Format Talks to Look Like Scriptures

Many of my friends on missions often write home asking for a talk to be printed, because they need something other than their scriptures to read during personal study every morning. So, I decided I would bring along some of my favorite talks!

When I print out talks, I like to format them similar to the scriptures– it makes for easy study, and keeps them compact, so I don’t have 5 or 6 pages floating around.  I’ll show you how I do it!

1. Go to lds.org to find your talk – I chose Safety for the Soul by Elder Jeffery R. Holland.

2. Select the print option on the right hand side.

3.  Copy and paste the ‘meat’ of the talk into a new document.

  

   4. There will be hyperlinks throughout the talk that are underlined and colored in blue. I highlight the whole talk and reselect the black font color, and get rid of the underlining. The hyperlinks stay in place, but it looks clean for printing purposes.

55. Change the orientation to landscape, and adjust the margins to be as small as possible (This will depend on your printer’s margin allowances.) – I chose .5”.

  6. Format into three columns. To add the line of separation, go to the “Columns” drop down menu, and select “Columns…” then check the box that says “Line between.”

  7. Under the Line Spacing drop down menu select, “Line Spacing Options”, then check the box that says, “Don’t add spacing between paragraphs of same style.”

  8. Number the paragraphs for easy reference – I chose not to number scripture references, but italicized them instead.

9. Add the title and bold it for easy location.

  10.  Go back to the print version of the talk and copy and paste the footnotes to the bottom of the talk. You may or may not want to include these – I like to because there are many scripture references that I like to be able to study along with the talk. 

  *Microsoft word may number the footnotes in addition to the numbering already present. If so, click the “Numbered List” drop down menu, and select “None” under “Numbering Library.”

  11.  I like to keep my talks to 2 pages, so I can print them double sided. At this point, if the talk flows on to other pages, I usually tweak the font to make it all fit. This talk is formatted at a 10.5 point font.

12. Now it’s ready to print and study!

Click here to get this talk.

Which talks will you choose to bring along with you?