Microsoft Word has a vast array of tools to support any written project, but therein lies the problem. How do you find the few tools needed to just format your book for self-publishing?

You already know from reading Publishing Help Notes number 2 that most books are not printed on 8.5" X 11" paper, so you must convert your work into a popular book size with appropriate margins and font size?

NOTE: But before we begin making changes to the format of you book, there is one important item we must cover. Many word processing users make heavy use of carriage returns and spaces to format their work into a pleasing display of separate pages where chapters start on a full page and other items like the Dedication and Copyright have their own page. The subsequent changing of margins and paper size from 8.5 X 11 will destroy all this careful formatting. If you are guilty of this practice then you need to replace all those carriage returns and spaces with a single Page Break at the end of the words on the page preceding the content that is to start on next full page. To view those hidden space and carriage return marks, toggle the switch that will display then.

This screen shows the location of the switch that makes the hidden marks like carriage returns and spaces visable. To hide the marks, hit the symbol again.

Once you have replaced all the extra carriage returns and spaces with page breaks where appropriate, let's begin with the page size and margins, specifically mirror margins. Why mirror margins? The center of an open book is called the gutter, and anything printed too far into the gutter is hard to read. Consequently, we want larger margins in the gutter, which means larger right margins on the left pages and larger left margins on the right pages This is called mirrored margins.

The following picture shows how to set these paramaters.

If you have written the draft copy of your work in double or other than single space, the following picture shows how to change the space between lines.

Paragraph spacing on a mechanical typewriter consisted of either hitting two carriage returns to start a new paragraph or one carriage return followed by indenting the first line with five spaces. The advent of word processing on a computer gives the writer many more options.

The following picture and explanation is an attempt to explain how to use Word's paragraph spacing settings to fine-tune the layout of paragraphs

Printed books normally have separate sections for title pages, copyright pages, dedication pages, etc called front matter. The meat of your book is called body matter, and you may have material like author info and other information at the end of your book called back matter. Each of these sections may have separate page numbering formats to differentiate them for the reader. Finding the settings to apply page numbers in Word can be daunting, and if you have already made a mess of it, you might consider deleting the existing page numbers and section breaks, and starting over.

This screen shows how to delete page numbers.

To assist in inserting Section Breaks in your document, toggle on the switch that will display marks and other formatting sysbols.

This screen shows the location of the switch. To hide the marks, hit the symbol again.

Section Breaks are similar to Page Breaks in that material following the break with begin on the top of the next page, but the material on the following pages may be assigned different characteristics like page number format. The following image shows how to replace a Page Break with a Section Break.

Now that you have divided your book into separate sections, you may apply page numbers in different formats. Roman Numerals are popular for numbering pages in the Front Matter section i.e. i, ii, iii, iv. In the following example Arabic Numerals are used in the Body Section, and Roman Numerals in the Front Section.

NOTE: Page numbers are normally placed in the page Header or Footer, and the default setting in Word is that all Sections use the same format. Consequently, to have different formats you must change that setting before adding page numbers. Use the following commands to begin unlinking the format of the Page Numbers in the Section 2 Footer. Go to the first page of your Section 2 and double click in the footer area. The following image will display.

You may now procede to the next step adding the page numbers to a section using the steps shown below. This step is shown again using the Layout Tab, but page numbers can also be added using the Insert Tab.

While on the Layout Tab select the Number Format style button and the Page Number Format selection box will appear. Select format and starting page number. Hit OK to finish..