Quote Layout

Last week I got a quote from a caterer for a dinner I am running. A round table affair to discuss water technology. It was fairly standard fare, a word document with the bare minium of information.

The quote P*ssed me off though as it was hard to read. What the author didn’t realise is that word documents can appear differently for different people.

When you open up Word (for most people) a new document starts with whats called the default template. This means that the page is a certain shape and your words are written in a certain font at a respecified size. There are also a number of other settings. It also sounds easy, but where it gets tricky is when your default template and my default template differ.

For instance, I like a 2cm margin on the left and a one cm margin on the right, as compared to Words default margin of 2.54 cm all round. The impact of this is that sentences wrap around at a different point, which can cause issues when spacing information by using tabs.

Another issue is that I like to use verdana 10 point as my standard font. If your using times new roman, it’s a skinnier font, which means paragraphs will appear bigger to me (more lines).

The solution to this problem, which I like best, is to print out quotes as a PDF document, before sending them out. The advantage of this is that my style and formatting is locked in to the document. An additional bonus is that my documents then become hard to alter or copy, providing less opportunities for future disagreements.

The best-known PDF generator is of course Adobe Acrobat. However there are plenty of other cheaper options in the marketplace, such as PublishPDF Pro, Scansoft and Robot PDF. In the past when feeling tight, I have used PDF995 . It’s a free job that generates irritating pop-up advertising when you use it.

Quotation layout made easy.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.