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Microsoft Word: Best Practices, Especially for Publishing a Book
The Problem
Do you want your Microsoft Word document to have a consistent look and make the most of the features of the software?
Are you thinking about turning your Microsoft Word document into a published book, perhaps using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)?
Read on for my advice on the best word processing practices.
Before you begin
- Make a backup copy of your document.
- Show invisible characters: This lets you see paragraph breaks, spaces, tabs, etc., without changing how the document prints.
- Show ruler: This lets you see the margins, paragraph intents, tab stops, etc.
Use named paragraph styles
If you define (and use) named Styles for every type of paragraph in your document, your document will not only have a consistent look, but you will also have much better control over the formatting. In other words, if you update a Style (e.g., change it from single-spaced to double-spaced), every paragraph that uses it will immediately show that change, saving you an enormous amount of work.
The most common types of paragraphs include:
- Your most frequent or standard paragraph: Define a style that embodies its look. You can either call it “Normal” (the built-in style) or create a new style with a custom name like “Regular” or “Standard.” For example, novels, nonfiction books, and biographies typically use paragraphs with first-line indents, whereas the paragraphs in textbooks and reference books typically don’t use first-line indents.
- Numbered Level 1: For numbered lists that use “1, 2, 3” numbering with a hanging indent.
- Numbered Level 2: For numbered lists that use “a, b, c” numbering with hanging and left indents.
- Bulleted lists (like this one): These also use a hanging indent.
- Quotations: Typically have both left and right indents and italic text.
- Quote Attribution: Further indented than Quotation, to show a quote’s source and author.
- Heading 1 (built-in): For chapter titles, will also appear in the Table of Contents (TOC); typically use a larger font and the “Page break before” option.
- Heading 2 (built-in): For subchapter titles, will also appear in the TOC.
- TOC 1 (built-in): Controls how chapter titles will appear in the TOC.
- TOC 2 (built-in): Controls how subchapter titles will appear in the TOC.
Define each of these paragraph styles carefully, and apply them consistently. For each one you can choose its:
- Font and size, e.g., Times New Roman 12
- Plain, bold, italic, underline
- Font color: Controls whether your text is black, red, green, etc.
- Highlight color: Controls whether the color behind your text is white, yellow, etc.
- Indents: Left, right, first line, hanging
- Alignment: Left, center, right, justified
- Extra space before, the spacing between lines (single-spaced, double-spaced, etc.), and extra space after
- Page break before -- Best for chapter titles (Heading 1)
- Special options to control or prevent page breaks: Widow/Orphan control, Keep lines together, Keep with next
Other paragraph best practices
The more you use the following features, the less work it will take to correct your document if its overall design changes (margins, page size, etc.):
- Let your text word-wrap: Only use the Enter key (Return on Macintosh) at the end of each paragraph, not at the end of each line.
- To make the lines within a paragraph be double-spaced, use that feature of the paragraph style instead of using the Enter key to manually force it.
- To create extra vertical space between paragraphs, don’t enter blank lines, adjust the paragraph style and use the Space before or Space after features.
- If you feel the need to make a formatting exception for a particular paragraph, don’t do that manually. Create another named paragraph style instead.
Character-level best practices
- Don’t use tabs for indentation, use First line or Hanging indents instead.
- Don’t use multiple spaces to center a paragraph, use Center alignment instead.
- Don’t use tabs or multiple spaces to try to line up columns of text, use a Table instead.
- Don’t use two spaces after each sentence, just use a single space.
- Use “curly quotes” (typesetter’s) quotes instead of straight quotes (inch and foot marks).
- Use a single close-quote in front of a number or year, e.g.: ’88 instead of ‘88.
- Use proportional-spaced fonts (like Times or Palatino) instead of mono-spaced (like Courier).
- Don’t over-use bold, italic, underlining, color, etc.
- Don’t over-use ellipses (...).
- Don’t over-use exclamation marks, question marks, emoticons, or other small decorative pictures.
Page-level best practices
- Don’t use multiple blank lines or paragraphs to “push” a paragraph onto the next page, use a Page break instead.
- Don’t type in manual page numbers, use automatic page numbers in the Header or Footer. You can use the page number by itself, or “Page N” or “Page N of T.”
In the Header or Footer, you may also want to add:
- Confidential
- Review copy as of 4/30/2026
- A Copyright notice
- The name of the document, e.g., My Memoir.docx
Document-level best practices
- Don’t type in a manual Table of Contents. Instead, use the TOC feature, which also requires using the styles Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. in the body of the document.
- Update your TOC periodically as you edit your document.
- Don’t use manual cross-references (“see X on page Y”), use Word’s built-in feature instead.
- Go to the end of your document and remove any blank paragraphs that might have accumulated there.
Document-level changes
If you change the margins, Page Size (paper size), or the page orientation (portrait vs. landscape), all of your regular paragraphs will probably re-word wrap correctly, but you will need to review these fixed-size items:
- Any tables in your document.
- Any tabs, including the ones in your Header, Footer, and Table of Contents
- Any drawing layer items, including pictures, text boxes, diagrams, shapes, etc.
For example, you might write your document using the default page size of 8.5" x 11" with 1" margins, and then later decide to publish it as a 6" x 9" paperback book on Amazon with 0.75" margins.
Before sending your document to someone else for review
- If you changed the Zoom (magnification), change it back to 100%.
- Consider also turning on Track Changes so you can monitor any changes the other person may make.
Where to go from here
As always, if any of my advice seems too difficult to follow, I recommend that you find someone you know and trust who can help you.
In the searches below, replace “X” with the name of a word processing feature, e.g., “paragraph style” or “margin” or “table.”
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