Monthly Archives: August 2001

Manual or Automatic?

When working electronically, editors often have to decide whether to make certain corrections manually or automatically, using such features as Find and Replace. Some corrections *have* to be made manually, but, in my opinion, editors often make more manual corrections than they should. For example, many editors change restrictive “which” to “that” by hand, making […]

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Making Passes

No, no, not that kind of passes. I’m talking about making separate passes through a document to catch different kinds of errors. If you can catch them all in one pass, your mind is much more efficient than mine. I work much better and catch more errors by going through a manuscript several times, fixing […]

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Editing from the Top Down

When I’m editing on the computer (which is most of the time), I’m most effective when I edit from the “top down.” What that means is that I don’t start changing commas and semicolons until I’ve done some other, more comprehensive tasks: 1. If each chapter of a book is a separate document, I pull […]

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Hidden Features in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word comes with lots of features, many of which do not appear on menus or toolbars unless you put them there. Some of these features aren’t even documented. Nevertheless, some of them are very useful for editing, writing, typesetting, and other publishing tasks. From time to time I’ll write about these features in Editorium […]

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Creating Menus

Last week I explained how to create your own toolbars in Microsoft Word. You can create your own menus, too, as a place to activate macros or Word commands. Here’s how: In Word 97 or later: 1. Click the “Tools” menu. 2. Click “Customize.” 3. Click the “Commands” tab. 4. In the “Categories” box (on […]

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