Formatting Questions

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parkernathan
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:48 pm

Formatting Questions

Post by parkernathan »

I also sent this into Tech Support, but I'll also post it here.

I'm trying to wrap up the formatting of my PhD dissertation. My supervisor has asked me to make these changes:

There are just a couple of very minor matters: In the Table of Contents, adjust the continuation lines consistently according to the style manual. Secondly, in the Introduction, pages 4-7 and page 9 have only a couple of lines of text and a large white space before the footnotes. Adjust these pages to print the notes below text rather than end of page so as to eliminate this white space.

How do I do these in Mellel?

Here's a link to the parts of my dissertation he's referencing: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kpb2lpjq8izyv ... ellel?dl=0

Thanks!
Amontillado
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 148
Joined: Fri May 04, 2018 4:00 am

Re: Formatting Questions

Post by Amontillado »

First thought - If you click Insert->Note->Edit Note Attributes... you'll get the Note Streams window.

Note streams are differently numbered sequences of notes. Note styles control how note streams appear. Your "Footnote" stream uses the note style "Footnote (Arabic)+". The plus sign means that some attributes of the note style are overridden.

A side observation - You can reset the attributes to unmodified "Footnote (Arabic)" by clicking the down arrow in the Note Style box and re-selecting "Footnote Arabic."

In the middle column of the Note Stream window there's a Position attribute. Yours is set to Bottom of Page. Set that to Below Text and click OK. Your footnotes will now appear below the text without a large gap. If the footnotes end up being too close to the bottom of the text, use the Space Above parameter to provide a little social distancing between your text and the footnotes.

Pages 4 and 5 may offer some challenges, but take a look and see if it gets you closer to set Below Text in the footnote Note Stream.

Another sidelight - Insert->Note shows the note streams you've set up, not note styles. Each note stream has an associated note style with full control to override anything you want. I'm no expert, but I think it's best to set up note styles so there are few if any overrides in the note stream setup.

For example, if you wanted two visually identical note streams except for the numbering style, set up one note style to use for both streams. Set the numbering style individually in each stream.

What does your style manual say should be different in the table of contents? I suspect you can get what you need without major surgery.
Amontillado
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 148
Joined: Fri May 04, 2018 4:00 am

Re: Formatting Questions

Post by Amontillado »

Forgot a couple of handy tips you may have already found.

If you double click a reference symbol in the text, whether it's a footnote number or an asterisk, you'll jump to the associated note. Double clicking the symbol in the note will jump you to the reference in your text.

Right click the reference in your text to get a handy context menu including Note Stream. That reveals which stream the note is in and also lets you move a note to a different stream.
DavidH
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Re: Formatting Questions

Post by DavidH »

Amontillado has already covered note placement in a very thorough way. But you also asked styling the table of contents.

I can’t tell from what you say how your style manual wants the “continuation lines” connecting entries with page numbers to look in your table of contents. Right now seem to be typing dots by hand in the document you posted. If this isn’t what the style manual wants, you can get Mellel to provide various other kinds of continuation line instead. You need to edit each of your table of contents paragraph styles, as follows.

Show the Ruler.
Clear all tabs.
Put a single Reverse Tab at the right hand end of the ruler.
In the Attributes side of the Paragraph palette, set the Tab Lead option on the right hand side of the palette to whichever option your style manual requires: dot, dash, low line, or whatever

Save the changes to the paragraph style you’ve just edited.
Icelander
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Re: Formatting Questions

Post by Icelander »

parkernathan wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 12:24 am How do I do these in Mellel?
Insert > Note > Edit Note Attributes…
Under General Options, set Height limit to 100%.
parkernathan
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:48 pm

Re: Formatting Questions

Post by parkernathan »

Thanks! My style manual is Turabian 9. Working on these as we speak.
parkernathan
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:48 pm

Re: Formatting Questions

Post by parkernathan »

I got the changes made and submitted my PhD defense draft. The dots themselves were OK, but there was some spacing in the TOC on a couple of chapters I had to resolve. That was easy enough. :-)

Thank you all so much for your assistance on this! It feels good to finally get this submitted, and you all were a huge help! I'm glad I assembled my dissertation in Mellel!
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