I finally went out and bought that new monitor I mentioned last week--a 19-inch Sony that looked great in the store (playing the Jurassic Park DVD!). But when I got it home and hooked it up, it didn't look so good. The characters in Microsoft Word looked jagged, and the toolbar icons were huge! Couldn't it do better than that? Then it struck me: on a monitor that was capable of 1600 by 1200 resolution, I was displaying 1024 by 768. No wonder! I quickly increased the resolution to the max, using the following procedure (I'm running Windows 98; if you're a Macintosh user and would like to explain how to do this on a Mac, I'd love to include your instructions in next week's newsletter):

1. Right-click the Windows desktop.

2. Click "Properties."

3. Click the "Settings" tab.

4. In the "Screen area" box, move the slider all the way to the right.

5. Click the "OK" button.

6. Follow any additional on-screen prompts.

Wow, were those characters ever fine! And tiny! Maybe I'd gone a little overboard. I repeated the procedure, this time setting the resolution at 1400 by 1050. Much better! And still beautiful to look at. After doing some editing in Microsoft Word, however, I decided that the lettering on Word's menus was still a bit small for my middle-aged eyes. But I liked that high resolution. What could I do?

I increased the menu font size with this procedure:

1. Right-click the Windows desktop.

2. Click "Properties."

3. Click the "Settings" tab.

4. Click the "Advanced" button.

5. Click the "General" tab.

6. In the "Font Size" box, select "Large Fonts."

7. Click the "OK" button.

8. Click the next "OK" button.

9. Follow any additional on-screen prompts.

Better, but the menus could still be easier to read. How about putting them in bold? I tried this procedure:

1. Right-click the Windows desktop.

2. Click "Properties."

3. Click the "Appearance" tab.

4. Click the "Normal" menu in the sample display window.

5. On the bottom right, click the "B" (bold) button.

6. Click the "OK" button.

(Actually, while I was in there, I also selected "Icon" in the "Item" box and set its font to bold.)

For the first time in years, reading my computer's menus and icon labels was easy. I should have adjusted those settings a long time ago.

If you spend most of your day editing on the computer, trying to differentiate between opening and closing quotation marks, between em dashes and en dashes, you too may benefit by setting your computer display exactly the way you want it.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's newsletter on hardware for editors, one subscriber wrote:

"I'm a big fan of the Kensington Turbo Mouse (aka the Expert Mouse, I think), which is really a trackball. It doesn't *look* ergonomically designed, but it seems to work for a great many people, and because it's got 4 programmable buttons you can create very useful shortcuts. I've used one for years at home and at work, and was horrified when a few months back it looked like they weren't going to produce a USB version, but they did.

"I haven't tried any of the newer Kensington trackballs (the things that have scroll rings, etc.) because the device itself does not fit a small hand.

"I'd be interested some time in discussion of voice-input software (or whatever you call it) for editors. (If you've dealt with this before, ignore this and let me know where!) This has been discussed briefly and intermittently on the copyediting list, and I know some people use it to cut down on repetitive motions. Me, I want it because (I confess) I knit while I'm doing the last read-through on a long project (it helps me stay focused, or at least awake), and I'd love a way to get the document to scroll up and down without having to put down my knitting!"

Thanks for this interesting suggestion. If you're an editor who uses voice-recognition software, we'd love to hear how you use it.

This week I've been shopping around for a new monitor. That got me thinking about what editors need in the way of computer equipment. If you work for a corporation, the powers-that-be probably think like this: "Editors just do word-processing, so they don't need much of a computer." Then they buy you something cheap and slow.

In reality, however, editors need something more than a garage-sale 486 with 16 megs of RAM. If you're serious about editing on the computer (which you should be), you'll need the fastest machine you (or management) can afford. Why? Because you're doing more than rearranging commas in a one-page letter. If you're like me, you're working on books with hundreds of pages, dozens of headings, complex formatting, and thousands of footnotes. And you're probably doing time-consuming stuff like this:

* Converting batches of files from one format to another (WordPerfect to Microsoft Word, for example).

* Running numerous search-and-replace routines to clean up text and make things consistent.

* Running macros (such as our add-in programs) to torture text and formatting into the form you need.

The most expensive resource you or your employer has is *your time.* If you have to sit for ten minutes while your computer huffs and puffs its way through some automated procedure, you need to invest in a machine that will make you more productive.

Don't focus solely on speed, however. For someone who's editing for many hours at a stretch, other things are equally (or more) important:

* Your monitor should be as large and as clear as you can get. Seventeen inches should be the *minimum* size. Back in the '80s, I wrote a book using a suitcase-sized "portable" with an eight-inch monochrome monitor. Never again. I've also worked on a 21-inch flat-screen beauty with .24mm dot pitch and a fast screen-refresh rate. Sheer bliss. If you have to choose between a bigger, better monitor and a faster processor, you should probably go for the monitor, which you'll be looking at all day long. Not convinced? How valuable is your eyesight? By the way, ten minutes of *looking* at monitors at your local computer store will give you a much better idea of what you like than two hours of researching the Internet.

* Your keyboard should be responsive, reliable, and comfortable to use. Keyboards are relatively cheap, so get yourself a good one. For example, you might like Microsoft's Natural Keyboard Pro:

http://shop.microsoft.com//Products/Products_Feed/Online/NaturalKeyboardPro%5B679%5D/ProductOverview.asp

Using a good keyboard may spare you the pain and expense of having carpal-tunnel surgery, which more than one of my colleagues has had to endure.

* Your mouse should feel good in your hand and not have to be babied along. If you have a bad mouse, you're probably not even aware of how much time you spend fighting it. Check out the Intellimouse Optical from Microsoft:

http://shop.microsoft.com//Products/Products_Feed/Online/IntelliMouseOptical%5B10037%5D/ProductOverview.asp

You might also be interested in a trackball, mouse-pen, or other input device.

There are many other things to consider: desks, chairs, wrist pads, screen filters, copy holders, and so on. You may not be able to afford everything you need all at once, but if you keep upgrading as you can, you'll be investing in your health, your comfort, and your productivity.

Microsoft Word provides several keyboard shortcuts to help you move around a document, which is important when you're serious about editing efficiently. You may not know, however, that Word includes commands to move from sentence to sentence--highly useful for an editor! The commands aren't mentioned in Word's Help file, and they're not assigned to any shortcut keys, but, sneaky guy that I am, I found them for you. The commands are:

SentRight (which will move to the next sentence)

SentLeft (which will move to the previous sentence)

To use these commands, you'll probably want to assign them to shortcut keys (or use our Editor's ToolKit program, which already has them assigned). Here's the procedure:

1. Click the "Tools" menu at the top of your Word window.

2. Click "Customize."

3. Click the "Keyboard" tab or button.

4. In the Categories list, find and click "All Commands."

5. In the Commands list, find and click the command, such as "SentRight."

6. With your cursor in the Press New Shortcut Key box, press the key combination you want to use. I'd recommend CTRL + ALT + RIGHT ARROW for SentRight and CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW for SentLeft, since these are probably not already in use on your computer.

7. Make sure the "Save Changes In" box shows Normal.dot.

8. Click the "Assign" button. (If you wanted to remove the key combination, you'd click the "Remove" button.)

9. Click the "Close" button.

That's it! Now you can merrily cruise from sentence to sentence as you edit your latest project.

As you edit, you'll probably notice that you can't hold down the SHIFT key and then select a sentence using the keys you've just defined. The commands, for some reason, don't allow it. However, you can overcome this problem with two other commands:

SentRightExtend

SentLeftExtend

You can assign these commands to some other key combinations. How about:

SHIFT + CTRL + ALT + RIGHT ARROW

SHIFT + CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW

That should make the commands work just the way you'd want them to.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article, "The Case against Caps," Steve Dobney wrote:

"As a keen keyboard shortcut user I make great use of Shift + F3 (on the Mac) to toggle between capitalisation options. I think it's the same for Windows."

Yes, it is. Thanks for the great tip, Steve.

Bruce White wrote:

"I have attached to a button the Change Case item from the Format menu. It changes the capitalization of selected text each time it is pressed to the next one in the sequence: UPPERCASE, lowercase, and Title Case.

"For some reason Sentence case is not in the sequence. I suspect that you are meant to change it all to lower then select the first word and change it to title case.

"Colin Wheildon's Type & Layout from Strathmoor Press (ISBN 0-9624891-5-8) has a bit to say against using uppercase. From his Table 5 on page 67:

lowercase Capitals

Roman old style 92% 69%

Roman modern 89% 71%

Sans serif 90% 57%

Optima 85% 56%

Square serif 64% 44%

"These numbers are for legibility of printed material.

"Note that the book includes the methodology used so that anyone wanting to see what results happen for online can follow the same approach."

Thanks, Bruce, for the useful tip and interesting information.

As you've edited various manuscripts, you've probably noticed the propensity of some authors to type headings in all caps, as I've done with the title of this article. This holdover from the days of typewriting is, to put it bluntly, bad practice. Why? Because in typesetting or desktop publishing, putting a heading in all caps is a design decision, not an editorial one. Headings are generally set apart from body text with a different font or point size, not with capital letters.

If you leave headings in all caps, designers are going to change them anyway--probably by *retyping* them, and *without* telling you. If you're lucky, you'll catch any new typos and improper capitalizations *before* the publication goes to press. Personally, I don't like the risk.

Fortunately, Microsoft Word makes it fairly easy to change an all-caps heading to title case:

1. Select the heading you want to change.

2. Click the "Format" menu.

3. Click "Change Case."

4. Click "Title Case."

5. Click "OK."

If you did that with the title of this article, for example, you'd get this: "The Case Against Caps."

Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed, you'll still have to lowercase articles, prepositions, and conjunctions by hand to get proper title case. For example, you'd need to lowercase "Against" in the title of this article: "The Case against Caps."

Wouldn't it be nice to have a macro that took care of that automatically? Our Editor's ToolKit program includes one. Just select the text you want formatted as title case and then run the macro (called "Make Selection Title Case"). Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs will be uppercased. Commonly used articles, prepositions, and conjunctions will be lowercased. Pretty neat! You can download and try the program free of charge for 45 days:

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

What if a design calls for all caps? The caps should be applied through formatting, not typing all-cap characters. As I've said before, you should format headings with one of Microsoft Word's built-in heading styles, such as Heading 1. Then if you want headings to be set in all caps, you can do this:

1. Place your cursor in a heading formatted with the style you want to be all caps.

2. Click the "Format" menu.

3. Click "Style."

4. Click the "Modify" button.

5. Click the "Format" button.

6. Click "Font."

7. Put a check in the "All Caps" checkbox.

8. Click the "OK" button.

9. Click the next "OK" button.

10. Click the "Close" button.

All of the headings formatted with that style will now be in all caps.

Changed your mind? You can change the headings back to title case by reversing the procedure. And that may be the strongest argument in the case against caps.

After reading our last newsletter, subscriber Debby English wrote: "In your latest issue, 'Creating New Documents,' you mentioned that you have modified Word's built-in invoice template. I would like to do the same but cannot find it in my Word template directory. Can you give me a clue about where it might be and what it's called? I'm running Word 2000."

I do much of my work in good old Word 95, so I hadn't realized that the Invoice template doesn't come with Word 2000 (at least *I* sure can't find it). However, Microsoft has several free Invoice templates available for download here:

http://search.officeupdate.microsoft.com/TemplateGallery/ct104.asp

If you're a freelance editor, you'll probably find the Services invoice (for billing by the hour) and the Simple invoice (for billing by the job) most useful.

If you're bidding on a job or writing a proposal, you'll find other helpful templates here:

http://search.officeupdate.microsoft.com/TemplateGallery/ct103.asp

Need more? You'll find many other templates in Microsoft's Template Gallery:

http://search.officeupdate.microsoft.com/TemplateGallery/default.asp

All of these templates from Microsoft will work in Word 97, 98, 2000, and 2001.

Microsoft isn't the only game in town, however. KMT Software, for example, has sample templates that you can download for free if you register with them (and, of course, templates that you can buy):

http://www.kmt.com/

Baarns Consulting offers numerous templates and add-ins that can make your work easier:

http://archive.baarns.com/Software/index4.asp

If you'd like to see a template with lots of styles for writing and editing (especially for technical books), O'Reilly & Associates provides a truly excellent one for its authors, although anyone who visits the O'Reilly site can download it:

http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/ch02.html#tools

Impressions has another editing template and other resources for editors working in Microsoft Word--a most impressive Web site. You can download the Impressions template at the address below. Please open the template, read the requirements, and follow them if you're going to use it:

http://www.impressions.com/resources_pgs/edit_pgs/template.html

Whether you need a template for an invoice, a memo, or a complex editing job, one of these places should have exactly what you're looking for.

In our past few newsletters, we've been talking about templates--attaching them, creating them, and so on. There's still one area we haven't talked about: creating *new* documents based on existing templates. If you're an editor, you may be thinking, "I usually work on documents someone else has created." True enough. However, as an editor you probably also:

* send letters to clients.

* send invoices to clients.

* write jacket blurbs.

* write manuscript reviews.

* send out an occasional resume.

And so on. If you create such documents using templates that fit your needs, you'll save time and frustration, and you'll also look more professional. For example, I've created a letterhead template that includes the Editorium logo from our Web site, my business address, and a date field, and I've stored it in Microsoft Word's Templates folder. When I need to write a letter, I do this:

1. Click Word's "File" menu.

2. Click "New."

3. Click my letterhead template (Letterhead.dot).

4. Click the "OK" button.

Word creates a new document with the Editorium logo, business address, and the current date. All I have to do is type in the text of my letter. Slick! I've also modified Word's built-in invoice template and created templates for different kinds of writing projects. I seldom need to create a new document from scratch.

When you *attach* a template to an existing document (as explained in previous newsletters), the styles from the template will be copied to the new document. However, any *text* in the template will *not* be copied. You'll probably use this feature most for documents you're editing.

When you use a template to *create* a new document, any text in the template *will* be copied to the new document (along with styles). You'll probably use this feature most for documents you're writing.

For example, if you write rejection letters to authors, having some "boilerplate" text in a template will save you lots of time. Just create a new document based on your Rejection template, modify the document as needed (inserting the author's name and some specific comments, for example), and you're done!

Please note that if you create a document by pressing CTRL + N or clicking the "New" button (on the far left of the Standard toolbar), Microsoft Word won't let you select a template to use. It will simply create the new document based on your Normal template. Since that's the case, you should modify your Normal template to create the kind of document you need most often.

It's midnight at the publishing house. All the cubicles are dark--except one in the back corner, where a frazzled production editor struggles to finish formatting a 700-page book that's due at press in eight short hours. Can't we do something to help?

As we've seen in our newsletters the past few weeks, Microsoft Word documents get their overall formatting from the templates attached to them. By changing a document's template, you automatically change the document's formatting. *Every* document is based on a template. If you don't attach one, Word uses the Normal template. The relationship looks like this:

Template ---> Document

Styles and paragraphs have the same kind of relationship as templates and documents. Paragraphs get their overall formatting from the styles applied to them. By changing a paragraph's style, you automatically change the paragraph's formatting. *Every* paragraph is based on a style. If you don't apply one, Word uses the Normal style. The relationship looks like this:

Style ---> Paragraph

Why does Word work like this? To give you greater and faster *control* over a document's formatting. Using templates and styles, you can instantly change the look of an entire document--or certain parts of a document, such as block quotations or headings.

Many people never even think about this. They'll go through an entire manuscript, manually formatting every single heading as Arial, 14-point, bold, small caps, 1-point condensed, center justified, exact line spacing, keep with next. It makes me absolutely crazy!

To get fast, consistent formatting throughout a manuscript, you'll need to do two things:

1. Attach a template that includes the styles you need with the formatting you want them to have. To learn more about this, see Editorium Update for the past two weeks:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?sort=&mid=1704544112

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?sort=&mid=1704628448

2. Consistently apply styles as needed. For example, you might use the Heading 1 style for part titles, Heading 2 for chapter titles, Heading 3 for subheads, and so on. You can read more about style levels in the documentation for our WordSetter program, here:

http://editorium.com/Wordset.htm/#_Toc500857368

If parts of the manuscript still don't look right, they may have directly applied font and paragraph formatting (such as Arial, 14-point, bold, small caps, 1-point condensed, center justified, exact line spacing, keep with next). Directly applied paragraph formatting is easy to remove: just select the whole document (CTRL + a) and then press CTRL + q. Unfortunately, directly applied font formatting isn't so easy to get rid of. Yes, you can select the whole document and press CTRL + SPACEBAR, but that will also remove all character formatting, such as italic, presenting a serious problem. The only solution I know of is our FileCleaner program's Standardize Font Formatting feature, which you can learn more about here:

http://editorium.com/Fileclnr.htm/#_Toc500858918

Using templates and styles is the key to formatting that looks good and doesn't take all night to finish.

Now, go home and get some sleep.

Microsoft Word comes with several templates for creating reports, press releases, resumes, and other documents. These templates can come in handy, but, as subscriber David Ibbetson writes, "The best way to use templates is to make your own according to your tastes and needs. Built-in templates can be valuable as a source of ideas, and can sometimes be modified to meet your requirements. An off-the-shelf template is unlikely to be as satisfactory as one made-to-measure."

This is especially true of templates for editing and typesetting, which Microsoft's off-the-shelf templates simply aren't equipped to handle. Their main drawback is not having enough styles, especially for something as complicated as a book, which needs styles for everything from epigraphs to endnotes. If you'd like a template with lots of styles, please feel free to use, modify, and rename the highly generic Typespec template that comes with our Editor's ToolKit program, which you can download here:

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

The other drawback to Word's templates is that they don't provide enough variety. In my opinion, nearly every publication is worthy of its own design--one that fits its subject and style. For example, Moby Dick needs a different typeface (something wild and rough-hewn) than Paradise Lost (which calls for something dignified and classical). Book design is a little beyond the scope of this newsletter, so you may want to consult such books as these:

The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst.

The Printed Word, by David A. Kater and Richard Kater.

The Art of Desktop Publishing, by Tony Bove, Cheryl Rhodes, and Wes Thomas.

Desktop Publishing with Word for Windows, by Tom Lichty.

The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams.

The Non-Designer's Type Book, by Robin Williams.

Besides the templates that you use for final formatting, you'll also need a template that you use with every document--but only while you're *editing* the document. That template should include all of the styles you'll use for final formatting (typesetting) but with typefaces, point sizes, and paragraph formatting that make editing easy. Currently, my favorite typeface for editing is Times New Roman, because its hyphens and dashes are so easily distinguishable from each other, as are its opening and closing curly quotation marks. You can download Times New Roman (and other useful fonts) free of charge from Microsoft here:

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

To create a custom template, follow this procedure:

1. Create a new document.

2. Paste in a bunch of text that you can play with.

3. Create and format the styles you'll need, experimenting on the pasted text (this will require time and care).

4. Delete the pasted text, leaving only the styles in your document.

5. Click the "File" menu.

6. Click "Save As."

7. In the "File name" box, give your template a name that will help you remember its purpose ("Editing.dot," "MobyDick.dot," or whatever meets your needs).

8. In the "Save as type" box, select "Document Template (*.dot)."

9. Click the "Save" button to save the template.

I recommend using the same style names in all of your templates, even though the styles will be formatted differently from template to template. Someday when you're converting hundreds of publications into a giant XML archive (or simply attaching a different template to a document), you'll be glad you did. I also recommend using Word's built-in heading styles (Heading 1 through Heading 9), which make it possible to navigate and rearrange whole sections of a document in Outline view.

Once you've created a template that you like, you can modify it as needed for other publishing projects, saving it with a new name for each one. After a while, you'll have a wide variety of templates designed specifically for *your* projects and needs.

Last week we used Microsoft Word's Style Gallery to understand one of the main reasons for using templates: to change the formatting of all of the styles in a document. You can read last week's newsletter here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704442036

Why would you want to change the formatting of all of the styles in a document? Let me suggest some reasons:

1. You're sick of editing in Garamond Ugly, which is the typeface your client has used. Why not (a) save your client's document as a template and then (b) go back to the original document and attach your own template that defines the styles in a typeface you like? When you're finished editing, you can simply attach the "client" template that you saved, which will restore your client's formatting in all of its hideous glory. For suggestions of typefaces that work well for editing, see our June 6, 2000, newsletter:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?sort=d&mid=1700934923

2. You've finished editing and you want to apply the final format to a document that's otherwise ready for printing. In the past you've saved certain elegantly designed documents as templates, so now you can attach one of those templates to your current document and create an instant masterpiece.

3. As the editor of an academic journal, you're pulling together a dozen papers from various scholars and want to give all the papers the same format. You attach your standard template, and voil?!

Note that for these scenarios to work, the documents in question must use styles that are also used in the templates you're going to attach. For example, if your document includes certain paragraphs formatted with the Heading 1 style, when you apply a *template* that uses the Heading 1 style, the formatting from the template will be copied to the headings in your document.

That is, it will if you've turned on the option to automatically update document styles. Here's the whole procedure:

1. Open the document to which you want to attach a template.

2. Click the "Tools" menu. (In Word 6 or 7, click the "File" menu instead.)

3. Click "Templates and Add-ins."

4. Click the "Attach" button.

5. Click the name of the template you want to attach.

6. Click the oddly-named "Open" button. (You'll now see the name and path of the template in the "Document template" box.)

7. Put a check in the box labeled "Automatically update document styles."

8. Click the "OK" button to attach the template to the current document and update the styles to match the formatting in the template.

I still haven't said why you should attach a template rather than use Word's Style Gallery to change your styles' formatting. Actually, the Style Gallery works just fine for that purpose. But attaching a template does more than just change the formatting of styles. It also makes certain items available in the document to which it is attached. Those items include AutoText entries, macros, and customized toolbars, menus, and key combinations--some very useful stuff! But that's a topic for another time.