Preparing for lists
Before you create a list, you must create and apply style sheets in your document. Begin by creating style sheets to be used in a table of contents, such as “Chapter Name,” “Section Name,” and “Body Text.” Then create another paragraph style sheet for the formatted table of contents.
Including style sheets in a list
The first step in creating a list is to decide what style sheets you want to include in the list. To create a table of contents, you might include chapter and section style sheets in your list, since a table of contents generally lists chapter titles and their respective page numbers. You can include paragraph and character style sheets in lists.
Specifying levels in a list
You will also need to decide how the different levels in the paragraph style sheets will be defined before generating a list. You might want chapter headings to be at the first level and subjects within a chapter to be at the second level. For example, if you are writing a manual about an application, and a chapter in the manual is titled “File Menu,” you might want the chapter heading “File Menu” to be the first level on your list. The “New,” “Open,” “Close,” and “Save” items (subheadings in the “File Menu” chapter) could be at the second level. Making decisions such as these beforehand will simplify the process of generating a list.