Author Archives: Jack Lyon

After reading our last newsletter, which offered an automatic way to insert dashes as you type, Sam Mills wrote: “Excuse me, but why can’t you just type shift-option-hyphen to get an em dash as you type? and option-hyphen for the en dash?” The answer, of course, is that you can (if you’re using a Macintosh). […]

While using Microsoft Word, I’ve often thought how great it would be if I could type two hyphens and get an em dash. Also, when I type a hyphen after a number, I want the hyphen to turn into an en dash to indicate inclusive numbers, like these: 3-10. Microsoft Word 97, 98, and 2000 […]

One of the main problems editors have working on a computer is that they lose their sense of proportion about the manuscript. What do I mean by sense of proportion? While working on a paper manuscript, with the pages piled neatly on the desktop, editors know exactly how much work they’ve done: 112 pages, stacked […]

Maybe you’ve seen that funny little poem about spell checkers that occasionally makes its way around the Internet. It comes in various versions, but the first and last stanzas usually go something like this: I have a spelling checker That came with my PC. It clearly marks four my revue Mistakes I cannot sea. I […]

If you’ve done much editing in Microsoft Word, you’ve probably noticed that some of Word’s “helpful” features just get in your way. Luckily, Microsoft has made it possible to turn those features off, so that what you type is what you get. Here are some of the more common problems with some possible solutions. PROBLEM: […]