Document formatting affects the layout and appearance of a document. This process relies heavily on document templates, which contain collections of style definitions that can be assigned to different elements in the content to change their appearance. For example, instead of changing each first-level header in a document individually, only the style definition for the first-level header needs to be changed when using document templates. The style applies consistently to all first-level headings. Document templates also make it possible to automatically change the layout of an entire document by assigning a new template that contains different style definitions with the same names as the original definitions. Based on professionally developed document templates, you can standardize and maintain the appearance of a variety of content efficiently.

Professionally developed document templates can help lower the costs and time requirements associated with the desktop publishing process. During desktop publishing, style definitions from .doc files are imported or matched with existing styles in the desktop publishing software. The better and the more consistent the formatting of the source documents, the less effort required to clean up the styles in the finished material. In contrast, desktop publishing costs increase significantly if the source material is poorly formatted, because the desktop publishing experts must then perform the formatting work in the desktop publishing environment that the authors omitted in the authoring tools.

Biblioso can help you give documentation, business reports and other content a professional appearance through the following means:

• Before authors start writing, desktop publishing experts plan the layout and style elements of your documents. From these plans, they create professional and intuitive templates.
• Editors check that authors and translators apply correct styles to all document elements.
• Desktop publishing experts import the finished source files into their desktop publishing environment, verify that the styles are imported correctly, and produce proofs of the finished material in Portable Document Format (PDF).
• Based on the PDF files, proofreaders verify correct formatting of the finished material.

Biblioso maintains document templates and associated formatting guidelines and samples in style sheet databases that are available to the entire project team. In this way, we can ensure that all team members have a clear understanding of the document formatting requirements. The style sheets and templates can be reused in any number of documentation projects to ensure style and formatting consistency across parallel or subsequent projects in the organization.