The argument table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the
problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than
paragraph formatting. I haven't really paid close attention because I don't
use "table styles" but do use specific styles for Table Heading and Table
Text.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Jonathan West" wrote in message
...
Hi Adrian,

I have made a standard practice of using Body Text and leaving Normal
alone
as thoroughly as possible for some years, since I discovered that if you
set
Normal to have anything other than 0pt paragraph spacing before & after,
envelopes tend to come out printed double-spaced.

I decided that as I could never tell when someone would attempt to select
an
address in a document based on any kind of template and print an envelope
from it, I was far better off not having to remember to explicitly include
all the envelope styles in my templates and set them back to 0pt paragraph
spacing.

In addition, if you attempt to use Table styles, (I rarely do because many
of my customers still require Office 2000 compatibility) I understand the
Table style definitions sometimes go all strange on you if the Normal
style
is set away from the factory default.

--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
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"Adrian" wrote in message
...
Hi,



My company has undergone a few mergers and I am now tasked with
standardizing our style sheets across offices. I'd like some advice on
this.



The templates I have been using till now use "Normal" as body text
rather
than a specific style called "Body Text" or similar. (One of our offices
uses "Body Text".) Most tech authors seem to advocate staying away from
Normal, but I don't see any problem with it as long as you follow these
simple rules:



i. You base any styles you don't want to change if Normal changes on "no
style" or another style.



ii. If more than one person will work on the same master document, you
EITHER give strict orders never to select "Automatically update document
styles" in the Templates dialog box OR you make sure that everyone in
the
authoring team has the same definition of "Normal" in their "Normal"
template OR you attach the document to a template on a shared network
folder that you know will always be available, and in which the "Normal"
style matches that of the document.



I don't see any problem with copy/pasting from other documents or emails
that use Normal, particularly with the latest versions of Word where you
get a dropdown menu that allows you to choose whether to retain source
or
target formatting when you paste. To me this is easier than reformatting
imported Normal text as Body Text. Even if somebody accidentally chooses
"retain source formatting" when pasting, as far as I can see you can
easily tidy this up by selecting "Automatically update document styles",
saving, and then clearing this setting (or by selecting the offending
text
and clicking ctrl + space).



Does this make sense?



IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I
don't think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of
one
and half a dozen of the other.



In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base
it on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't
make any sense to me.



Thanks,



Adrian