Help with writing format basics

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Permalink Reply by Kate Wagner on September 17, 2013 at 9:13am

The standard for submitting manuscripts for publication would be 10 or 12 point Courier or Times Roman, double-spaced. I would set the leading to 120% of the font size. San-serif fonts such as Ariel or Helvetica are not as easy to read as a Serif font such as Times Roman.  As for getting the chapters to line up in order on the disk? That would be a problem.  Perhaps, you can set it your table of contents as internal hyperlinks pointing to the location of the chapter in the directory. Not sure about the print whole document command as that would go into the programming.  Of course, the best solution would probably be to publish the entire book in Adobe Acrobat...hmmm...

I know I am a bit late in finding this group but it looks like you all have been discussing a topic that has come to the forefront of my own goals at this time.  

Kate

Permalink Reply by Myo on September 21, 2013 at 11:37am

Hi, Kate, Thanks for your reply to my 2010 post. I thought there would be more people talking about their writing and publishing ideas.  I haven't changed anything with the one that I was working on at that time. It was put together to be given out at a family reunion. The majority of us descended from the same husband and wife. I just used word docs and put it on a disk. I have 4 sections,  To get the chapters in order I just numbered them in front of the family name.

Section 1. INTRODUCTIONS & CONTENTS,    - table of contents and a written narative about the history and who did the research,

SECTION 2. THE -----LINE,(GRANDFATHERS SIDE)  has 8 chapters, 1 is the story of the beginning of that line. It is mostly a narative about our grandfathers ancestry because it is all in France and we do not have much info on his ancestors, only names and dates. I need to add more info and charts for these people.   the next 7 are on the individual sons and daughters. under there I have a narative about that person and his/her descendents. then copies of vital records if available, some census records and some pictures. Also I added short family tree charts on our direct grandfather.

SECTION 3. THE ----LINE  (GRANDMOTHERS SIDE); has 16 sections. This side goes back longer in America and we have found more family lines. It starts with our grandmother and then follows her ancestor lines.

SECTION 4. PRINTABLE MATERIALS  additional charts and form for people to use.

Most of the original research was done by a cousin on a very-very old computer so i had to update it to a newer program and add the research I have found.  I gave disks to the first cousins. I hope they pass it on to their children to make copies if they want them.

I am now working on the ancestry of my step granddaughter and doing it the easy way since she is only minimaly interested.  I am putting together a basic narative of the key people and then printing out a FTM history. I do have some records and pictures that I am adding.

I hope to hear how others are doing their projects.

 

Permalink Reply by Kate Wagner on September 21, 2013 at 2:20pm

Hi, Myo, fancy meeting you over here.  I was browsing the writing discussions looking for inspiration and finally found this one. The discussion I found before her sounded more like a school teacher waiting to pounce. :::screech:::

Your work sounds like mine.  All goes back to the same person.  The only difference is that I found there were two in the MidAtlantic during the same period.with similar names for both the husband and wife (Christopher/Christian and Anna Catharine/Susanna Catharine). It was the dates of the births of the children that led me t realize there were two separate families, but probably brothers.

I registered a domain name a little over a week ago so as to have a place to start putting up a beginning to draw attention to what is being done.  I don't want to provide my sources until I publish or give a complete roadmap.  I am thinking of doing timeline with the photographs I've taken, an introduction as to the purpose of the research, a bio, a blog.  We can begin writing the history but password the pages so they can't be accessed by just anyone stumbling on the site  When it's done, we can convert to print and an electronic format. Since my cousin Kim has been working on this with me, she would be included with her own place for a statement and bio.  As you can see, I'm not even putting the family name in this posting. Genealogy Wise is trawled by the search engines and I've seen my comments, etc. pop up almost immediately after typing a search on the ancestor and family name. Oh, btw, I found this great website that creates color palettes. genopal.com, I believe it is.

I've been brushing up on my Dreamweaver skills (very rusty but somehow the site needs to be designed) as well as Photoshop skills.  The photographs have been sorted and edited. I've selected the typestyles for a banner, and the image for a background.  I'm sitting at Starbucks with the Adobe Digital Classroom and just about finished with the chapters on CSS (thank God). I ordered a few web design and typography books from abebooks.com a week ago, then a writing style manual, another on historical writing an a third that I can't remember at the moment. 

One step at a time else I am going to return to feeling very overwhelmed.

Permalink Reply by Myo on September 21, 2013 at 3:54pm

Wow, you are overwhelming me just reading your comments. I never thought about doing it as a webpage. Sounds interesting. Understand what you say about putting up names. I have a very old copy of dreamweaver but have only used it for uploading ftp files to a domain name (a small biz) I created the pages with Mic Pub. Has worked fine for years but something has happened and links do not work.

You mentioned something about putting links in a publication/document.  does that work in Word?

I applaud you for all the work you are doing. That would be far beyond me.

Permalink Reply by Myo on October 29, 2013 at 2:50pm

Well!!, I finally "finished", at least I am taking a break on a family history book for my stepgranddaughter. This has been a long and time consuming project. I know I broke all the standard rules in how it should be done but tried to do it in a way that I hope she will be able to understand and enjoy.

The first section is a narative with pictures of some of the key and most interesting people. Next is a full report printout from FTM. Then a section of maps and list of people and where they lived. Ending with a spread sheet with all the names involved - when/where born, when/where died, when/where/who married. I put it into a 3 ring note book.  I also did a full ancestor chart that came out 36 X 42. I hope she enjoys it.