Category Archives: Microsoft Word

Add-Ins from Microsoft

By Jack Lyon | Published: June 15, 2023

By Jack Lyon, the Editorium I’ve created lots of Microsoft Word add-ins at the Editorium, but did you know that Microsoft also provides add-ins, many of them free? Here’s how to explore and use these add-ins right from within Microsoft Word. In the search bar at the top of your Word window, enter “add-in.” You’ll […]

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Getting a Bird’s-Eye View on Your Document

By Jack Lyon | Published: December 16, 2022

By Jack Lyon, the Editorium Back in the days of editing on paper, I would sometimes spread manuscript pages out on my desk to get a bird’s-eye view of the text I was working on. This could be useful for several reasons: To see if long stretches of text needed to be broken down into […]

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Converting Fields to Regular Text (and Why That Matters)

By Jack Lyon | Published: December 9, 2022

By Jack Lyon, the Editorium Microsoft Word documents often include fields that authors use to insert text that isn’t really text: dates, page references, author names, and much more. If you’re editing a document that includes text copied and pasted from a web page (quite frequent these days), the text probably includes hyperlink fields, perhaps […]

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How to Add a Macro to Word and Its QAT (Quick Access Toolbar)

By Jack Lyon | Published: November 17, 2022

Microsoft Word’s macro features make it possible to turn Word into a lean, mean editing machine. You’ll find lots of free editing macros online (see below for some excellent sources). But how can you add a macro to Microsoft Word so it will be available when you need it? Here’s the procedure: Copy the text […]

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Wildcard Secrets Revisited

By Jack Lyon | Published: November 2, 2022

A few weeks ago I sent out an article called "Three Wildcard Secrets." I thought they were pretty good secrets, too! You can see them here. In a nutshell, here are the first two: The wildcard range [A-z], meant to find any uppercase or lowercase letter, will not find accented letters. You have to use […]

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Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word

By Jack Lyon | Published: October 8, 2015

If you’re editing or writing in Microsoft Word, you need to understand Word’s advanced search features. These features are extremely powerful, but they’re also virtually undocumented; most explanations of their use have been limited to a simple table of wildcards. My new book, Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, explains in detail how you can use […]

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Better word processing: The Chicago Manual of Style interview

By Jack Lyon | Published: August 18, 2015

The Chicago Manual of Style “Shop Talk” column recently noted: “When it comes to word processing, CMOS users probably represent every level of expertise (or nonexpertise), but regardless of skill level, we all experience frustration at times when we don’t know how to accomplish a task on our computers. Often we do something the way […]

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Spelunking in Microsoft Word

By Jack Lyon | Published: November 7, 2014

Laura Poole’s Editorial Bootcamp Before getting into today’s main article (“Spelunking in Microsoft Word”), I want to mention a great resource: master copyeditor Laura Poole’s Editorial Bootcamp, which covers everything from style guides and software to style sheets and spelling. I had the good fortune to sit in on one of Laura’s sessions at this […]

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Technology

By Jack Lyon | Published: March 5, 2003

John Henry was hammering on the right side, The big steam drill on the left, Before that steam drill could beat him down, He hammered his fool self to death. American folk song “John Henry” pits man against machine in drilling a tunnel for the railroad. John Henry wins the contest, but the effort costs […]

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Shifting Styles, Part 3

By Jack Lyon | Published: May 1, 2002

You’re working away, editing a client’s document, and decide to modify the Heading 1 style to use a Goudy typeface. Whoa! Now the Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles are in Goudy as well. What’s going on here? What’s going on is that your client has made the Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles “based […]

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