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Textboxes & Sidebars

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Textboxes and sidebars, and other secondary content, should be moved to an appropriate place within the main narrative flow.

A text box may contain formatting (italics, bold, lists, headings, etc.).

Textboxes and sidebars will be marked with the <aside> tag in EPUB3.

Insert any secondary content, such as sidebar content or text boxes, using a text box feature within Word under Insert in the top Menu.

[include image of top menu and video of steps]

To Insert a Text Box:

  • Highlight the text you want in the text box
  • Go to Insert in the top menu bar
  • Select Text Box
  • In the drop menu, select the option Text Box

Next you have to make sure it is properly anchored and aligned:

  • Select the Text Box
  • Right click to open the options menu
  • Select Wrap Text
  • In the drop menu select the option for Inline with Text
Text boxes can only be the size of the page.

If the text box is longer than a single page format content without a text box and the appropriate header.

Sometimes Text Boxes are too big because of the size of images. If you have an image in your text box, resize it until it fits on the page. Only do this if the image can still be a reasonable size (i.e. you can make it out without eyestrain.) If you can not resize the image properly to fix the Text Box size then format as a regular section.

If in doubt, ask in the Q&A Section here.

Reformatting for DAISY Requests

We still receive patron requests for DAISY books. If it is a DAISY request you will reformat all text boxes and sidebars as follows.

Textboxes and sidebars will be marked with the <sidebar> tag in DAISY XML.

If the Request is for DAISY there will be a note within the ticket of the title.

Textboxes

Retain the text that is inside the textbox. This text should be placed at an appropriate location in the reading order. The textbox should not be inserted as a picture. The words “Textbox Starts" and "Textbox Ends" should be inserted at the start and end of the textbox contents. If a textbox contains a heading, it may be marked up as a heading if appropriate; otherwise leave it as normal paragraph text.

Retain the content that is inside the sidebar. The sidebar text should be placed at an appropriate location in the reading order. The words “Sidebar Starts" and "Sidebar Ends" should be inserted at the start and end of the sidebar contents. If a sidebar contains a heading, it may be marked up as a heading if appropriate; otherwise leave it as normal paragraph text.

Q & A

Q: When creating sidebars, I did not want to wrap the text in a way that would make the text lose its corresponding associated text, so I selected "In line with text" - all other options seemed to stay in one place no matter what happened with the rest of the text. Was this the correct thing to do? - Jenn

A: When incorporating sidebar content into the main body of the text, we take the contents (sometimes helps to clear formatting) and apply the normal body text style to it. We offset the contents with the text SIDEBAR STARTS and SIDEBAR ENDS. The sidebar content can also consist of a heading(s) if it makes sense to apply that hierarchy. Try to place the content somewhere within the main body so that there's a logical reading order.

Q: Generation X was initially designed in a way to use margins for definitions throughout the book as well as images, etc. I put the definitions in footnotes instead, for now - so they can still correspond with the correct sections of text. Is there a better method? (I kept the images in the main body of the text though - for the images that were just words, I typed the words in the main body).

A: Yes, in this case, it is appropriate to put the content that is in the margins into a note.

public/nnels/etext/textboxes_and_sidebars.1591634099.txt.gz · Last modified: 2020/06/08 09:34 by rachel.osolen