Author Archives: Jack Lyon

Don't Break That Word!

I’ve recently been editing a long, scholarly tome that, for reasons I’ll discuss in a future newsletter, my co-workers and I decided to typeset in Microsoft Word, following the techniques explained here: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708956278 Our intrepid typesetter has been fairly content except for one thing: there seems to be no way to keep a word from […]

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Wordperfect Weirdness

I work with lots of authors who use WordPerfect. Sometimes they pass their documents on to colleagues who use Microsoft Word. That wouldn’t be a problem if the authors would first save their documents in Word format. But they don’t, and their colleagues work on the documents in Word, pass them around to others, and […]

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Button Bonanza

Stars, pencils, light bulbs, puppy dogs, faces, diamonds, and hearts. What am I talking about? Toolbar buttons! Lots and lots of toolbar buttons! If you like assigning macros to toolbar buttons, you’re probably tired of the paltry 42 images you can use on those buttons by default. But fear not! Word has hundreds of images […]

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Revision-Tracking Format in Word 2002

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” […]

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Wildcard Dictionary Entries

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 […]

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Readers Write

After publishing last week’s article on creating a standard style list, I received such amazing feedback that I decided to dispense with a feature article this week and go straight to the Readers Write column. There’s enough information here to keep you reading, thinking, and implementing for some time, and I owe my thanks in […]

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Standard Style List

Last week’s newsletter explained the importance of using styles consistently in Microsoft Word, with a promise that this week I’d share my standard style list. As you look at the list, keep in mind that it was developed for styling books. If you work mostly on journals or magazines, your list will probably look quite […]

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Styles and Standardization

In the early days of printing, the “source” for the words on a printed page was the metal type used in the press. Once the pages had been printed, the type was removed from the printing forms and resorted into bins, completely destroying the source text. Producing a new edition of the book meant setting, […]

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Ligatures in Microsoft Word

Ligatures, in case you didn’t know, are letters that have been mashed together as one character. Why would anyone want that? For aesthetic reasons. (Yes, there is an ae ligature for words like “aesthetic.”) The ligatures used most often are fi and fl, accompanied by their friends ff, ffi, and ffl. That’s because these letter […]

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Wildcard Dictionary

If you’ve been reading Editorium Update for a while, you know about wildcard searches and some of the neat things you can do with them. If you don’t know about them, you can learn by reading these past issues of the newsletter: 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 Even though I use wildcard searches all […]

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