Last week we discussed the basics of using wildcards to find text in a Microsoft Word document. You can read last week's newsletter here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705963026

This week we'll talk about how to combine wildcards, which will let you get pretty fancy about the stuff you want to find. Basically, you just need to know that you *can* combine wildcards. Then you can get as crazy as you like.

Last week we used the "?" wildcard to find every three-letter combination starting with b and ending with t--"bet," "but," "bit," "bat," and so on--by searching for "b?t" with "Use Pattern Matching" turned on in the Find dialog box.

Now let's say we wanted to find the same characters but add others as well. For example, we might want to find every three-letter combination starting with b and ending with d--"bed," "bud," "bid," "bad," and so on--in *addition* to the combinations ending in t. Can we really do that? Sure!

After bringing up the Find dialog (Edit > Find) and turning on "Use Pattern Matching," we'll start by entering the letter b into the "Find What" box, telling Microsoft Word to find that letter.

Next, we'll enter the ? wildcard, which tells Microsoft Word to find any single character.

Finally, we'll enter a new wildcard: [td]. Microsoft Word will find any *one* of the characters specified in the brackets.

Altogether, the string of characters looks like this--

b?[td]

--and there we are, doing wildcard combinations! This particular combination tells Microsoft Word to find the letter b followed by any other single character followed by t or d.

How will something like this help you in editing? Suppose you're working on a manuscript in which the author has misspelled a name in nearly every way possible. You could comb through the manuscript over and over, hoping to catch all the variations. Or, you could be *sure* to catch them all by searching with wildcards. For example, let's say your manuscript is a book about India and the name in question is Gandhi. Your author has misspelled it as "Ghandi," "Gahndi," and "Ganhdi." (Not possible? Hah!) You can find every last one of them with the following string:

G[andh][andh][andh][andh]i

Then, if you've put the correct spelling, "Gandhi," in the "Replace With" box, you can find and replace each wrong spelling with the right one in a single pass, which is much more efficient than finding and replacing each variation separately.

You may be wondering why you couldn't just use the * wildcard to represent the whole string of letters, like this:

G*i

You could. But remember, the * wildcard represents *any* string of characters--including spaces. It's not limited to characters within a word (and neither are other wildcards). That means, in addition to finding the misspelled names, it will find the first 14 characters of the following phrase: "Go to the officer's hall." So be careful, especially if you're planning to use "Replace All" rather than finding and replacing one item at a time.

There is a way to simplify the wildcard combination, however. Consider this string:

G[andh]{3}i

It's functionally the same as G[andh][andh][andh][andh]i. The {3} tells Word to find exactly three more occurrences of the previous "expression," which is [andh].

But now a complication: Suppose that our slapdash author has also spelled Gandhi's name as "Gandi." Uh-oh. Our original string won't catch that, because this new misspelling is one character shorter than our string specifies. But consider this:

G[andh]{2,3}i

The {2,3} tells Word to find from 2 to 3 occurrences of the previous expression, so this string will catch all of our misspelled variations so far.

What if we want to allow for more or fewer characters, being particularly unsure of our author? We can use this string:

G[andh]@i

The @ wildcard tells Microsoft Word to find *one or more* occurrences of the previous expression. That ought to cover nearly anything our author throws at us. If we want to get a little more specific, we can use {2,}, which tells Word to look for *at least* two occurrences of the previous expression.

By this time you've probably noticed a pattern to these wildcards, but if not, I'll summarize:

A question mark ? finds any single character.

An asterisk * finds any string of characters.

Square brackets [] specify the characters to find.

Curly braces {} specify how many occurrences of the characters to find.

{n} finds an exact number (such as 2) of the preceding character or expression.

{n,} finds at least n occurrences (such as 3) of the preceding character or expression.

{n,n} finds from n to n occurrences (such as 3 to 5) of the preceding character or expression.

@ finds one or more occurrences of the preceding character or expression.

Here's a parting tip: What would happen if we put a lowercase rather than a capital G at the beginning of our string? Word wouldn't find the misspelled names. Why? Because with "Use Pattern Matching" turned on, Word automatically matches case--a useful thing to know.

That brings us to the subject of finding a range of characters--something we'll talk about next week.

Subscriber Allene Goforth (agoforth@aros.net) wrote:

"I use your 'Searching with Microsoft Word's Built-In Codes' list all the time, but Word's restrictions on what codes can be used in the 'Replace with' box are a pain. I'd love to see an issue of Editorium Update that deals with wildcard searching."

Thanks for the suggestion, Allene. Here goes:

When I was in the fifth grade in wintry Idaho, rather than venturing out into the cold, some fellow students and I often spent recess playing poker. (Did our teacher know about this? I can't remember.) Being *extremely* sophisticated players, we often designated jokers, deuces, *and* one-eyed jacks as wild cards--that is, they could represent any card in the deck. With the help of these wild cards, we had plenty of royal flushes, hands with five aces, and so on. Now that was poker!

Microsoft Word, too, has a bunch of "wild cards" (which Microsoft spells as one word) that you can use to find various combinations of characters in a document. Wildcards can get pretty complicated, but this week we'll cover just the basics.

The simplest wildcard is the question mark (?), which represents any single character. If you want to see how it works, try this:

1. Open a document with some text that you can play around with.

2. Click the "Edit" menu.

3. Click "Find."

4. In the "Find What" box, enter a question mark (?).

5. Put a checkmark in the "Use Pattern Matching" box. (You may need to click the "More" button first.) Checking this box tells Microsoft Word that you're going to use a wildcard. If you didn't check the box, Microsoft Word would assume you were trying to find a question mark.

6. Click the "Find" button.

Microsoft Word will find the first character after your cursor position. Click the "Find" button again. Microsoft Word will find the next character. And so on.

That doesn't seem very useful, but let's suppose you're editing a document that was scanned from a magazine article and is riddled with typos. You notice that the word "but" shows up in various ways, including "bat" and "bet." Let's say that this is a technical article with no references to baseball, winged mammals, or games of chance, so you decide to use the ? wildcard to find "bat" and "bet" and replace them in a single pass. Here's the procedure:

1. Click the "Edit" menu.

2. Click "Replace."

3. Enter "b?t" in the "Find What" box.

4. Enter "but" in the "Replace With" box.

5. Put a checkmark in the "Use Pattern Matching Box."

6. Click the "Replace All" button.

Both "bat" and "bet" will be replaced with "but." The problem is, so will "bit." And, unfortunately, since you can't specify "Find Whole Words Only" when the "Use Pattern Matching" box is checked, Microsoft Word will replace "better" with "butter," "combat" with "combut," and who knows what else. So, instead of clicking the "Replace All" button, you should click the "Replace" button for each individual item as needed.

Now you begin to see the power--and the danger--of using wildcards. Like cutthroat poker, they are not for the faint of heart. But if you know what you're doing, they can be very useful. Unfortunately, they won't help much in the "Replace With" box. In fact, you can't use them there at all. Why? Because Word has no way of knowing what you want them to represent.

Let's say you want to find "but" and replace it with either "bet" or "bat," so you put "b?t" in the "Replace With" box and click the "Replace All" button. Word doesn't know whether you want to replace "but" with "bet" or "bat," so it just replaces it with the actual text "b?t." So, basically, the only thing you can use in the "Replace With" box is actual text or certain built-in codes, mentioned earlier. You can get the list of codes here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1703968584

Next week I'll explain wildcard searching in more depth. Until then, here's a list of wildcards for you to play with (on some junk text--don't use a real document):

? Finds any single character:

"c?t" finds "cat," "cut," and "cot."

* Finds any string of characters:

"b*d" finds "bad," "bread," and "bewildered."

[ ] Finds *one* of the specified characters:

"b[ai]t" finds "bat" and "bit" but not "bet."

[-] Finds any single character in the specified range (which must be in ascending order):

"[l-r]ight" finds "light," "might," "night," and "right" (and "oight," "pight," and "qight," if they exist).

[!] Finds any single character *except* those specified:

"m[!u]st" finds "mist" and "most" but not "must."

"t[!ou]ck" finds "tack" and "tick" but not "tock" or "tuck."

[!x-z] Finds any single character *except* those in the specified range:

"t[!a-m]ck" finds "tock" and "tuck" but not "tack" or "tick."

{n} Finds *exactly* n occurrences of the previous character or expression:

"re{2}d" finds "reed" but not "red."

{n,} Finds *at least* n occurrences of the previous character or expression:

"re{1,}d" finds "red" and "reed."

{n,m} Finds from n to m occurrences of the previous character or expression:

"10{1,3}" finds "10," "100," and "1000."

@ Finds one or more occurrences of the previous character or expression:

"me@t" finds "met" and "meet."

< Finds the beginning of a word:

"

Finds the end of a word:

"in>" finds "in" and "main" but not "inspiring."

Last week I explained how to use Word's Rand feature to create sample text ("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") that you can use for various purposes. You can read last week's newsletter here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705763701

I neglected to mention that for the Rand feature to work, "Replace text as you type" must be turned on under Tools > AutoCorrect. If you tried using Rand but nothing happened, you don't have it turned on. Of course, you may not *want* it turned on because then Word automatically makes certain "corrections" that you may not want. If you're editing in Word, that can be a disaster. For more information on how to prevent such problems, see "When Word Gets in the Way" in the very first issue of Editorium Update:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700237543

If you turn off "Replace text as you type," you can still use the traditional "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" sample text included in last week's newsletter. Subscriber Karen L. Bojda of Bojda Editorial & Writing Services (http://www.bojda.f2s.com) sent this helpful suggestion for doing so:

"Depending on your layout, repeating the 'quick brown fox' creates columns of words and rivers instead of a nice sample layout. So I just made an AutoText entry for the 'Lorem' text, which works whether AutoCorrect is on or not."

Thinking that this was a great idea, I immediately followed suit. Now, whenever I need some sample text to work with, I just type the word "lorem" into my document and press the F3 key. Presto! If you'd like to do this, here's how to set it up:

1. Copy and paste the "Lorem" text into a Word document (I've included a nice, long version at the end of this article).

2. Select the "Lorem" text.

3. In Word 97 or later, click the "Insert" menu at the top of your Word screen. In Word 95 or earlier, click the "Edit" menu.

4. Click "AutoText."

5. In Word 97 or later, click "New."

6. In the box labeled "Please name your AutoText entry" (just "Name" in Word 95 or earlier), type "lorem."

7. In Word 95 or earlier, make sure the box labeled "Make AutoText Entry Available To" shows "All Documents (Normal.dot)."

8. In Word 97 or later, click the "OK" button. In Word 95 or earlier, click the "Add" button.

Now, when you need some sample text, do this:

1. Type "lorem" into your document.

2. Press the F3 key.

The "Lorem" text will be inserted into your document.

Karen also sent this caution: "If you're going to address AutoText entries in an upcoming newsletter, I found the way Word files them by style to be at first baffling and then annoying, and I think a heads-up about that would be worthwhile. I avoid adding AutoText entries casually. Instead, I first create a style that has a meaningful name, such as 'sample text' or 'math symbols.' Then I format the text I want to add using that style, so that the AutoText entry gets filed under a heading that is more meaningful than 'Normal' or 'Body Text.' The style itself can then be deleted."

Many thanks to Karen for this useful information.

Here's a three-paragraph version of the "Lorem" text that you can use to create an AutoText entry (after deleting the extraneous email carriage returns at the ends of the lines):

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Working in Microsoft Word, I often need some "junk" text to play around with, for various reasons:

* I'm designing a document and don't want to get bogged down in what the text actually says.

* I'm creating a template with various paragraph styles and need to see what they will look like.

* I'm creating a macro and need some text for testing purposes.

* I'm trying to learn more about some feature of Microsoft Word and don't want to practice on a real document.

Microsoft Word 97, 98, 2000, and 2001 include an undocumented feature that generates all of the sample text I need. Maybe you'll find it helpful too. To use it, type the following line into a Word document and press the ENTER key:

=Rand(1,1)

Word will insert the following text into your document:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

(As you probably know, this sentence includes every letter in the alphabet and is sometimes used for typing practice.)

Need more than one sentence? You can specify how many sentences you need by changing the last number in the Rand statement. For example, if you needed five sentences, you could type this--

=Rand(1,5)

--which would produce this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Need more than one paragraph? You can specify how many paragraphs you need by changing the first number in the Rand statement. For example, if you needed two paragraphs (with five sentences in each one), you could type this--

=Rand(2,5)

--which would produce this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

In other words, the first number specifies the number of paragraphs you want to insert; the second number specifies the number of sentences you want to include in those paragraphs.

If you're using Word 95 or lower (or if you're tired of that quick brown fox), you can use the traditional Latin "Lorem ipsum dolor . . . ," which has been used as placeholder text for centuries:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ulliam corper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem veleum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel willum lunombro dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

If you're curious about this, it's a garbled quotation from Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Good and Bad), book 1, paragraph 32, which reads, "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit," meaning, "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain." The book was popular during the Renaissance, when the passage was used in a book of type samples for that wonderful new technology, printing.

If your Latin is good enough (unlike mine), you can read Cicero's complete text (or just get a whole bunch of great sample text) here:

http://patriot.net/~lillard/cp/cic.fin.html

If you want to see a beautiful collection of classic type samples, check out Giambattista Bodoni's Typographic Manual at Octavo:

http://www.octavo.com/collection/bodtip.html

And for more information on sample text, see Jacci Howard Bear's article at About.com:

http://www.desktoppub.about.com/compute/desktoppub/library/weekly/aa051199.htm

This week subscriber Doug Clapp, proprietor of PocketPCpress (http://www.pocketpcpress.com/), wrote with an interesting question. He'd received a book that had been typeset in QuarkXPress (Doug didn't have QuarkXPress) and sent to him as a "stuffed" (.sit) Macintosh file (Doug didn't have the StuffIt program or a Macintosh). What Doug *needed* was an unstuffed Microsoft Word document that he could use on his PC.

If you're ever in the same predicament, there *is* a way out. Even better, it's (relatively) easy, and it's free!

First, you'll need StuffIt for Windows, which will "unstuff" that stuffed file. (StuffIt is a file compression program similar to WinZip.) You can download a trial version here:

http://www.aladdinsys.com/stuffitwin/index.html

When you install the program, it will ask if you have a "serial number" password, but you can click "No" to install in "demo mode." Then you can use the program free of charge for 30 days. (After that, you can register the program for a reasonable price if you want to keep using it.)

To unstuff the file, simply drag and drop it to the "Aladdin Expander" icon on your Windows desktop. The unstuffed file will then appear on your desktop as well.

Next, you'll need to convert the unstuffed file from QuarkXPress to Word. That means you'll need the QuarkXPress 4.1 Demo program for Windows, which you can download here:

http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/demos.html

The name of the program to download is "QuarkXPress and QuarkXPress Passport 4.1 Demo (Win)." The download page explains that the "Save" function of the demo program has been disabled, but don't worry about that. To download and install the program, read and follow the instructions here:

http://www.quark.com/support/downloads/instructions.html

After you've installed the QuarkXPress demo, follow this procedure:

1. Start the QuarkXPress demo.

2. Click the "File" menu.

3. Click "Open."

4. Find and open the unstuffed file that you want to convert to a Word document.

5. Click the "File" menu.

6. Click "Save Text" (which is different from the disabled "Save").

7. Save the text as a Word document, which will preserve styles and other formatting.

And there you have it! Now you can open the file in Microsoft Word and do what you need to do.

The downside to getting the QuarkXPress demo is that it's 23 megs. If you have fast Internet access, no problem. On a slow modem, though, the download may take several hours. An alternative is to request a demo CD from Quark, which you can do at their Web site. The QuarkXPress demo will run forever, but you can't use it to save QuarkXPress documents. You *can,* however, use it as a wonderful Quark-to-Word converter whenever the need arises.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Subscriber Dwight Purdy sent information about a program that you may find useful if, like me, you're prone to hitting certain keys accidentally:

"While reviewing some of our long-ago discussions, I decided to go back to www.Phoebusnet.com to see if there was anything happening to their sMaRTcaPs program. As it turns out, there are some things which they have done with it, including branching out to your personal nemesis, the Insert key. The price for this gem is now $5.00. I couldn't resist that, so I downloaded it. If you hit the insert key, it tells you so! Ditto for Caps Lock and Num Lock, and all of them also respond audibly to holding them down for a moment. I haven't had time to explore what other little extras might be there, but this is a 'must have'."

Thanks for the tip, Dwight.

An important part of editing is marking type specification levels in a manuscript. The Chicago Manual of Style describes the process like this:

"Each item in the opening of an article or of a preface, chapter . . . , appendix, or other section of a book (title, chapter number, etc.) is marked for its particular type size, style, and placement. . . . Specifications for text, subheads, block quotations, and similar elements must also be given, at least at the first occurrence of each. Thereafter, handwritten 'codes' added during editing identify similar elements for the typesetter. . . . Increasingly, however, a much more abbreviated form of markup is being used that relies on the typesetter to follow directly the design layouts and detailed list of specifications provided by the publisher's design department. All the editor need do is provide, during editing, the traditional codes for elements that would not be obvious to the operator. The various levels of subheads, for instance, must be indicated for the typesetter, usually by circled alphabetical or numerical codes (A, B, C or 1, 2, 3, etc.)." (14th edition, 2.135.)

A footnote adds this:

"Such codes written by hand on the manuscript correspond to the codes used on electronic manuscripts, which are part of the electronic files; both serve the same identifying function. If a manuscript (or printout) coded by hand is to be produced electronically, the handwritten codes are translated into electronic codes."

Now, if you're editing directly in Microsoft Word, you don't *have* any handwritten codes. So how are you going to mark spec levels?

@BODY:Some editors mark them by entering typesetting codes directly into the manuscript, as I've done at the beginning of this paragraph. If you're a QuarkXPress user, you'll probably recognize that code as an XPress Tag. QuarkXPress translates XPress Tags into style sheets, which work a lot like styles in Microsoft Word. Entering all those codes seems like a lot of work, though, even if you have each code in a macro and assign the macros to function keys. Those codes also mess up the pristine appearance of your beautiful Word document, and they may confuse authors and reviewers. There ought to be a better way.

Well, you could just mark spec levels with styles. For example, you could mark part titles with Word's Heading 1 style, chapter titles with Heading 2, and subheads with Heading 3. If you're typesetting in Microsoft Word (some people do), applying styles should take care of all of your paragraph-level formatting.

If you're typesetting in QuarkXPress, however, you may want to try our QuarkConverter program (which is also included with Editor's ToolKit Plus). QuarkConverter adds XPress Tags for all the styles in a document, for character formatting (such as italic and bold), and for various typographic niceties, and it converts special characters (which include dashes and quotation marks) from PC to Macintosh or vice versa. It also converts Word index entries into QuarkXPress index entries, which means you can index in Word but have page numbers in your index reflect the pagination in your QuarkXPress document. You can learn more about QuarkConverter here:

http://www.editorium.com/14846.htm

No matter what typesetting program you use, I'd love to know how you code your electronic manuscripts or otherwise prepare them for typesetting, and I'd be glad to include your comments in our next newsletter. If you're willing to share your procedure, please send an email message here: mailto:hints [at symbol] editorium.com. Thanks!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Subscriber Audrey Dorsch (exchange@ica.net) sent this recommendation for a mouse:

"I put up with a temperamental mouse for years. (Don't ask me why except for ingrained thrift that resists replacing anything as long as it still functions.) When it finally gave up the ghost I treated myself to a Logitech cordless mouse with scrolling wheel and an extra, thumb-operated, button. All the buttons are programmable for whatever function I choose. What a joy. Worth every penny of the $85(CDN) it cost."

Maarten Reilingh (maarten@ulster.net) kindly provided the procedure for changing screen resolution and other settings on a Macintosh:

"To change screen resolution use the Monitor control in the Monitors and Sound control panel.

"To change menu and other display fonts and font sizes use the Appearance control panel (Fonts tab).

"Control panels may be accessed in various ways depending on how your OS is configured, but usually they are available from the Apple pull-down menu. Once you open these control panels, everything else is pretty intuitive; just select the desired settings."

Hilary Powers (hilarypowers@earthlink.net) described her interesting uses of voice-recognition software:

"I get a lot of mileage out of an elderly voice command program called Kurzweil Voice Pro. It doesn't do continuous dictation - but I'm not really into dictation anyway, and it's fine for three or four words at a time.

"It's brilliant for control of the machine, as it can fool virtually any Windows program into thinking its input is really coming from the mouse or the keyboard. "Page-down!" would do just what your correspondent wants, with no special programming or training (beyond the basic read-in of the voice).

"And you can record any sequence of keystrokes and call it anything you want. Fr'example, I have 'Style-that!' pick up the selected text, move to the style sheet document, and drop the text there. Then (after I enter the part of speech or do whatever note-taking I need re the style item) 'Head-on-back!' moves the insertion point in the style sheet to a new line, returns to the main file, and deselects the text.

"There needn't be any externally obvious relationship between what you say and what you get - if your author makes a consistent mistake that's too complex to correct with a search&replace operation or a macro that runs through the whole file, but always takes the same keystrokes to fix once you find it, you can call it something satisfying like 'Curl-up-and-die!' Then you put your insertion point where the sequence needs to begin, speak rudely to your computer, and watch it do the work. Very satisfying....

"I've actually bought L&H Voice Express, which is supposed to do all this and continuous dictation too, but haven't been able to make it work for me -- mainly because I'm too comfortable with Kurzweil to go through the learning curve, but also because it seems to be much more sensitive to its microphone input. Headsets drive me buggy, and KV works happily enough with a good desk mike cantilevered out so it sits close to my mouth. L&H VE gets confused and grumpy with the same system, so it's not predictable enough to feel worth working with. L&H bought Kurzweil a couple of years ago, and was at least for a while selling the Kurzweil product as well as its own. Dunno if it's still available, but it might be worth a try."

Thanks to all for their suggestions.

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.