Using the Text Files

Advantages of the Text Files

There are two main advantages of the “cleaned” text files:

1. Reading the articles from the text files is considerably faster and much more enjoyable.

2. The articles can be easily saved for future reference (archived), knowing that I can quickly and easily find them again when needed (see Refinding Information) and the non-proprietary text format will always be readable far into the future (see Purpose).

Display Conventions

In order to effortlessly comprehend, at a glance, the heirarchy of text in an article, I have adopted the following character- and paragraph-style conventions:

Titles are sans serif (Arial) bold, larger point size.

Subtitles are Arial italic.

Body text is serif (Times) 12-point.

[Picture captions] are enclosed in brackets, Arial, smaller size, gray color.

{Sidebars} or related links are enclosed in braces, Arial, smaller size, brown color.

The styles are only faithfully reproduced on a Mac using Tofu or MacGizmo (or using Mariner Write, which has long been my preferred word processor). However, knowing that captions are in brackets and sidebars are in braces will make the categories of the text blocks clear, even if the character styles are not preserved when viewed on your computer.

Check Text Viewing Options for ideas of how to use the text files efficiently (Tofu shown at left).