Introduction
As a matter of best practice, document authors should use styles rather than direct formatting wherever possible. The reason is simple: styles help increase consistency while reducing the effort required to produce documents with a professional look and feel. And if you need to produce documents for multiple clients, for example, styles are the only practical way to adapt documents to the client’s House Style.
DokuMate is based on a standard set of styles that must be used for all documents if you want to leverage its advanced functionality. The reason is that styles are used to assign semantics to the text, not only visual appearance.
Before you read on, note that this article refers to contracts when describing where some of them would be used. Note, however, that the styles are general purpose styles also apply to other types of structured documents.
Styles for Contracts
A contract document, for example, can consist of up to three parts, the front of the contract (optional), the body of the contract – what the parties are agreeing to – and the back of the contract (optional). While a full contract would have all three parts, a typical schedule, exhibit or attachment would only have the body of the contract. Let’s look at the styles provided for those parts of a contract.
Styles for the Front of the Contract
For the (optional) front of the contract, which includes the title, introductory clause, recitals, and lead-in, Contract Architect provides the following standard paragraph styles:
- Title. The title of the contract document.
- Body Text. Unnumbered body text.
Where bulleted or numbered lists are required in the front of the contract, DokuMate provides the following paragraph styles:
- List Bulleted 0. Bulleted list; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Decimal 0. Numbered list using the (1), (2), (3) series; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Legal 0. Numbered list using the 1, 1.1, (a) series; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Lower Letter 0. Numbered list using the (a), (b), (c) series; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Lower Roman 0. Numbered list using the (i), (ii), (iii) series; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Upper Letter 0. Numbered list using the (A), (B), (C) series; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Upper Roman 0. Numbered list using the (I), (II), (III) series; indented to match the Body Text style.
- List Body 0. Continuation of the above bulleted or numbered lists.
Styles for the Body of the Contract
For the body of the contract, starting with the first level 1 heading, DokuMate provides the following paragraph styles (among others):
- Heading 1 to 9. For numbered headings and paragraphs, with Heading 1 to Heading <N> being decimally numbered headings (e.g., 1, 1.2) and Heading <N+1> to Heading 9 being numbered paragraphs (e.g., (a), (2), (iii)). Part of the default style set of Microsoft Word.
- HeadingBody 1 to 9. For unnumbered body text underneath the corresponding Heading 1 to Heading 9 paragraphs.
- List Bulleted 1 to 9. Bulleted list; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
- List Body 1 to 9. Continuation of List Bulleted 1 to 9 or any of the below numbered lists.
Where specific numbering is desired that deviates from the numbering used by a Heading <N> style, the following paragraph styles are available:
- List Decimal 1 to 9. Numbered list using the (1), (2), (3) series; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
- List Legal 1 to 9. Numbered list using the 1, 1.1, (a) series; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
- List Lower Letter 1 to 9. Numbered list using the (a), (b), (c) series; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
- List Lower Roman 1 to 9. Numbered list using the (i), (ii), (iii) series; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
- List Upper Letter 1 to 9. Numbered list using the (A), (B), (C) series; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
- List Upper Roman 1 to 9. Numbered list using the (I), (II), (III) series; indented to match Heading 1 to 9 and HeadingBody 1 to 9.
There are a few things to note:
- Using Heading 1 to Heading 9 for numbered headings and paragraphs has a number of advantages (e.g., it is very easy to switch between levels, using Tab and Shift+Tab) and is common practice in the legal industry.
- The List Bulleted <N> styles define multiple bullet levels. So, if you want sub-bullets (e.g., dashes) to structure your bulleted list, you would use the List Bulleted <N> style that matches your preceding Heading <N> or HeadingBody <N> style and then increase or decrease the indent level of individual paragraphs by:
- pressing the Tab (increase) or Shift+Tab (decrease) keys;
- pressing the Shift+Alt+Right (increase) or Shift+Alt+Left (decrease) keys; or
- clicking the Increase Indent or Decrease Indent buttons.
- Heading <N>, HeadingBody <N>, and List Bulleted <N> are matched in terms of indentation. For example, if you want to have a second-level heading followed by an unnumbered paragraph and a bulleted list, you would use one Heading 2, one HeadingBody 2, and a few List Bulleted 2 paragraphs. Just remember to use styles with matching numbers.
- Some of the above mentioned styles may not be visible in the styles pane or may not even exist in your document. However, they will be made visible or created automatically by DokuMate, e.g., through functions such as “Body” or “Bulleted”.
On top of the above paragraph styles, DokuMate also defines a few character styles that can be used in conjunction with those paragraph styles:
- Defined Term Definition. Used to markup a defined term where it is initially defined. Typiclly bolds the font.
- Defined Term. Used to markup a defined term where it is used. Typically not an issue in English language contracts, because you would just capitalize those terms. Very hand, however, for languages like German where defined terms might be “highlighted” differently.
- Heading. Used to markup a numbered paragraph as a heading when an additional numbered heading level is required (e.g., if the template only provides two decimally numbered heading levels and you exceptionally require a third or even fourth heading level)
- Note. Used to markup a whole paragraph as a note to the advisor or client.
While many (but not all) people have used paragraph styles, character styles are likely new to most Word users. However, they can be quite powerful. For example, if you properly markup all defined terms using the Defined Term character style, you can work with that semantic markup:
- You can search for any defined term, because Word allows you to search for text having a certain style.
- In languages (e.g., German) where you can’t simply use initial caps (or title case) to tell defined terms apart from other text, you can apply a house style-specific look and feel to all defined terms by simply (1) changing the style in one template and (2) assigning that template to a set of contract documents:
- One client might demand all capitals – a typographic sin in the author’s view – to highlight DEFINED TERMS. You would just change the Defined Term style to format the text in all caps.
- Another client might not highlight defined terms at all. You would change the Defined Term style to do nothing.
- Another one might use colors to highlight defined terms. In this example, you would change the Defined Term style to use bold and gray font.
Finally, DokuMate defines the following table styles:
- Table Contract. A table with zero left indentation.
- Table Contract 1. A table the left indentation of which is matched with Heading 1 (and typically the other decimal heading levels).
- Tabular Form. A table with zero left indentation that is used for the tabular form.
Styles for the Back of the Contract
DokuMate does not define additional styles for the (optional) back of the contract which includes the concluding clause and the signature block.
Summary
If you are using styles properly, DokuMate makes it very easy to define CI-compliant templates for your own company or your clients and apply those templates to a larger set of contract documents with a click of a button. This saves a lot of time while producing higher-quality output.