Word italic formatting bug

[jzacks]

Hi,

I'm formatting a Word document with a number of paragraphs that are formatted in a style whose font is italic, but which contain text that has been converted to non-italic, e.g.:

"This is the header of the paragraph. The paragraph now goes on with the italics turned off. The paragraph contains citations {Author, 2005, #7777}. etc..."

When these paragraphs are scanned, the citation and everything after it is converted to italics. Has anyone else come across this?

Jeff Zacks

[Jon]

I believe this is discussed in the Read Me.

Check the style sheet for that paragraph -- it probably is set to use italics.

Jon
Sonny Software

[jzacks]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for the quick reply. I now understand what you're saying in the manual. I'd recommend changing this in the next release. I can understand that it's a judgment call whether an inserted citation should have the formatting of the surrounding text or the default for the style. (I think it's more intuitive to have it take on the formatting of the surrounding text, and I have a hard time thinking of a situation in which that's not the behavior one would want.) However, it seems obviously undesirable to have scanning affect the formatting of text other than citations in any way.

In my view, the _most_ elegant solution would be to have the formatted citation take on whatever formatting is imposed on the unformatted citation marker. For example, suppose the style specified italics as in the previous example, but the marker were formatted bold:
"This is the header of the paragraph. The paragraph now goes on with the italics turned off. The paragraph contains citations {Author, 2005, #7777}. etc..."

The most intuitive result would be for that to format (using, say APA style) as:
"This is the header of the paragraph. The paragraph now goes on with the italics turned off. The paragraph contains citations (Author, 2005). etc..."
I.e., it should format as not italic, bold. The current result is to format it (and the following text...) as italic, not bold.

Jeff

[Jon]

Hi,

Bookends doesn't know (or care) what the surrounding formatting is. It reverts to the format of the style sheet for the paragraph. This is what styles sheets are for, after all. If your style sheets are adjusted correclty you'll get the result you want.

Jon
Sonny Software

[jzacks]

Jon,

First, for Bookends to behave intuitively, it _should_ care what the surrounding formatting is. Second, Bookends should not change the formatting of text that is not part of a citation as a side-affect of formatting.

Jeff

[Jon]

I'm explaining why you saw this change -- your style sheets do not match your text. Bookends respects the style sheets, not ad hoc changes that have been made. That's the way it works. It is a fundamental aspect of the scanning process that cannot be changed (even if I thought that was a good idea, which as you can see I don't) without a major revamp of the way Bookends does scans. You may prefer it didn't care about style sheets, but it does.

Jon
Sonny Software

[tom]

.... the citation and everything after it is converted to italics. Has anyone else come across this?
...
Second, Bookends should not change the formatting of text that is not part of a citation as a side-affect of formatting.

no, not with my installation (BE 8.1.1 and word X, OS 10.3.9). I think this is a bug of your installation. I can understand that this behavour is very annoying.

hope this helps
tom