his/her institution or a description :
Each author will be entered in a separate paragraph (one per line), followed by a paragraph styled as “Author Description” (if applicable).
Compound / phrasal nouns
If the author’s name is composed (for example “Philippe Le Moigne” or “Enrique Mansutti Rodriguez”), an unbreakable space must be added between the two names: Mansutti°Rodriguez, or between the name and the particle: Le°Moigne
Lodel takes the last word of the author paragraph as its name. So without a blank space for Enrique Mansutti Rodriguez, Lodel will retain “Rodriguez” as the name. The non-breaking space indicates that the break must be made between “Enrique” and “Mansutti”.
Windows/Mac : Ctrl + Shift + Espace ou Alt + 0160
OpenOffice : Ctrl + espace
It is necessary that any book has at least :
- one or more authors ;
- or one or more editors – not both;
- or a scientific editor (in the case of an anonymous source).
There may be:
- an author and a scientific editor.
On the other hand, there cannot be :
- an author and a publication director.
Language
It is imperative to declare the language of the document, according to the ISO 639-1 standard. The ISO code consists of two letters: fr, en, es, de, it…
Abstracts
When styling the document, ensure that:
- the abstract(s) are placed under the language of the document;
- the words “Abstract” or “Résumé” that often precede the document’s summary are removed;
- the abstract(s) do not repeat the title of the document, nor the author. This would be a duplication of the document title styled above;
- summaries in other languages are placed one below the other;
- the style applied corresponds to the language of the abstract: abstract for an English abstract, resumen for a Spanish abstract;
- there are no paragraph breaks in the same abstract. Use manual line breaks instead.
Keywords
When styling the document, make sure to:
- remove the “Keywords” mention that often precedes the list of keywords; the layout will automatically add the keywords mention in the different languages available;
- separate the keywords with commas;
- Remove the period at the end of the keyword list and the capital letter at the beginning of the paragraph. This will be interpreted by Lodel as part of the word and a new entry in the keyword index will be created;
- remove the quotation marks which will be considered as an index entry;
- remove any other element separating the keywords, such as a dash, semicolon, etc;
- remove the capitalization of common nouns.
As with author names, the spelling and case of keywords must always be the same to avoid duplication in the indexes.
Page numbering
If necessary, the paper pagination of a chapter can be entered as follows:
- in Roman numerals (x-xx or X-XX) ;
- in Arabic numerals (123-145).
The page numbering is indicated without the mentions p. or pp., these being taken into account by the layout.
Text styling
Headings
In the document, make sure that the various headings :
- are in lower case except for the initial ;
- do not end with a period or colon;
- follow each other hierarchically: do not use the style “Heading 3” when the headings of level 1 and 2 have not been used previously in the document.
The “Normal” text
The ” Normal ” style applies to all body paragraphs that do not correspond to a remarkable element.
Remember to :
- check and if necessary restore italics, small caps, superscript characters;
- remove any local formatting from the document.
Paragraph without indentation
The normal style results in paragraph numbering. If for some reason this numbering is not desired, use the “Unindented Paragraph” style. Paragraphs styled this way will not be numbered.
Quotes
To present poems, quotes, lists, etc., replace paragraph breaks (¶) with manual line breaks ↲ [Shift + Enter]. This avoids too much space between lines. This space is defined in the site layout.
The use of paragraph breaks in quotations should be limited to a specific structuring function of the passage, as it may be useful in a poetic text in stanzas, in a quotation followed by its translation, etc.
Bulleted lists
Bullets are formatted by applying the “Normal” style and Word bullets from the “Home” tab. This solution allows you to choose between numbered and unordered lists.
Illustrations
Illustrations and tables are styled in “Normal”.
These elements must be presented as follows:
- the title of the illustration (“Illustration Title” style) placed above the illustration or table ;
- the illustration or table (style ” Normal “) ;
- the caption (style ” Illustration caption “) below the illustration;
- the credits (style ” Credits Illustration “) below the illustration.
Recommendations :
- save in JPG or PNG format;
- keep a good image quality (definition of 150 dpi recommended) ;
- RGB colorimetric profile (CMYK is not allowed);
- it is possible to put large images up to 7 million pixels maximum (width x height, for example 2000×3500 or 1000×7000).
Tables
Lodel handles complex tables, retrieves cell background formatting, merges cells or columns.
The table must be styled in “Normal”. With or without borders.
Tables must not be arranged in a wrapper (with text around it), otherwise they will not be displayed by Lodel.
Bibliography
The bibliography should be added at the end of the document. It must be styled as “Bibliography” and must include one paragraph per reference.
The title “Bibliography” should not be indicated, as it is added automatically by the layout.
The bibliography may include headings that must be styled as “Title 1”, “Title 2”, etc.
The bibliography may not include tables.
It is preferable to repeat the names of authors rather than use dashes to replace them, so that Bilbo can recognize the bibliographic entries and affix a possible DOI. More information on this subject here: XXX
Appendices
Paragraphs styled as “Appendix” appear at the bottom of the document. As with the bibliography, the word “Appendix” must be removed as it is included in the layout. It is also possible to add “Title 1”, “Title 2”, etc.
Acknowledgements, dedications, erratum, NDRL, NDLA
These styles are to be used at the very beginning of the document, directly after the metadata. If an entire document is a dedication or an acknowledgement, the paragraphs must be encoded as “Normal” and not as “Acknowledgements” or “Dedication”. These styles are to be used in a document composed of other paragraphs of type “Normal”.
Footnotes and Endnotes
Lodel supports footnotes and endnotes. It is possible to fill in either set of notes or both simultaneously.
Make sure that :
- There is a dynamic link between note calls and footnotes;
- that the style of the “Footnote” notes is correct and that the notes are styled in a coherent way;
- that italics, small caps and superscripts are retained;
- that the calls for notes are styled in “Normal”;
- that note calls do not contain local formatting.
Note. Notes may be enhanced by:
- citations (which retain the same styling standards as those present in the body text – especially for manual line breaks) ;
- images (for which zoom will not be available) ;
- tables (only in DOCX and some tables that are too complex may not fit in the layout, so they will have to be inserted as images).
Clean up note calls
Note calls sometimes have the “Normal” style, or another style that causes an unwanted display. To “clean up” the calls, open the “Find” window and type ^f (or click on More > Special > Footnote call), check “Highlight all items found in:” “Main document”, and click on “Find all”. All the footnote calls are then selected. Then simply apply the character style “Footnote call”. Repeat the operation for the footnote block, by checking the box “Highlight all items found in:” “Footnotes” when “Search”, and then applying the character style “Footnote character”.
Featured image: anapaula_feriani de Pixabay. Pixabay License