Templating your project, whether you’re a doctoral student writing your dissertation or a content writer working on a multi-assignment project, can save you plenty of time as you write and revise. If you perused my Google Drive, you’d find templates for nearly every project I’ve ever worked on.
When you build a template, you can establish document-wide formatting before you write. Then, when you dive into the document to get started, you won’t be distracted by constantly changing the font or finding the right heading level or correcting the page numbers. With formatting already established, you'll be able to focus on your writing without the distraction of wonky formatting.
Whether you write in Word, Google Drive, or another program, you can easily establish formatting styles to suit your needs. In fact, both Word and Google Drive offer already established formatting styles for headings, which you can tweak based on your school, publisher, or client needs. So, take advantage of those tools already in place, and consider defining the following formatting in a template that you can copy and recreate for project after project:
Heading levels (refer to your style guide as you build your template)
Font size and type
Frontmatter like the table of contents and list of figures/tables
Page numbering
Building a template isn’t incredibly time consuming and, best of all, you only have to do it once. With the template building behind you, you’ll be able to focus on your writing in a more efficient and effective way.