Rackham, the graduate school at the University of Michigan, has arcane and ugly formatting requirements that my dissertation must meet in order for me to receive my degree. They will not let me graduate if my margins or headers are wrong. That’s pretty compelling incentive to get my formatting right. Using the excellent “Using Word 2007 for Your Dissertation” guide provided by the University Library’s Knowledge Navigation Center as a starting point, I set off to make sure Word would format my dissertation correctly.

The keys to making your formatting life easy with Word are styles and templates. You can learn more about both at Microsoft’s site. I’m a faithful style user, and I assume you can easily become one if you aren’t already. All text in my documents is associated with some style – e.g., Normal, Heading 1, Long Quote. You need not worry about the specifics of a style while you write – just make sure all your text is associated with a style. Word does much of that automatically. Once you’re done writing and ready to format, you should first open a new blank document and create a template.

Creating a Template

The real purpose of your template is to store the formatting rules you assign to all your different styles. Your template need not have any content, but I find it helpful to write a little something so I can at least see my style changes in action. To create a template, you need to edit the styles so they match your formatting rules and then save the document as a template (*.dotx) instead of a regular document.

Attaching Templates to Files

Once you have defined all your styles and formatting rules in a template, you need to attach the template to your Word document. In Word 2007,

1. Go to the Office button
2. Choose “Word Options” from the bottom
3. Choose “Add Ins” from the side menu
4. Choose “Templates” from the Manage drop down at the bottom
5. Click “Go…”
6. Click “Attach” and navigate to the template file you just created and saved
7. Make sure “Automatically update document styles” is selected
8. Click “Ok”

You should see your document change to reflect the formatting rules in your template.

Using Quick Styles

One of my favorite features of Word 2007 is the Quick Styles feature. Quick Styles let you save template rules so they are accessible from the “Change Styles” menu on the Home ribbon. To get your formatting rules into a Quick Style, essentially saving you the hassle of attaching a template:

1. Open your template file
2. Click “Change styles” on the Home ribbon
3. Choose “Style set” and then “Save as Quick Style Set…”
4. Give your set a name you’ll remember and click “Save”

Now, you can apply your template’s rules in any document right from the Quick Style menu by click “Change Styles”, then “Style Set,” and choosing the name you gave your set.

Notes

I wrote this post in part to remind myself of the steps involved. Styles and templates can make working in Word incredibly easy, but you absolutely must always use styles to format your text. If you make changes by hand (e.g., clicking Ctrl+B to make something bold), you’ll screw the whole process up. Only when used together (and exclusively) will styles and templates make your writing life easier.

Office 2008 for Mac can do the styles and templates stuff but does not have a useful Quick Styles feature. To attach a template to a document in Office 2008 for Mac:

1. Open the “Tools” menu
2. Choose “Templates and Add Ins…”
3. Click “Attach” and navigate to the template document you created
4. Make sure “Automatically update document styles” is selected
5. Click “Ok”

If you’re using RefWorks, you should use either Word 2007 or Word 2008 but not both. RefWorks gets confused when you try to add or edit citations with both programs. I do most of my writing in Word 2007 on a virtual machine running Windows 7. I occasionally make edits using Word 2008 natively on my Mac, but I do not make changes to citations in both programs.

I’ve been reading books on writing while taking breaks from my ever-growing dissertation. Today I read a little of the Howard Becker Gem Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article and most of Silvia’s book. Here are a couple gems from Silvia’s book:

Academic writers cannot get writer’s block. Don’t confuse yourself with your friends teaching creative writing in the fine arts department. You’re not crafting a deep narrative or composing metaphors that expose mysteries of the human heart. The subtlety of your analysis of variance will not move readers to tears, although the tediousness of it might…Novelists and poets are the landscape artists and portrait painters; academic writers are the people with big paint sprayers who repaint your basement. (p. 45)

and

Like their dislike of jocks and the yearbook club, many writers’ distrust of semicolons is a prejudice from high school. … While you’re rebuilding your relationship with the semicolon, reach out and make a new friend – the dash. Good writers are addicted to dashes. (p. 67-68)

I’m proud to say that I a) do not have writer’s block and b) use both semicolons and dashes often and appropriately. I have trouble sticking to a writing schedule as Silvia (and many, many other writing guide authors) recommend, but at least I’ve mastered the dash.

In the fall of 2005, drivers in a small midwestern city began crossing over an interstate on a new kind of bridge. The bridge beneath them looked like other bridges carrying city streets over the interstate, but this bridge could bend. It couldn’t bend like Gumby, but it could bend like steel. Building the deck of this bendable bridge involved a state transportation department, a university research lab, and several private contractors. Given the complexity of construction projects, the challenges in doing innovative construction work, and the potential pitfalls of collaboration projects, the success of the bridge is surprising. This dissertation explores how the team managed to build a bridge with a remarkable new kind of deck.

Existing scholarship provides insight on the problems that plague projects and collaborations and identifies many mechanisms to help meet these challenges. My analysis suggests that the bridge project avoided possible problems common in projects such as (1) loose coupling among actors in a project limiting the information sharing that occurs and (2) procurement processes that encourage builders and clients to see one another as adversaries through (a) social language and its associated attention to others, (b) the flexibility and localized control loose coupling affords, and (c) the motivating influences of affect. This study will combine and extend theories about social capital, creative projects, and loose coupling in order to better understand the nature of collaborative projects involving multiple communities of practice and how those projects can be successful.

I’ve written at least 68 good pages and probably about 50 not-so-good ones that will eventually work their way, in part, into the good stuff. I have a few (< 10) interviews remaining, and that means more time in analysis. I’m on target for my personal deadline of a spring/summer defense and am actively seeking new opportunities beginning summer or fall of 2009.

manâ‹…iâ‹…fesâ‹…to

[man-uh-fes-toh]

–noun, plural -toes. a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization. (from Dictionary.com)

This definition from Dictionary.com seems to be missing some of the “flair” I normally associate with a manifesto.  For me, a manifesto is not just any public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, but an energetic, empassioned public declaration.  Without passion, it’s just a statement.

Why blog this?  Well, I’m worked up.  My guy won the White House.  A close friend wrote something that was entered into the Congressional record and may find a public outlet for other important work.  My brother sent me something from non-academic workplace literature that made me sit up and pay attention while I read.  President-elect Obama. We millions who voted for him. My friend the policy researcher. Tom Peters. These people made public declarations of their opinions and objectives, and they did so with passion.

It seems silly to compare those actions to the kind of effort my advisor asked me to use in my research statement. I don’t think I really understood when she told me to “be more manifesto-y.”  I definitely improved my statement after that advice, but it did not turn into a research manifesto.  It’s probably too early in my career for me to be writing research manifestos.  After all, I need some political capital in order to get a job.  I don’t have the protection of tenure to shield me in the event that my manifesto is unpopular.

I don’t think my manifesto would be unpopular though.  My manifesto would be about doing research that helps us change the world by working together.  Research that helps us solve problems like AIDS, bioterrorism, crumbling civil infrastructure, and the uncertainty and pain of starting new careers.  Those are the problems the people I study are solving.  My research will be useful to them.  My research will help us work together better.  My research will help us organize our projects so that we can accomplish more together than on our own.  My research will help us feel better about our work, about what we can accomplish, about our relationships with our colleagues.  My research will enable us to get more from ourselves.

That is the research statement I can make here, on my blog, after regaining hope in my country, after watching my friends do their best to change the world, after reading about how to succeed.  I make it here because it’s not appropriate for my job packet.  I make it here because while reading #17: Work on Your Story in Tom Peters’ manifesto, I was reminded of my frustrations about presenting and discussing academic work.  Tom Peters claims that “he/she who has the best story wins!”  He claims that telling stories is better than simply giving presentations.  I am a great story teller.  Ask my friends or the people who come to my parties.  My friend Caroline, for sure, will vouch for me.  I want so much to believe Tom Peters that being a storyteller will help me succeed.  The trouble is, I’m not sure my audience can handle it.  I’m not sure my conference presentations go over that well when I try to be a storyteller.  I know reviewers get frustrated when I don’t stick to intro, method, results, discussion and bullet points.  I’m pretty sure a hiring committee would rather I send them the statement I did than something like the paragraph before this one.

Am I asking too little of my conference audiences, of those hiring committees?  Would I be better off if I showed them the passion I have for the study of collaboration?  I’m not sure.  I do know I want to be more manifesto-y.  The stories about the work I’ve done and seen could inspire.  I don’t know who would listen to them though.  I don’t know what audience would match my energy.  The dry, monotonous style of academic publishing, both in print and at conferences, does not lend itself to manifesto.  We academics are reserved; sometimes we are cynical.  When I’m all worked up like this, that reservation, that cynicism is troubling.  I see some value in a cold, passive, rational approach.  I do.  Just not tonight.