short lines in quoted email message text

C

Carol Whitney

I'm a brand new Word-user, with Word 2000 (Office 2000),
Windows 98 SE.

First, let me apologize in advance for the length of this; I
don't know how to make it any shorter, in order to ask my
question(s).

I'm trying to set up templates (with some success) to conrol
various sorts of formatting. I followed Shauna Kelly's
instructions for dealing with customizing Outline Numbering
(thanks, Shauna!) and used help from Suzanne Barnhill to learn
more about fine-tuning my styles. But I still have tons I need
to learn.

I have a rule for myself: no direct formatting. I removed the
direct-formatting toolbar, so as not to be tempted to mess up
my documents.

Right now, I'm working wtih email messages, because I'll be
simulating them, and/or quoting from some, in my long
documents, later.

For now, I'm bringing actual email messages (my own, or ones I
have permission to reproduce) into Word (2000) as text files,
by using Copy and Paste, after selecting New Blank Document,
with my email-formatting template. I'm copy/pasting them from
my text editor, to get the text into the New Blank Document
(using a specific .dot file, but also, copying the format
styles into normal.dot, once I'm happy with the formatting).

This is specifically about short lines in a quoted signature.
I need sometimes to set these up as a single-quoted passage
(paragraph format?); sometimes as a double-quoted passage (!),
and - I hope not often! - perhaps as a triple-quoted passage.

I'll bet there are ways to do this fairly simply, but I'm so
new to Word that my mind isn't wrapping around this.

For now, to imitate (give the appearance of) single-quoted
text, I used a border on the left side that continues through
the quoted paragraph. That imitates the excerpt bars popular
in Eudora. It might not be the best way to do things; should I
use ">" instead? And if I do, how would I set that up in Word?

I'd want to insert a ">" at the beginning of each line in the
paragraph.

For double-quoted paragraphs, I succeeded (it appears) in
changing the left-side border to a double line from a single
line.

Then suddenly, I ran into this problem:

Somebody quoted a signature from a previous message. The
signature lines are short, not extending to the right margin
of the page.

Thus (inventing):

Carol Whitney
Second signature line
Third signature line
Even though I don't usually
Use more than one line as
A signature
A signature.

Now, suppose that's set as a single-quote, which, in the
original email message, would look like this:
Carol Whitney
Second signature line
Third signature line
Even though I don't usually
Use more than one line as
a signature

Oops - now that looks as though I'm quoting somebody else, but
it's me <g>.

In the original text in the email I'm formatting, those lines
(in the simulated signature) would each end with a paragraph
mark - in other words, a Hard Return, or a Line-Feed with
Carriage Return, Hex 0D0A, if I remember right, or did I get
that backwards?

When a signature occurs in the original, I'm simply formatting
it with Left-alighned text, hanging indents for each line (and
each line of the signature is a separate paragraph). I'm
adding space-before the first line of a signature, space-after
after the last line of a signature, and no space-before nor
space-after for all intervening lines. (Incidentally, I'm
using these same formats for message headers, and for any
added footer on email messages, which are sometimes added by
email lists.)

But for Body Text, and its relatives, I'm using Space-After, 6
points. For the simulated short-line quotes, though, I don't
want any space-before nor space-after, until the last line of
the grouped short-lines.

Does anybody have any suggestions about how I could format
quoted email text, showing some kind of "quote marks" (for
single, double, or even triple-quoted text - I'm definitely
not wedded to the left-side border! - don't even really care
for it that much), and deal with short lines?

Is there such a thing as a "NewLine" (I think that's line-feed
only? without the hard Return (carriage return?) Or am I even
more confused about that?)

In other words, how can I get this effect:

Several short lines that follow each other (and should be kept
together through the last line), without added space in the
style format, with some kind of quote marks - single, double
or triple?

Sorry I'm really rotten at asking questions, until I already
know the answer(s), at which point I'm able to ask the
questions <g>.

Monday 1 Sep 2003, 18:40:39

Carol Whitney
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Insert a line break with Shift+Enter. I think your single and double borders
are probably a better approach than trying to use > as a quote character.
Personally, I think I'd avoid either and just use increasing indents for the
quotes, much as you would if the material were text from a book instead of
an email.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top