I Want My Rounded Boxes

Word is not a paging program, but working with it can give you an appreciation for just how much can be reproduced in Word: tinted boxes, vertical type, custom borders, and other graphically pleasing touches that make a book attractive.

You can get almost anything reproduced in Word. The question is, Should you?

Some reasons for caution:

• Word elements are not as easy to control as elements in a paging program. Adding tints or borders because of their graphical appeal, rather than their pedagogical necessity, can mean more elements to juggle on a page than you really need to.
• Word files are prone to corruption, especially from drawing objects. Drawing objects include boxes and shapes. While many of these are necessary for features and image placeholders, shapes that are there for aesthetic purposes can be eliminated to simplify the Word file and minimize the chance of Word corruption.

The goal in WriteRAP is to have a viable representation of the finished page, and to ensure elements take up the correct amount of room. It is more important that a 24x12 box take up 24x12 than that its corners are rounded, or that its tint exactly matches the Quark or InDesign file.

When you look at your design, look for things that are pedagogically significant to be reproduced: examples, for instance, might have a vertical or end rule that is used to separate the example from the body text. This is a meaningful graphical element that needs to be reproduced. However, if these examples are tinted in addition, you probably don't need that as well, and not having the tint will mean easier handling of your content.

You might wonder, if you have a box anyway, why can't it just have rounded corners? And the answer is that in Word, you can't just make the corners rounded - you have to add a drawing object and keep it grouped or anchored in your text. And that's when things can get messy.

If you are going direct to PDF, it may be worth a little extra work to get the graphic touches that you want. If you can alter your design to minimize these items, that's great, but when you can't, go ahead and use rounded boxes. If they make the file harder to work with, you can work with simpler elements during editing and have the vendor swap in the complicated version as part of the finalization process.