Author Archives: Jack Lyon

I’m a book editor by day and a writer and programmer by night, which means I have dozens of projects going at any one time, and numerous tasks for each project. I’ve been looking for a way to manage all that and have finally figured out a system (using Microsoft Outlook) that seems to work. […]

In our last issue, I wrote about increasing editorial efficiency by fixing one kind of problem at a time. This raises (*not* “begs”) the question, “What kinds of problems lend themselves to this approach?” Some possibilities for your consideration: * Fixing typographical errors with a spell check: http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700310413 * Editing all headings at the same […]

Back in the days of working on paper, editors had to keep an eye out for all kinds of errors and problems–all at the same time. The human brain, which is wired to think about *one* thing at a time, often missed things, and editors were forced to comb through a manuscript over and over […]

A book I recently edited had lots of lists–with no terminal punctuation. The lists looked something like this: 1. Text of the first item 2. Text of the second item 3. Text of the third item As I worked, I found myself jumping to the end of each line and typing in a period, like […]

In earlier versions of Microsoft Word, it was possible to print comments separately from tracked revisions. You can still do that with Word 2002 and later versions, but how to do so is no longer obvious. Here’s the trick: 1. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing. 2. On the Reviewing toolbar, click the Show button. […]

Sometimes, in a document that’s been reviewed by several people, it’s nice to be able to accept all changes by a single reviewer–maybe the author or a proofreader whose judgment you trust. (Or maybe yourself!) In Word 2002 (XP) and later versions, this is easy: 1. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing to display the […]

This week one of the editors I work with needed to show tracked revisions to an author she’s working with. The problem was, the author used WordPerfect, not Microsoft Word. We tried opening the marked-up Word document with WordPerfect, but no go. Additions were there, marked in red, but deletions had reverted to regular text. […]

The August 18 issue of Editorium Update featured a macro to delete styles that exist in a Word document but are not used in that document. While I was writing that macro, I also wrote a couple of others that I thought you might find useful. The first macro, ListCustomStyles, lists (at the end of […]

I frequently edit books that are compilations of articles by various authors. Some know how to use Word pretty well; others don’t have a clue. Those in the latter category either don’t use paragraph styles or create styles that aren’t needed. After I’ve fixed and consistently applied the styles I need, I like to get […]