You can't prepare documents for professional printing using Word, can you?

Many of my technical authoring colleagues will be throwing their hands up in horror at the mere thought, but the honest answer is “Yes, you can... if you know what you are doing!”

Why use Word?

If someone asks me to create Word templates for documents that are going to be professionally printed, I always ask why Word has been chosen.
Although Word can be used, there are a lot of other options out there that are better in many cases. The only sound reason (in my opinion) for using Word instead of a dedicated layout programme (Adobe's InDesign, Quark, Serif's PagePlus or even another Microsoft programme, Publisher) is because you're going to be frequently updating the content.

A lot of PCs come with a version of Word pre-installed and many people are familiar with it...but very few of them are experts. Your beautifully formatted document will go horribly wrong if you don't follow a few simple principles.

So how do you get started?

You need to plan your document carefully and create a template that contains all the styles you want – and then you need to use them!

If you're asking “What are styles?”, you need to read some of the built-in help that the people at Microsoft have provided.