Before Word 2002, it was possible to set revision-tracking colors and formatting separately for inserted and deleted text. The procedure was simple:

1. Click Tools / Track Changes / Highlight Changes / Options.

2. Select "Mark" (bold, italic, underline, or double underline) for "Inserted text."

3. Select "Color" (various) for "Inserted text."

4. Select "Mark" (bold, italic, underline, or double underline) for "Deleted text."

5. Select "Color" (various) for "Deleted text."

6. Click the "OK" button.

In Word 2002, however, this feature works only for "Inserted Text." "Deleted text" automatically follows suit, and there seems to be no way to set the two independently. To make matters worse, Strikethrough is no longer among the listed marking options. How annoying! Fortunately, there's a hidden way to overcome these limitations. I've exploited it in the following macro, which you can easily modify to meet your own needs:

Sub SetTrackingFormat()
With Options
.InsertedTextMark = wdInsertedTextMarkUnderline
.InsertedTextColor = wdBlue
.DeletedTextMark = wdDeletedTextMarkStrikeThrough
.DeletedTextColor = wdRed
End With
End Sub

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can learn how here.

The macro is currently set to mark insertions as blue text with underline, and to mark deletions as red text with strikethrough. To change this, replace the "Underline" on the end of "wdInsertedTextMarkUnderline" or the "StrikeThrough" on the end of "wdDeletedTextMarkStrikeThrough" with any of the following:

Bold

ColorOnly

DoubleUnderline

Italic

None

StrikeThrough

Underline

Then replace "wdBlue" or "wdRed" with any of the following:

wdBlack

wdBlue

wdBrightGreen

wdByAuthor

wdDarkBlue

wdDarkRed

wdDarkYellow

wdGray25

wdGray50

wdGreen

wdNoHighlight

wdPink

wdRed

wdTeal

wdTurquoise

wdViolet

wdWhite

wdYellow

Then run the macro (Tools / Macro / Macros). Hah, hah! Once again Microsoft Word must bend to your will!

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READERS WRITE

Readers have sent so many great tips and comments that it's taking a while to go through them all. They'll be appearing in the newsletter over the next few weeks. Today's issue makes a good start, however. Many thanks to Bill Rubidge, Rohn Solecki, and Rebecca Evans for their terrific comments and tips.

Referring to the December 18, 2002, issue of Editorium Update, which featured styles and style lists from readers, Bill Rubidge (wbr@aya.yale.edu) wrote:

Eric Fletcher explains that he uses an "Editorial Note" style. We use something similar, but the style is called "Open Issue". (Actually, the name has a prefix, so that all the styles we use are sorted together in the list and distinguishable from styles that may come from other templates or users). The style highlights items with color, as Eric's does, but we do one thing more.

At the end of our documents, we insert a page break and then type a title "Open Issues". Below that, we generate a TOC based only the Open Issue style (not any headings--TOC field {TOC t "wbrOpenIssue,1"}). This gives us a complete list of these open issues for the entire document, to ensure that none are overlooked.

By the way, we also insert these Open Issue paragraphs (which are sometimes just queries) ABOVE the item in question, and the Open Issue style has the paragraph set to "keep with next". This helps make the page number refs in the Open Issue TOC more accurate.

If you really want to get complicated, on multi-file projects (we deal with about 40 files per book), it may be easier to just extract the open issues from the file and put them into another document. For now, I just do this using the open issue TOC at the end of each file, but have a macro that copies it (fields unlinked) to the clipboard and then opens up our Open Issue file (in Excel, for easier sorting). Based on posts in the Word PC listserve, I think involving Maggie Seneca, I think you could also harvest all the Open Issue items in the file and automatically write them to another file (rather than the manual paste we're using).

You might refer to the macro that Bryan and Pieter helped Eve Golden with, back in the Daily Word Tips list. I think the last posts about it were from November 20. That macro searches for text highlighted in a certain way, and copies all that text and appends it to a separate file.

_______________

Rohn Solecki wrote:

I also have a favorite style you might want to pass on. Although it may not be useful to the publishing industry, it is handy for internal documentation in companies that still use "green screen" computer terminals. Green screen terminals are the old style fixed pitch font, by default 24 line by 80 character displays (but optionally up to 27 lines by 132 characters).

Rather than doing a graphic screen capture I do a Edit / Select All, Edit / Copy to capture the text, paste to Word, then apply my "Screen Print" paragraph style to reasonably simulate the appearance of text on the computer terminal. This style has 3 main advantages over pasting a graphic screen capture:

* It uses orders of magnitude less space, which is important if you have lots of screens to capture.

* It is editable, so if something on screen changes you don't have redo the capture.

* Since it is editable, it is easy to apply character formatting like highlighter or font colors to highlight specific sections (without having to use a separate graphics program).

Details of Screen Print Paragraph Style:

* Paragraph Formatting - Flush Left, Keep with Next, Keep lines together, Border: box (single line), Shading: 5%, Indent: Hanging 0.25 Right 0", Widow and Orphan Control. Font Formatting - Courier, 10 pt, Condensed 0.5 pt.

Reasons for choices:

* The Box Border and 5% Shading simulate the look of the screen.

* Keep Lines together and Keep with next ensure that the whole screen capture stays on same page.

* Hanging indent is optional if a line wraps for some reason, for example, capturing from a 132-character display.

* Courier is fixed pitch so characters line up as they did on screen.

* 10 pt Condensed 0.5pt so that an 80-character line will fit on a page with reasonable margins (less than the default 1.5" both sides) without wrapping.

_______________

Rebecca Evans (evansreb@earthlink.net) wrote:

I have been designing and typesetting books for a living since 1976. Being able to use style tags in today's programs is certainly a blessing compared to keeping a spec sheet beside you so you can hand key specs as you re-type a book from a typemarked manuscript.

My comment on the style naming issue is that I have found I do not need list tags that add space after the list (NL End), just the tag to begin the list and for the interior paragraphs. All I need after lists, boxes, and the like, are two Body Text tags with added space above them, one with a paragraph indent and one without, because any paragraph style other than Body Text--heads, extracts, boxes, summaries, other lists--already includes space above.

Of course this assumes that spacing is consistent within a design so that you don't have +12' below a BL and +6' below an NL. And, I realize this may not be applicable to documents other than books. However, in my experience with textbooks, I have found those two extra Body Text styles to be all the "exit" styles I need.

On another note, I use two character style names because that lets me reduce the width of the style tag window (I use Ventura Publisher and keep the style list docked and open on screen), leaving more screen width to display page spreads. This is not an issue if you use a style drop down menu but I thought I'd throw in my two cents on that one too.

I responded, "Not being a Ventura user myself, I'd like to know why Ventura users want to tag Word files before bringing them into Ventura. Won't Ventura import RTF files? Any light you could shed on that subject for me?"

Rebecca replied:

Ventura does import RTF files--it will even File:Open RTF files and build copies of all the Styles as closely as possible to how they are in Word. Irrespective of that, you elucidated the reasons for using raw codes very well in your recent essay.

Most books are Styled erratically by the author and there is usually so much junk left in text files that it's easier to clean up the text if you can see the raw codes. Much of what I clean up is taken care of by EKTPlus but I still like to see exactly what I'm importing before I import it.

Also, an author's Styles, even if perfectly applied, never match the design of the typeset book. It is far easier for me to type codes than to drop down the Style list and click each one. Assign Styles to buttons takes a long time and would be almost as much work to use as dropping down the style list.

I use XyWrite for coding text files because I can drop in coding with short-cut keys, which are incredibly easy to assign in XyWrite: no menus, just select the text, press F2, press the key you want to use for that shortcut (any key), then press F3 to deselect the text. Then it's just ALT+"that key" to insert the text. You can keep reassigning new text to your shortcut keys as you work.

XyWrite also has macro-scripting capabilities that let me build S&R tables for almost anything. I keep the S&R table open in a separate window while I work so I can change/add entries in it as I go along.

Unfortunately, XyWrite is ASCII and everything else in the world (seemingly) is ANSI so I've recently been converting over to coding in Word. Assigning and using shortcut keys is more of a process in Word because alphanumeric keys are used for Word function shortcuts.

I should tell you that XyWrite is an older program used mostly by programming types now. XyWrite is DOS-based so I don't know if it will even run under Windows XP. It's an old friend for me but someone trying to learn it today probably wouldn't know what to do with the command line at the top of the screen (very useful if you know DOS commands) and would have to adjust to using function keys rather than the CTRL/ALT keys to execute commands.

There are folks out there who write scripts for converting Word coding to Ventura--Allan Shearer in Canada comes to mind--but your programs are so well executed and beautifully interfaced that it's worth paying for them even if the same functions are available free from other sources.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

RMIT University has an excellent collection of links related to editing and publishing:

http://www.rmit.edu.au/links/publish.htm

Some weeks ago I suggested the need for a "wildcard dictionary" and asked readers to send in their contributions. You can read that article here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711394495

I heard from Rosalie Wells, Hilary Powers, Eric Fletcher, Allene Goforth, Michael Coleman, and Steve Hudson, who sent some great wildcard strings and commentary on their use. Many thanks to them, and, if I missed anyone, many apologies.

You can learn more about finding and replacing with wildcards in these back issues of Editorium Update:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705963026

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706069286

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706167662

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706267069

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706365638

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706458823

And now, the wildcard dictionary entries! (Before using any of these in the real world, be sure to try them on some test documents to make sure they will do what you need. You should do that with any wildcard string, of course.)

___________________________________

ROSALIE WELLS wrote:

I use this one all the time in my translations into Spanish to change the decimal separator "period" to a "comma" separator as required for many Spanish-speaking countries:

Find what: ([0-9]).([0-9])

Replace with: 1,2

___________________________________

HILARY POWERS wrote:

I tend to design strings from scratch when needed, but here are a couple that I use often enough to more or less remember them:

.([A-Z])|. 1

opens up initials on reference lists; requires fixing things like U.S. and N.Y. after

([0-9]). |^t1.^t

indents hand-typed list numbers

[!.]^013 - review one by one and add periods by hand where needed. There's a way of scanning for more end-sentence punctuation and doing the change automatically, but I'm usually too lazy to look it up and this is what I remember. A complete punctuation scan would be quite welcome. . . .

It'd be a good idea to emphasize that the Wildcard and Revision Tracking features do bad things to each other, at least in Word 97. Some simple replaces will work with tracking on, but it's hard to predict which ones are safe and which ones will scramble the new info. Before running any wildcard replace operation, it's best to save the file and then turn the tracking off. Run the replace, check to see if it worked, then TURN THE TRACKING BACK ON.

___________________________________

ERIC FLETCHER wrote:

I have my favourites in various Word files I seem to never get around to consolidating. But here are a few I found without having to look very hard:

DESCRIPTION: Finding a telephone number formatted as 123-4567.

FIND WHAT: ([0-9]{3})(-)([0-9]{4})

REPLACE WITH:

KEY WORDS: Telephone number

BEFORE:

AFTER:

COMMENTS: This is handy for doing a quick review of phone numbers. In Word 2002, you can choose to select all occurrences so you can see them easily in context.

DESCRIPTION: Changing telephone numbers formatted as (123) 456-7890 or (123)456-7890 to 123-456-7890.

FIND WHAT: ([(])([0-9]{3})([)])(*)([0-9]{3})(-)([0-9]{4})

REPLACE WITH: 2-567

KEY WORDS: Telephone number

BEFORE: Telephone numbers formatted as (123) 456-7890 or (123)456-7890.

AFTER: Telephone numbers formatted as 123-456-7890 or 123-456-7890.

COMMENTS: Note that the (*) looks after catching situations where there may or may not be a space after the area code portion.

DESCRIPTION: Find formatted text and change it to use HTML codes.

FIND WHAT: Font=Italic

REPLACE WITH: ^&

KEY WORDS: Italic, HTML, formatting

BEFORE: Change the italicized words to use HTML codes.

AFTER: Change the italicized words to use HTML codes.

COMMENTS: If you include Font=Not italic in the Replace with, the italics will be removed as well. Use variations of this for any formatting and other HTML codes.

DESCRIPTION: Find text coded with HTML and change it to Word formatting.

FIND WHAT: ()(*)()

REPLACE WITH: 2 Font=Italic

KEY WORDS: HTML, italic, formatting

BEFORE: Change the italicized words to regular Word formatting.

AFTER: Change the italicized words to regular Word formatting.

COMMENTS: Use variations of this for any formatting and other HTML codes.

___________________________________

ALLENE GOFORTH wrote:

Here are five of my wildcard routines. I use more than those, but some are specific to various publishers, and others are of the half-baked variety.

DESCRIPTION: In APA-style references lists, find volume numbers in roman and change them to italic. Retain the issue numbers in roman.

FIND WHAT: , [0-9]{1,}

REPLACE WITH: [nothing]; change font to italic

KEY WORDS: APA, references, volume numbers

BEFORE: Developmental Neurobiology, 13(2)

AFTER: Developmental Neurobiology, 13(2)

COMMENT: Find string includes a space between the first comma and the bracket.

DESCRIPTION: In APA-style references lists, find issue numbers in italics and change to roman.

FIND WHAT: ([0-9]@)

REPLACE WITH: [nothing]; change format to roman

KEY WORDS: APA, references, issue numbers

BEFORE: Developmental Neurobiology, 13(2)

AFTER: Developmental Neurobiology, 13(2)

DESCRIPTION: In APA-style references lists, find initials in names that need a space inserted after the period.

FIND WHAT: ([A-Z].[!A-Z])

REPLACE WITH: 1

KEYWORDS: APA, references, initials

BEFORE: Brown, A.C.

AFTER: Brown, A. C.

COMMENTS: A space is needed at the beginning of the Replace string.

DESCRIPTION: In APA-style references lists, find name strings containing "&" that need commas inserted before the "&."

FIND WHAT: ( [&])

REPLACE WITH: ,1

KEY WORDS: APA, references, &, comma

BEFORE: Smith, A. B. & Gordon, D. J.

AFTER: Smith, A. B., & Gordon, D. J.

COMMENTS: In the Find string, there is a space between the opening parenthesis and the bracket.

DESCRIPTION: Find and close up space between journal volume number and issue number in APA-style references lists.

FIND WHAT: (([0-9]@))

REPLACE WITH: 1

KEY WORDS: APA, references, space, volume, issue

BEFORE: 45 (3)

AFTER: 45(3)

COMMENTS: In the Find string there should be a space before the opening parenthesis. There should not be a space before the first character in the Replace string.

___________________________________

MICHAEL COLEMAN wrote:

Right now I'm working on an index. There's not a lot of work to be done, but it was exported from Quark to Word, so all the formatting was stripped. (If there's a way to avoid that, I'd love to learn about it.) So I set styles for the four levels. Simple enough. The only other trick is to get back all of the italics. There are a few titles that need to be italicized, and fortunately I know that they all have names with at least three words, so I searched for a string

[A-Z]([a-z]@) [A-Z]([a-z]@) [A-Z]

I didn't make any automatic changes because several titles fit the string but don't get italicized.

We used to have a lot of tables, figures, and exhibits in our books, but now they're all called figures. In the index, the appropriate first letter--t, f, or e--appeared in italics after the page number, such as 11-11e. (We use chapter-page pagination.) So I searched for

([0-9])[e,f,t]

I set the replace string to italic and replaced with

1f

Then I searched for ([0-9]) formatted as italic and changed it back to roman using 1.

Our old style was to use en dashes to show a range of pages, but that was hard to read because of the hyphens in the chapter-page pagination format. So we changed it to "to." I therefore searched for

^=([0-9])

And replaced it with

to 1

___________________________________

STEVE HUDSON wrote:

Remove Time stamping from most logs:

F: [[]*[]]

R: nothing

Kill excessive blank paras

F: ^p^p^p

R: ^p^p

Locate some passive voice instances

Find: be <*ed>

Convert a list of Firstname Lastname to Initial. Lastname

Find <(?)(*)> <(*)>

Replace 1. 3

Find manually formatted numbering (hand tweak)

F: [0-9]@.^t

R: Pass 1 List style, pass 2, nil.

Straight Quotes to Curly Quotes

To turn curlies to straight:

1. Turn off the Autocorrect

2. Go to your find and replace dialog and replace " with ".

Sharon Key wrote asking why, after selecting smart quotes, her find and replace of quotes with themselves didn't work to trigger the replacement from straight to curly. Yes, your FnR (find and replace) is NOT triggering the smart quote function. To do that it needs something before or after the quote to help the smart quote system dope it out. It's actually triggered by an "end of word" condition. So to replace straight quotes with curly quotes, use these FnR's with Wildcards enabled (select More and then look at options near the lower left)

Find: "(<*>)

Replace: "1

Find: ([! ])"

Replace: 1"

Both formulae use the () to force capture of that segment to be referred to in the replace section as 1 (or whatever left -> right position it holds if there are multiple bracketed entries).

The first finds quotes followed by a word ( a < is a start of a word, * is anything, a > is the end of a word), and replaces the quote with the word (now referred to as 1 from being bracketed) after it. You can't use that same trick for the second, as it selects the whole string of words afore it, and the smart quote feature is confused as the last typed character was in a range. So, we find any non blank character followed by a quote, and replace the single character and the quote. This will take care of most of your problems.

FnR CheatSheet

?= Any 1 character

*=Any string of characters

@ any number of repeats of the previous character

<=the beginning of a word

=the end of a word

{n}=n repeats of the previous char

{n,}=at least n repeats

{n-m}= between n and m repeats

[ ] marks a set of characters. A - used inside this means an ascending range between the two hyphenated characters. A !, only valid at the set's start, means 'any character except'.

() groups the expressions and indicates the order of evaluation. It is used with the n wildcard to rearrange expressions. The result of the 1st () pair is represented by 1, the next pair 2 and so on.

The easiest way is to use a special character as a literal, e.g. to find a bracket character, use ASCII code 40 instead. ASCII codes are specified in ANY sort of search with the caret ^.

= ^92

(=^40

)=^41

?=^63

{=^123

}=^125

[=^91

]=^93

@=^64

<=^60

=^62

*=^42

^=^94

To find some relevant information in Word's help file, Contents > Editing and Sorting text > Finding and Replacing Text. A few links later you can get some wildcard information.

10{1,3} finds "10", "100", and "1000".

[10]@ finds any binary number

<[a-zA-Z]{1,3}> finds words of three letters or less.

<[A-Z][a-z]@> finds any title-cased word.

<[0-9]@> finds any whole number, <[0-9]{1,3}> from 0-999

Find: <([0-9]@[/.-])([0-9]@[/.-])([0-9]@>)

Replace with: 2 1 3

Changes all numeric dates from DD/MM/YY(YY) to MM/DD/YY(YY) and back again.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Readers have sent so many great tips and comments that it's taking a while to go through them all. They'll be appearing in the newsletter over the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

There's an excellent explanation of how to find and replace with wildcards at the Microsoft Word MVP site:

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/UsingWildcards.htm