Category Archives: Editing

Editorium Update usually just assumes that you’re editing on the computer, specifically in Microsoft Word. But *why* should you edit on the computer? Because, to attain the same level of quality, it’s cheaper than editing on paper–cheaper in money, time, and stress. I’ve heard editors complain that they don’t like to edit on the computer […]

Last week we talked about Microsoft Word’s Spike feature, which lets you cut as many blocks of text as you want (like sticking them on a spike) and then paste them all at once in your chosen location. You can read last week’s newsletter here: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1701584333 But what if you want to *copy* rather than […]

Remember when editors wore green celluloid visors and impaled pieces of paper on a shiny steel spike? Word, too, has a spike, but it’s buried so deep that most Word users have never even heard of it. The Spike is a *cumulative* cut and paste. It lets you cut as many blocks of text as […]

In our last newsletter, I promised to tell you about Word’s Extend Selection feature, which I’ve assigned to the Insert key in our Editor’s ToolKit program. Extend Selection, a terrific tool, is often overlooked because it’s not included on a menu or a toolbar. It’s also not covered well in Word’s documentation (so what else […]

In our last newsletter, I complained about accidentally hitting the Insert key and thus turning on Overstrike by mistake. Microsoft Word lets you reassign the Insert key to paste the contents of the Clipboard, but that brings its own set of problems. Subscriber Kathy Anderson suggested using the Insert key as an additional Delete key. […]

It happens all the time: I’m editing merrily along in Microsoft Word only to discover that I’ve accidentally hit the Insert key, turning on Overstrike. Now I’ve typed over the top of a whole sentence and who knows what else. Aarrgh! I wish I could rip that key right off my keyboard. After I calm […]

A longtime, highly skilled editor I know likes to keep track of how much she’s tightened a manuscript, and she does it by counting words or pages as she works. This is especially useful if a publication (a magazine, for example) has only so much room for a particular article. But it may also be […]

If you’re like me, you’ve often made an editorial correction in Microsoft Word and then, five pages later, changed your mind. But where was that correction? Word includes a feature that will take you back to your last change, then the change before that, and so on, cycling through the last four changes in your […]

It’s hard to beat Microsoft Word if you’re editing a document with footnotes or endnotes. If you add or delete a note, the other notes renumber automatically (assuming the notes haven’t been typed as body text and numbered manually), and the program provides a notes “pane” that allows you to edit all of your notes […]

Just another pretty face? Nothing wrong with that. If you’re editing in Microsoft Word, why not use a typeface that you’re comfortable reading and that makes editing easy? (Unless, of course, you’re editing documents that have already been carefully formatted for typesetting.) You can always apply the final typeface and formatting after your editing is […]