Monthly Archives: May 2000

As I’ve trained editors working in Microsoft Word, I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon: Left to their own devices, some editors will scroll for pages using only the UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW keys (the cursor keys). That’s like using a toothbrush to paint your house. This is going to sound pretty basic, but there’s a […]

When I edit a document in Microsoft Word, I do everything I can from the keyboard. I avoid using the mouse because reaching over to get it interrupts the flow of work and slows me down. Sometimes, though, for a change of pace, I like to see how much editing I can do without even […]

Microsoft Word comes with a collection of secret macros. Well, okay, they’re not really secret, but they’re often overlooked. And they can be pretty useful if you know they exist and understand how to use them. Editors may be particularly interested in the following: FindSymbol: A macro that allows you to find and replace symbols […]

One of the advantages of editing on paper is that you can lay out the various pages, one here, one there, for reference and comparison with each other. For example, you may need to refer to a certain paragraph on page 10 while editing a paragraph on page 300. On the computer, this is a […]

After reading our last newsletter, which offered an automatic way to insert dashes as you type, Sam Mills wrote: “Excuse me, but why can’t you just type shift-option-hyphen to get an em dash as you type? and option-hyphen for the en dash?” The answer, of course, is that you can (if you’re using a Macintosh). […]