Author Archives: Jack Lyon

Wildcard Secrets Revisited

By Jack Lyon | Published: November 2, 2022

A few weeks ago I sent out an article called "Three Wildcard Secrets." I thought they were pretty good secrets, too! You can see them here. In a nutshell, here are the first two: The wildcard range [A-z], meant to find any uppercase or lowercase letter, will not find accented letters. You have to use […]

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Three Wildcard Secrets

By Jack Lyon | Published: October 25, 2022

So, you’ve been using wildcards with Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace feature to save time and ensure consistency as you edit the plethora of freelance work that’s bombarding your inbox. Excellent. But even if you’re getting pretty good at using wildcards, there are actually a few secrets that even many experts don’t know. Maybe you’ll […]

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Review: Geoff Hart’s Write Faster with Your Word Processor

By Jack Lyon | Published: May 25, 2022

I’ve been a fan of Geoff Hart’s books and articles since 2007, when I reviewed the first edition of his book Effective Onscreen Editing. The beauty of that book is that it applies to any software an editor might use. As Geoff explained then, “The overall goal is to teach editing strategies, not specific software.” However, in his […]

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Review: Geoff Hart’s Effective Onscreen Editing, 3rd Edition

By Jack Lyon | Published: October 6, 2016

Back in 2007, I reviewed the first edition of Geoff Hart’s book Effective Onscreen Editing, which I still keep close at hand on my bookshelf. Why? Because it’s one of the best books ever written about how to edit on a computer, packed with real-world information you’ll find nowhere else. My own books (such as […]

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Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word

By Jack Lyon | Published: October 8, 2015

If you’re editing or writing in Microsoft Word, you need to understand Word’s advanced search features. These features are extremely powerful, but they’re also virtually undocumented; most explanations of their use have been limited to a simple table of wildcards. My new book, Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, explains in detail how you can use […]

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Better word processing: The Chicago Manual of Style interview

By Jack Lyon | Published: August 18, 2015

The Chicago Manual of Style “Shop Talk” column recently noted: “When it comes to word processing, CMOS users probably represent every level of expertise (or nonexpertise), but regardless of skill level, we all experience frustration at times when we don’t know how to accomplish a task on our computers. Often we do something the way […]

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Spelunking in Microsoft Word

By Jack Lyon | Published: November 7, 2014

Laura Poole’s Editorial Bootcamp Before getting into today’s main article (“Spelunking in Microsoft Word”), I want to mention a great resource: master copyeditor Laura Poole’s Editorial Bootcamp, which covers everything from style guides and software to style sheets and spelling. I had the good fortune to sit in on one of Laura’s sessions at this […]

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Macros for Macs!

By Jack Lyon | Published: June 20, 2014

In Word 2008 for Macintosh, Microsoft removed all macro capability. In Word 2011 for Macintosh, Microsoft brought it back—sort of. The capability is there, but compatibility with Word for Windows is somewhat lacking. And that’s why the programs from the Editorium have not been available for Word 2011. I’m pleased to report, though, that our […]

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Removing Spaces at the End of Table Cells

By Jack Lyon | Published: June 5, 2014

Authors do funny things. Sometimes these things are inadvertent; sometimes they’re the result of trying to “prettify” documents for publication. In either case, editors have to clean up what the authors have done. One such problem is spaces at the ends of table cells. A table cell should end with the text it contains. If […]

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Deleting Extraneous Carriage Returns in Footnotes and Endnotes

By Jack Lyon | Published: May 22, 2014

During my editing career, I’ve often run into problems with footnotes and endnotes in Microsoft Word. Many authors have no clue about how notes are meant to work, and Microsoft certainly hasn’t made it obvious. In fact, they’ve made it easy to mess notes up beyond repair. One mistake authors make is to insert extraneous […]

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