Formatting Electronic Texts for the CCEL

If you are typing or scanning a book, please enter all of the text exactly as it appears in the book. Try to make the electronic text look like the book. Enter footnotes as regular footnotes in your word processor, if possible (using ctrl-alt-f in Microsoft Word), and don't add blank lines between paragraphs unless there is extra space in the book. If you are using Microsoft Word, format with paragraph styles as described below, save in RTF format, and email it to me.

Using paragraph styles in Microsoft Word

If you apply certain paragraph styles in Microsoft Word in a consistent manner, it will make the job of conversion to other formats and adding a book to the CCEL automatic. Software will be able to automatically convert your text to HTML, text, and other formats.

You can get the paragraph styles to use in the RTF document @Styles.RTF. That document also serves as an example of how to use the paragraph styles. One way to copy the styles into your current document in Word 97 is to use the organizer -- choose Style... from the Format menu, and then click the Organizer button. Click the Close button on the right, then Open, then find the Styles.RTF document that you downloaded. Select all of the styles in that document and copy them into the file you are editing.

Use the styles as follows:

Body -- for most normal text

Heading 1, Heading 2, ... --> these levels of headings will appear in the table of contents, and documents will normally be split into pieces at any Heading 1 or Heading 2 paragraph. Typically, the main section titles will be Heading 2 (preface, book or chapter titles, etc.)

h1, h2, h3 --> these look like Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc., but they don't appear in the table of contents and the document is not split. They are used in places like the title page, where large fonts are desirable but the text should not appear in the table of contents.

verse1, verse2, verse3 -- for poetry, hymns, etc.

Centered -- for paragraphs that should be centered

hr -- a paragraph of the hr style will cause a horizontal rule in the html document

BlockQuote -- for block quotes.

Entering Greek and Hebrew

If the book you are working on contains Greek or Hebrew text, please download and install the freeware font Sil Galatia or Sil Ezra. These high-quality fonts from the Summer Institute of Linguistics are available from the SIL website for @Greek or @Hebrew.

You will probably want to print out the document showing the key sequence for each character, to use as a quick reference while you are typing Greek or Hebrew text.

Hebrew text goes from right to left, but most word processors don't support that and the text will have to be entered from left to right. Thus, those of you who are familiar with Hebrew will realize that you are typing it backwards.

This document (last modified July 01, 1998) from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library server, at @Wheaton College