Brief Formatting: Tips & Help

Feel free to reach out for help!

Spacing/Alignment Issues

Styles

Word Count and Page Numbers

If you need individual assistance with technical formatting issues, drop by my office (178, NE side of library's first floor). I will hold office hours:

Feb. 21: 11:00-1:00

Feb. 22: 11:00-12:00 

Feb. 23: 8:30-9:30; 11:00-12:00

Feb. 26: 11:00-2:30

Feb. 27: 11:00-12:00

Feb. 28: 11:00-12:00

Feb. 29: 11:00-12:00; 3:00-4:00

March 1: 1:00-4:00

You can also email me to set a meeting time in person or remotely. Note that I will not be working or answering email on Saturday or Sunday, March 2 and 3. Plan to ask any formatting questions by March 1 at 4 p.m.

Adjusting Line Spacing on Cover Sheet

If you need to change some lines on the cover sheet so that there is no space between them (e.g., In the & court name, Party name and appellant, etc.), you want to make sure those lines are single spaced and there are not additional spaces before or after the line.

Example.

You want to change this:

so it looks like this:

Try this first: Soft Return (Manual Line Break)
Rather than using a hard return (Enter) at the end of the line, instead use a soft return. Position your cursor where you want the break and press Shift+Enter to insert the soft return.

If the soft return does not work, adjust your line spacing

PC Instructions for second option:

Select the lines you want to adjust. On the Home tab, in the paragraph section of the toolbar, click the slanted arrow. This will open the pop-up menu. On that menu, make sure Spacing before and after are both set to 0 and that line spacing is set to single. Click OK. The lines should now not have space between them, as shown below.

MAC Instructions for second option:

Select the lines you want to adjust. On the Home tab, click the line and paragraph spacing icon. This will open the pop-up menu. On that menu, make sure Spacing before and after are both set to 0 and that line spacing is set to single. Click OK. The lines should now not have space between them, as shown below.

Fixing TOC Errors

Table of Contents errors like spelling mistakes, outline level mistakes, or missing italics all need to be fixed in the brief itself first. Then you can update your table of contents to correct it. If you edit in the table itself, those edits will be overwritten if you later use Word's update table feature (and manually editing the TOC will not fix the errors in the brief itself). 

Adding a Soft Return (Manual Line Break)
If some TOC entries have short, final lines that are missing the dot leader (dotted line to the page number), it is probably easiest to adjust this by adding a manual line break to put more words on the final line of the heading. You can also try this if the line break is falling in a weird place. This will be over-written if you later use the automated function to update the TOC, so do not do this until the very end.

To insert a soft return, position your cursor where you want the break and press Shift+Enter. 

You can also adjust this by moving your tabs on the Ruler.

Go to your Table of Contents page.

If you do not see the ruler, click on the View tab and make sure the checkbox by Ruler is marked.

• Select just the last line of the TOC entry, and then drag the first tab stop to the left, so it is in line with the indentation tool on the ruler

This shows the location where you want to move that first tab stop. Note that the dot leader now appears. However, the second line is nothing but a tab leader, which is why it might have looked better to add a manual line break before the word "with" or "only." This would put enough text on the second line that the tab leader appeared while not making the first line so short that it looked odd.

Fixing TOA Errors

Fix errors in the TOA in the coding in the brief (the part after \l is what appears in the Table of Authorities and the number after \c determines the category), and then update your table of authorities to correct it. (See instructions.) If you edit in the table itself, those edits will be overwritten if you use Word's update table feature. 

Adding a Soft Return (Manual Line Break)
If the line break is falling in a weird place, you may want to manually add a soft return at the very end of your work. (Again: Do not do this until everything else is done, as manual edits are over-written if you later use the automated function to update the table.)

To insert a soft return, position your cursor where you want the break and press Shift+Enter. 

Use the ruler to indent all lines of the signature block. Make sure there is no indent for the main text on this page.

From the View tab, make sure the box next to Ruler is checked. Then use the indentation tool on the ruler.

For the main text, this tool should line up on the far left side, as shown below. You can use tabs or adjust the indentation tool to block indent the addresses.

For the signature block, it should be around the 3.5 inch mark.

First highlight the lines where you want to adjust the alignment. Then click the rectangle at the bottom of the tool and drag it along the ruler to the place where you want to set your indent, as shown below.

Only apply the Heading 2, Heading 3 and Heading 4 styles within the Argument section. Anything tagged with those styles will appear in your Table of Contents when you update it. In addition, using those styles outside of the Argument section can throw off the numbering in your Argument.

To add formatting, including Roman numerals, to the issues listed in your Statement of Issues, set the formatting yourself. Do not rely on one of the pre-defined styles.

You can put caps lock on while you are typing the issue or also fix the capitalization at the end. These screenshots show the process of adding all formatting after typing the question without formatting.

Select your issues. Then, on the home tab, use the Change Case tool to put the text in all UPPERCASE.

Also on the home tab, open the numbering menu and select Roman Numeral numbering.

If you need to adjust the indent, use the ruler. If you do not see the ruler, click on the View tab and make sure the checkbox by Ruler is marked.

Click on the box at the bottom of the bottom guide and drag it to move both the top and the bottom guide simultaneously until your right indent is as you want it. 

The template has built-in styles for point headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings. If your argument has additional levels of point headings, you will need to create a new style. 

The instructions below are to create a sub-sub-subheading. If you have even more levels to your argument, the steps would be the same, but you would use Heading 6 instead of Heading 5.

Instructions for those using a screen reader:

1. On the Home tab, find the Styles box.
2. On a PC, click the diagonal arrow in the very bottom of the box to open the Styles pop-up. On a Mac, click the Styles Pane.
3. Click the down arrow in line with Heading 5 to open the Modify Style box.
4. Click Modify.
5. Review the style to make sure everything is as you want it. In particular, make sure the font type, size, and color are Times New Roman, 12, and black.
6. When everything is as you want it, click OK.
7. Click again on the down arrow in line with Heading 5.
8. In the pop-up, click Add to Style Gallery.
9. You will now see a Heading 5 in the Style Gallery. Click the X in the upper right of the Styles pop-up box to close it.
10. You can now apply this style as you did the others. Select the text where you want the style to be applied.
11. Then click on Heading 5 to apply the Style to the selected text.

• Make sure hidden characters are turned off (Paragraph symbol on Home tab)
• Click the Review tab.
• Highlight from Statement of the Case to the signature block in the Conclusion.
• Click the Word Count option.

If you accidentally deleted the breaks at the end of each brief section, you may notice mistakes in your page numbers.

At the bottom of the cover page and the Table of Authorities, it is not enough to have a page break. You need a section break, so you can change the number.

How to insert a section break:

Position your cursor where you want the break.

Go to the Layout tab, click Breaks to open that menu, and then choose Next Page under Section Breaks.

Then, you have to fix the page numbering.

If your cover page is wrong, first go to the next page to look at it's footer. In other words, click somewhere on the Summary of the Case page.

From the insert tab, click on Footer, and then Edit Footer (Alternatively, you can double click in the footer to open it for editing.)

The footer will open for editing. If the footer itself shows Same as Previous, you need to unlink this section's footer (again, starting at Summary of the Case) from the footer of the prior section, the cover page. In the Header & Footer tab, you will see Link to Previous selected. Click it again, so it is no longer selected. Now when you adjust the footer for the cover page, you will not change the roman numeral pagination. Click Closer Header and Footer.

Now click somewhere on the cover page and bring up the edit footer option, as described above. Delete the page number and then click Close Header and Footer.

Arabic numerals should start with the Statement of Jurisdiction. If your Statement of Jurisdiction also shows roman numerals, follow the basic process above to

1. Insert a section break at the end of the Table of Authorities
2. Go to the Statement of Jurisdiction page, open the footer to edit, and unclick the "link to previous" option in the menu. Close Header and Footer

Then, if the Arabic pagination is missing, reinsert it.

Click on the Statement of Jurisdiction page.

From the Insert tab, click on Page Number, then bottom of the page, and Plain Number 2 (which puts an Arabic number in the middle of the bottom of the page). The footer will open, showing the page number. Click Close Header and Footer.

Changing Arabic numbers to Roman

If you find your page numbering is correctly starting over at 1 for each numbered section, but the preliminary sections are now showing as Arabic numbers, too, you will want to edit the section that begins with the Summary of the Case. Double click on the page number at the bottom of the Summary of the Case page. This will open the footer for editing.

From the Header & Footer menu, click Page Number, and from the menu that appears, select Format Page numbers.

On a PC, this looks like this:

On a Mac, this looks like this:

Clicking Format Page Numbers will open a menu where you can indicate you want Roman numerals.

Choose these options (PC image)

Choose these options (Mac image)