If you're like me, you've often made an editorial correction in Microsoft Word and then, five pages later, changed your mind. But where was that correction? Word includes a feature that will take you back to your last change, then the change before that, and so on, cycling through the last four changes in your document.

The name of the feature is Go Back, although it's sometimes referred to as Previous Edit. Whatever Microsoft wants to call it, it's a handy feature to have. The problem is, it's a hard feature to find. You won't see it on a menu or a toolbar. Nevertheless, it's there, and you can use it by pressing SHIFT + F5.

When you press SHIFT + F5, you'll go back to your last change. What's less obvious is that if you made the change in a different document that's still open, Word will switch to that document and take you to the last change there. Neat! Not only that, but if you open a document you've worked on before, SHIFT + F5 will take you to the last change you made in *that* document. Amazing! Now you can find the place you left off editing in a document you've saved and closed. (If you're using our Editor's ToolKit program, you'll use the Go Back feature by pressing SHIFT + F10 rather than SHIFT + F5. You'll also find it on the Editor's ToolKit 1 toolbar and on the Edit menu, right under Go To.)

Go Back isn't a big, flashy feature. It's just one of those basic, practical tools that you'll use all the time--now that you know where it is.

It's hard to beat Microsoft Word if you're editing a document with footnotes or endnotes. If you add or delete a note, the other notes renumber automatically (assuming the notes haven't been typed as body text and numbered manually), and the program provides a notes "pane" that allows you to edit all of your notes at once. (With WordPerfect, you have to view and edit one note at a time. Yechhh.) To use the notes pane most effectively, follow this procedure:

1. Make sure you're using Normal view rather than Page Layout view (click the View menu and then "Normal").

2. Open the notes pane (click the View menu and then "Footnotes").

3. Use your mouse to grab the top of the notes pane and move it almost to the top of your document window, giving you plenty of room to work. (If you move it too far, the notes pane will close.)

Now you can see and edit all of your notes at once. (To close the notes pane, click the "Close" button at the top of the pane.)

Here are some other tips for working with notes:

* Use Word's Go To feature (CTRL + G) to go to a specific note. This will work in document text and in the notes pane.

* Let Microsoft Word do the numbering for you. Some writers and editors do such weird things as use Word's automatic note reference numbers but manually type notes and note numbers at the bottom of the document rather than use the notes pane. I've also seen cases where an author, wanting to use a number followed by a period for note numbers, deleted and retyped each note number (with a period) in the notes pane, or inserted a period after the automatic note number. This is madness. Let Word do the job it was designed to do.

* Don't put headings into the notes pane. Some authors type things like "Notes to Chapter 3" at the top of the pane. It may look okay when you print it out, but it's actually a note without a note number, and it may cause file corruption and other problems. If you need to use such headings, put them at the bottom of your document text.

* You can convert endnotes to footnotes or vice versa by clicking the Insert menu and then clicking "Footnote," "Options," and "Convert."

* If you're working with revision marking, or tracking, turned on, you can delete a note reference number from the document text, but the note itself will still show up in the notes pane, and your other note reference numbers won't renumber correctly. This appears to be a bug in Microsoft Word. The only remedy I've found is to accept revisions by clicking the Tools menu, then "Revisions," and then "Accept All." (You can also accept a single revision by clicking "Review" rather than "Accept All.")

* If you're editing a document with manually typed notes rather than automatically numbered notes, you can turn them into automatically numbered notes with our NoteStripper program, which you can download at http://www.editorium.com/15078.htm. Then you won't have to renumber the notes by hand when you're finished editing.

* If you need to turn automatically numbered notes into regular numbered text (perhaps for use in QuarkXPress or PageMaker), our NoteStripper program will do that as well. It also includes other tools to make working with notes a snap.

Just another pretty face? Nothing wrong with that. If you're editing in Microsoft Word, why not use a typeface that you're comfortable reading and that makes editing easy? (Unless, of course, you're editing documents that have already been carefully formatted for typesetting.) You can always apply the final typeface and formatting after your editing is finished (probably just by attaching a different template to the document).

Some typefaces lend themselves better to editing than others. Here are some things to look for in a typeface to use while you're editing:

1. Legibility. Are the characters clear and easy to read?

2. Universality. Is the typeface readily available at no cost or low cost, and on other computers as well as your own?

3. Are special characters easy to distinguish? These include the hyphen, the en dash, the em dash, and opening and closing quotation marks.

I first thought that Courier might be a good font to use in editing. It's nice and clear and can be found almost anywhere. Its hyphen and dashes, though, are practically indistinguishable, making it unsuitable for editorial work.

After considerable testing and exploration, I've found three typefaces that seem to me to work especially well for editing:

1. Times Roman (yep, that old chestnut), some variation of which you almost certainly have on your computer already.

2. Verdana.

3. Georgia.

Times Roman is actually a bit small and condensed (designed to fit lots of type into a newspaper column), but you probably won't find a face with more easily distinguishable quotation marks and dashes. The em dash is nice and long, the hyphen is tiny, and the en dash falls comfortably in between. You just have to make sure that you get the point size big enough so you can read it comfortably.

Verdana is a Microsoft typeface that was designed for viewing on-screen, so it looks especially clean and legible on a computer monitor. Its quotation marks aren't as clearly distinguishable as those in Times Roman, but they're not bad, either. Verdana's main drawback is that it's a sans serif font, so the eye doesn't glide from letter to letter. If you're using Verdana for editing, however, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as you may have a tendency to slow down a little as you read.

Georgia is another Microsoft typeface that was designed for viewing on-screen, so, like Verdana, it looks great on a computer monitor. Unlike Verdana, it has serifs, making it a little smoother to read.

You can download both Verdana and Georgia free of charge from Microsoft at the following address (which may break in your email and need to be put back together):

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm?fname=%20&fsize=

Using one of these fonts, you may want to create a template that you attach to documents you're going to edit. If you don't want to create such a template yourself, please feel free to use the Typespec template that comes with our Editor's ToolKit program. You can download it at this address:

http://www.editorium.com/14842.htm

Whether you use the program or not, you can still use the template, which was created using the Verdana typeface (my current favorite) and has lots of styles for editorial markup. If you want to use a different typeface with the template, just open the template in Microsoft Word and change the Normal style to the font of your choice. Another approach is to use Times Roman, Verdana, or Georgia in the template you are currently using. You can always change back to the original font when you're ready for final formatting.

You may not have given much thought to selecting a typeface for use in editing, just using whatever your client has used by default. You'll probably find your work easier and more enjoyable if you use a typeface that you like and find easy to read. Why not give it a try?

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The Editorium is not affiliated with Microsoft Corporation.