Category Archives: Editing

As I’ve trained editors working in Microsoft Word, I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon: Left to their own devices, some editors will scroll for pages using only the UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW keys (the cursor keys). That’s like using a toothbrush to paint your house. This is going to sound pretty basic, but there’s a […]

When I edit a document in Microsoft Word, I do everything I can from the keyboard. I avoid using the mouse because reaching over to get it interrupts the flow of work and slows me down. Sometimes, though, for a change of pace, I like to see how much editing I can do without even […]

Microsoft Word comes with a collection of secret macros. Well, okay, they’re not really secret, but they’re often overlooked. And they can be pretty useful if you know they exist and understand how to use them. Editors may be particularly interested in the following: FindSymbol: A macro that allows you to find and replace symbols […]

One of the advantages of editing on paper is that you can lay out the various pages, one here, one there, for reference and comparison with each other. For example, you may need to refer to a certain paragraph on page 10 while editing a paragraph on page 300. On the computer, this is a […]

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: […]