Interlinear glossing

A special typographical challenge that linguists face is the formatting of our beloved example sentences with interlinear glossing. The problem is to make the words in the original example line up with the gloss, whether the example word or the gloss word is longer. I will present three solutions to this problem, from worst to best. (See Numbering for how to insert example numbers.)

1. Use a fixed-width font

This solution is the most familiar to many linguists, since it was available on a typewriter, and was still the only practical solution with many early word processers. It involves typing spaces to line up the words. This only works with a fixed-width font; otherwise, the words won't line up properly.

(1) Ini  sebuah contoh
    this a      example
    'This is an example'

The downside of this approach is that fixed-width fonts are unaesthetic and unsuitable for camera-ready copy (see Basic typographical principles ). It also involves a certain amount of fiddling with spaces to make the words line up properly, and more fiddling every time you edit the example.

2. Use tabs

This solution involves the following steps:

1. separate the words on both lines with tabs
2. select both lines (so the tab settings will apply to both)
3. add tab stops on the ruler and adjust them to line the words up properly

In the example below, the option to show tabs and paragraph marks has been selected in Tools | Options | View. The L-shaped marks on the ruler correspond to tab stops, and they can be dragged to the desired location.

Unlike the previous method, a proportional font can be used; but again, manipulating the tabs is fiddly.

3. Use a table

Recent versions of Word have a table feature called “Autofit” which automatically fits table columns to the size of their contents. This means that the process of adjusting the width of the columns to the widest text is entirely automated.

In Word 2000 (as opposed to earlier versions) this approach has an additional advantage: the table can be set to automatically readjust column width as the column is edited, so changes can be made to the example without requiring manual realignment. This simple feature can save so much time in the long run that I've switched from the “tabs” method to the “table” method with this version of Word.

Other advantages:

• since the contents of a table cell is also a paragraph, paragraph styles can be used to format individual elements in the example, or to format the example number differently from the text. The other methods above require the use of character styles for this, which aren't as flexible.
  
• adding additional rows (for extra gloss lines or to indicate constituency, for instance) is more straightforward than with other methods.
  
• breaking a long example into multiple lines is easier, since you can easily select a rectangular group of cells and move them.

I know of two disadvantages:

• if for some reason you want the example to revert to plain (table-free) text, you might need to use “Convert Table to Text”. However, in fact the clipboard will accomplish this for you if you're pasting into an ASCII application like Notepad.
  
• Tables that are adjacent in the text will merge with each other, which will mess up the “autofit”. Make sure to keep a blank line between your examples. (If two examples accidentally merge you can fix the problem by putting the cursor in the first row of the second example and choosing Table | Split Table.)

While the process of setting up a table example is a bit more complex than the previous methods, this is the only procedure that can be recorded in a simple keyboard macro, since it doesn't involve manual adustment of widths. The steps are as follows:

1. Type the example and the gloss, separating the words with spaces, and using an extra space for any item that doesn't correspond to a word in the other line (for instance the example number).
   
2. Select both lines of the example.
   
3. Choose Table | Convert | Text to Table. In the dialog, choose AutoFit to contents; under “Separate text at”, choose “Other:”, and type a space in the box after “Other:”. (If you prefer you can type tabs to separate the words in the example, and choose “Tabs” here.) Click “OK”.
   
4. You don't want grid lines around your example. Choose Table | Table Properties | Table, click Borders and Shading, and choose None (or use the corresponding controls in the “Tables and Borders” toolbar if you have that visible).
   
5. Choose Table | Table Properties | Table and click Options. Here you can adjust the spacing between the words. Make sure “Automatically resize to fit contents” is checked. (Space between the lines can also be controlled here, but it's probably more efficient to use paragraph styles instead so you can easily make global changes to your example formatting.)
   
6. If you want to insert a column for the example number (or other marginalia such as asterisks, arrows, or speaker labels), select the leftmost column, and choose Table | Insert | Columns to the left. Type the example number in the appropriate cell. This column should be a fixed width (so that all your examples line up on the left margin, regardless of the width of the number); if you can resize it by hand using the ruler (or by using Table | Table Properties | Column | Preferred Width) it will become a fixed-width column.

I've written a macro called TableExample that automates this process. It further lets you format a multiline example or several adjacent examples at once, it will add example numbers and bookmark them (as described in Numbering and Cross-referencing), and it offers several formatting options. (This macro displays the dialog at left.) You can download this macro and several others in the Lingword template.