Better Word

A Word format with a real title block.

What the better-word format gives a Word document, how to use it, and what a custom OpenXML template can and cannot do.
Author

Mickaël CANOUIL, Ph.D.

Quarto’s Word output loses the front matter that matters in a manuscript: authors on one line with superscript affiliation numbers, a numbered affiliations list, a correspondence line, and a logo above the title. A reference-doc cannot bring them back, because it controls styles rather than structure.

better-word supplies a custom OpenXML template instead, so the document itself is built the way a manuscript expects.

See one rendered by this site.

Starting a document

quarto use template mcanouil/quarto-better-word@0.1.1

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Adding it to a document you already have

quarto add mcanouil/quarto-better-word@0.1.1

This will install the extension under the _extensions subdirectory. If you are using version control, you will want to check in this directory.

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Quick start

format:
  better-word-docx: default
author:
  - name:
      given: Ada
      family: Lovelace
    orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
    email: ada@example.org
    corresponding: true
    affiliations:
      - ref: inst
affiliations:
  - id: inst
    name: Example Institute
    city: London
    country: United Kingdom

The author model is Quarto’s own author and affiliation schema, so nothing special has to be learned for it.

See the Reference for every option, and the Examples for the front matter behind the rendered document.

Where it works

Word, through Pandoc’s OpenXML template support, which needs Pandoc 3.2.1 or later.

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