Information is often much easier for readers to consume when it's in a table--no, not restaurant tables--tabular rows and columns. For example, check out how much easier this list of products and prices is to follow when it's in a simple table. First the list:

Rhododendron: $15/foot; Vine Maple: $5/foot; Japanese Maple: $10/foot; Dogwood (white): $12/foot; Dogwood (pink): $15/foot; Sub-Alpine Fir: $18/foot; Deodara Cedar: $20/foot.

And now the same information in a simple table: 

Last Friday I posted a parody of Tom Clancy as a Publisher Help writer and asked you, my readers, to respond in the comments with suggestions for other famous writers who might be good targets for further such parodies. To further encourage you to respond here is Raymond Chandler's Help article on the Publisher 2007 catalog merge feature.

Over a year ago, my manager, Louis, wondered aloud what Help would look like if it were written by famous authors. The concept tickled my fancy and I wrote a couple of parodies of famous authors writing Publisher Help content. I love this idea, so I'm going to publish these parodies and ask you all to make suggestions in the comments of other authors who might make good Help writers, or even better to write your own parodies in the comments. So here we go.....

To create a TOC in Word 2010 you simply go to the References tab and click Table of Contents. (Be sure to check out Joannie's roundup of Word TOC content on the Word blog.)

Inserting a TOC into a Publisher publication is not quite that simple, but it's really not too difficult. Adding a TOC for a newsletter or a catalog makes it much easier for your readers to find the information that they're most interested in, and so increases their interest in what you're publishing.

Start with a text box and set up right-aligned tabs with leaders. Leaders are the dots, dashes, or lines that follow the chapter or section titles in a table of contents and that line up those titles with page numbers. You can then type your table of contents entry, press the TAB key to create the leader, and then type the page number for that entry.

One of the ways that Publisher can help small business owners is with creating and printing personalized business cards. As always, start with our large collection of free business card templates. Use the business information set feature in Publisher 2007 and 2010 to automagically populate your business card with your company name, address, contact information, logo, etc.

So here's a collection of help resources to make sure you get your business cards created and printed just the way you want.

Valentine's Day is today! If you're reading this, perhaps you forgot to get your sweetie a card. Publisher can help you. We've got 12 built-in Valentine's Day card templates that install with Publisher and another five online templates that you can use to quickly produce a card in time to give to your sweetheart by the end of the day!  Be sure to check out the Valentine images available on Office.com to help you create a unique card.

Crop marks, also known as trim marks, are lines printed in the corners of your publication's sheet or sheets of paper to show the printer where to trim the paper. They are used by commercial printers for creating bleeds where an image or color on the page needs to extend all the way to the edge of the paper. Printers generally can't actually print to the very edge of the paper, so instead they print on a larger sheet of paper and then trim it down to the correct size. Crop marks are used to define where to trim. So, to print crop marks, you must print on a paper size that is larger than the page size you have set for your publication.

Last month I posted a piece by Jeff Bell, the former Group Program Manager for Publisher and Text Services, talking about the reasons for taking out the new Web page creation functionality in Publisher 2010. You can find this article here: Where is web site authoring in Publisher 2010? But hyperlinks are still available and can be used for your e-mail publications.

Counting the words in your publication is a little problematic--you have to use Publisher's Edit Story in Microsoft Word function to get a count of the words in your stories...well, you can also just count them by hand..."One word, Two words, Three words...hahaha..I love it!"

In Publisher 2003 and 2007, you select the story and, on the Edit menu, select Edit Story in Microsoft Word. In Publisher 2010, you have to first customize the ribbon or your Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) to show the Edit Story in Microsoft Word button. 

The job market is tough right now. There are lots of people out there looking for work, so if you're one of them, it's crucial that you get your resume noticed. One way to do this is by making use of graphics instead of just text. While Publisher is your best Office app for building graphics-heavy resumes, our Publisher resume templates tend to use graphics for decoration. What if you want to really stand out by using the graphics AS your resume? What am I talking about? Well, here are a couple of examples from Randy Krum's excellent blog Cool Infographics: