Category Archives: Editing

Several readers have written to complain about Microsoft’s “enhancements” of various features in Word 2002. Most notably, the Comments and Revision Tracking features are broken. I’ve written about these here: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1710381892 http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711737396 Reader Ned Humphrey suggested starting a campaign to get Microsoft to reverse itself on such “disimprovements,” which I thought was a great idea. […]

I’ve occasionally mentioned this in passing, but based on recent questions from readers, it seems worth making a fuss about: Yes, you *can* use a carriage return in a wildcard search. People who use Microsoft Word often get stymied by this. They try doing a wildcard search with a string like this one: ^pSee(*)^p What […]

I work with lots of authors who use WordPerfect. Sometimes they pass their documents on to colleagues who use Microsoft Word. That wouldn’t be a problem if the authors would first save their documents in Word format. But they don’t, and their colleagues work on the documents in Word, pass them around to others, and […]

Before Word 2002, it was possible to set revision-tracking colors and formatting separately for inserted and deleted text. The procedure was simple: 1. Click Tools / Track Changes / Highlight Changes / Options. 2. Select “Mark” (bold, italic, underline, or double underline) for “Inserted text.” 3. Select “Color” (various) for “Inserted text.” 4. Select “Mark” […]

Some weeks ago I suggested the need for a “wildcard dictionary” and asked readers to send in their contributions. You can read that article here: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711394495 I heard from Rosalie Wells, Hilary Powers, Eric Fletcher, Allene Goforth, Michael Coleman, and Steve Hudson, who sent some great wildcard strings and commentary on their use. Many thanks […]

After publishing last week’s article on creating a standard style list, I received such amazing feedback that I decided to dispense with a feature article this week and go straight to the Readers Write column. There’s enough information here to keep you reading, thinking, and implementing for some time, and I owe my thanks in […]

Last week’s newsletter explained the importance of using styles consistently in Microsoft Word, with a promise that this week I’d share my standard style list. As you look at the list, keep in mind that it was developed for styling books. If you work mostly on journals or magazines, your list will probably look quite […]

In the early days of printing, the “source” for the words on a printed page was the metal type used in the press. Once the pages had been printed, the type was removed from the printing forms and resorted into bins, completely destroying the source text. Producing a new edition of the book meant setting, […]

If you’ve been reading Editorium Update for a while, you know about wildcard searches and some of the neat things you can do with them. If you don’t know about them, you can learn by reading these past issues of the newsletter: http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705963026 http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706069286 http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706167662 http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706267069 http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706365638 http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706458823 Even though I use wildcard searches all […]