Typesetting

There are 18 posts filed in Typesetting (this is page 2 of 2).

Don't Break That Word!

I've recently been editing a long, scholarly tome that, for reasons I'll discuss in a future newsletter, my co-workers and I decided to typeset in Microsoft Word, following the techniques explained here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708956278

Our intrepid typesetter has been fairly content except for one thing: there seems to be no way to keep a word from breaking at the end of a line. Microsoft Word happily breaks "Je-sus" and "Bud-dha," for example, which we'd like to avoid. We could force a word down with a soft return, but that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution. Clever idea: how about putting an optional hyphen (CTRL + -) at the *beginning* of the word? That works, but it also *displays* a hyphen at the beginning of the word, which certainly won't do. Can the optional hyphen go at the end of the word? No, that doesn't work at all. So where might we find an answer?

Well, Unicode fonts include all kinds of interesting things. Would they, by chance, include a zero-width nonbreaking space? If we had one of those, we could insert it at the spot where we didn't want a break to occur. I went to Alan Wood's spectacular Unicode Resources site and searched for "zero-width nonbreaking space":

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/search.html

There it was, not under general punctuation but as the last entry under Arabic Presentation Forms, of all things:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/arabic_presentation_forms_b.html

The Web site told me the decimal number (65279) and hex number (FEFF) of the character, so I fired up Word 2002 (XP) and entered the character by typing the hex number followed by ALT + x. With nonprinting characters showing, I could see the little beauty--it looked like a gray box inside a gray box. When nonprinting characters *weren't* showing, the character was invisible, since it had no width. And sure enough, when I put the character into a word and then pushed that word to the end of the line, the word refused to break. Success!

I sent a sample to Word guru Steve Hudson, who tested the idea in various ways and pronounced it good. Thanks, Steve! So now I share this little marvel with you. If you'd like to see the character in action (and get a sample of the character that you can copy and use in your own documents), you can download the following document to play around with:

http://www.editorium.com/ftp/nonbreaking.zip

After you download, unzip, and open the document, notice the automatically hyphenated "excellent" on the first line. Now add a character somewhere in the middle of the *second* line--enough to make the second "excellent" break. But it won't!

Incidentally, the character works in Word 2000 and later versions as long as you have Unicode fonts installed on your computer. You can learn more here:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html

Please note that using this character within a word will mess up spell-checking for that word, so you might want to check spelling *before* inserting the character hither and yon. If you need to get rid of the characters, display nonprinting characters; then search for ^u65279 and replace with nothing.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article on finding and replacing weird WordPerfect characters, Jane Lyle (jlyle@indiana.edu), managing editor at Indiana University Press, sent the following macro. Thanks, Jane! The macro does its work by searching for characters formatted in the WP TypographicSymbols font, and it includes some characters that last week's macro overlooked. If you don't know how to use such macros, you can find out here.

'MACRO BEGINS HERE

' WPTyp Macro

' Macro recorded 10/25/2001 by Jane Lyle

'
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = ""

.Replacement.Text = ""

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = False

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "A"

.Replacement.Text = """"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "@"

.Replacement.Text = """"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = ">"

.Replacement.Text = "'"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "="

.Replacement.Text = "'"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "B"

.Replacement.Text = "^="

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "C"

.Replacement.Text = "^+"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "?"

.Replacement.Text = """"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

.Replacement.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"

.Font.Name = "WP TypographicSymbols"

.Text = "Y"

.Replacement.Text = ". . ."

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

'MACRO ENDS HERE

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

You can find lots of interesting spaces, hyphens, and other Unicode characters here:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/general_punctuation.html

Ligatures in Microsoft Word

Ligatures, in case you didn't know, are letters that have been mashed together as one character. Why would anyone want that? For aesthetic reasons. (Yes, there is an ae ligature for words like "aesthetic.") The ligatures used most often are fi and fl, accompanied by their friends ff, ffi, and ffl. That's because these letter combinations really do look kind of ugly in many fonts, with the dot on the i running into the top of the preceding f, and so on.

You can set ligatures automatically in dedicated typesetting programs like QuarkXPress and InDesign. In Microsoft Word, it's not so simple. But it is possible. Here's how:

1. Have a font that includes ligatures. You probably already have several, even if you don't know it.

2. In Microsoft Word, click "Insert."

3. Click "Symbol."

4. On the "Symbols" tab, make sure there's a "Subset" dropdown list on the right. If there's not, pick a different font from the "Font" list on the left. (If you've got Palatino Linotype, you've hit the jackpot.)

5. Scroll down the "Subset" list until you find a subset called "Alphabetic Presentation Forms." Or, easier still, click in the list and then press the "A" key on your keyboard until you come to "Alphabetic Presentation Forms."

6. Somewhere in the characters displayed will be some ligatures, probably fi and fl but maybe others as well. Click one of them, then click "Insert," and then click "Close."

You should now have a ligature in your document--in Microsoft Word, of all places! Of course, you'll want to use ligatures from a font that you're using for the rest of your document so that everything matches up nice and pretty. You'll probably be surprised at how good the ligatures look.

I doubt that you'll want to insert all those ligatures by hand in an existing document. Instead, you can insert them using Word's Find and Replace feature. For example, you can find "fi" and replace it with the fi ligature character. If the ffi and ffl ligatures are available, you should find and replace those character combinations *before* doing fi, fl, and ff. Otherwise, the fi, fl, and ff in the ffi and ffl letter combinations will be replaced with the fi, fl, and ff ligatures--not good. (Try saying that last sentence three times really fast.) If the ffi and ffl ligatures are *not* available, you may not want to use fi and fl either, for the same reason. (If you like, you can record the whole Find and Replace procedure as a macro that you can use again on future projects.)

If you need more information about finding and replacing special (Unicode) characters, you'll find it here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1710421080

And now, a caution. Using ligatures will foul up spell-checking for the words in which they are used, because Word will see the words as misspelled. For that and other reasons, you should keep a backup of your original file as a source document and consider the file containing ligatures as a presentation document. You can learn more about this here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1709632986

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Last week's newsletter included an article on making a wildcard dictionary and asking for your help in compiling one by submitting your favorite wildcard strings with a brief explanation of what they do. Some readers have been kind enough to send them in, but others are still holding out. Come on guys--you know who you are! Please send your niftiest wildcard creations here: mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com. Thanks!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Want to see the old-fashioned approach to using ligatures? Here's the scoop:

http://www.orbitals.com/self/ligature/ligature.htm

Will Harris presents an informative and persuasive argument *against* using ligatures at his strikingly designed Web site:

http://www.will-harris.com/ligatures.htm

Shifting Styles, Part 3

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 on" the Heading 1 style. If you don't know how this works, you'll be scratching your head over the changing formats. If you *do* know how it works, you can use it to ensure consistent formatting throughout a document.

Let's say you want all of your headings to be set in Baskerville. It's true that you could go through and set Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Heading 4, Heading 5, Heading 6, Heading 7, Heading 8, and Heading 9 (whew!) all to use that font (in varying point sizes, say). But now what if you want to switch to Palatino? Do you really have to go through and modify all of those styles again? Not if you originally based them all on Heading 1. If you did that, all you have to do is change the font for Heading 1, and all of your other heading styles will change as well. Pretty neat! Here's how to do it:

  1. Click the "Format" menu.
  2. Click "Style."
  3. In the Styles list, click the style (Heading 2, for example) that you want to base on another style (such as Heading 1).
  4. Click the "Modify" button.
  5. In the "Based on" dropdown list, click the style on which you want to base the current style.
  6. Click the "OK" button.
  7. Click the "Close" button.

Now, whenever you modify the "parent" style (Heading 1), the "child" style (Heading 2) will be modified automatically.

Please note, however, that any changes you make to the "child" style will override the attributes of the "parent" style. For example, if Heading 1 is set to 18 points, you can still modify Heading 2 (based on Heading 1) as 14 points. If you do that, though, you may wonder how to get rid of the override if you need to. Here's the secret: change the attribute in Heading 2 back to the way it's set in Heading 1 (14 points back to 18 points). The "child" style will simply pick up its attributes from the "parent style" once again.

This "based on" feature is extremely useful. You can use it to set up whole families of styles that are based on a "parent" style. For example, you might want to set up a family of heading styles, a family of body text styles, and a family of list styles, and then store them all in a special template. Just be sure to use a naming convention that makes it easy to remember which styles are the "parents." The easiest way to do this may be to use "1" to designate "parent" styles: Heading 1, Body Text 1, List 1, and so on. Then you can use other numbers (2, 3, 4) to indicate "child" styles.

Now, when your styles start shifting, you'll be happy rather than sad.

READERS WRITE

Last week's newsletter discussed Word's "Automatically update" feature for styles. In the newsletter, I suggested turning on the feature while designing a document but turning off the feature while writing or editing. If you've got lots of styles, however, this can get pretty tedious. Gary Frieder, a Microsoft Word MVP at Woody's Lounge (http://www.wopr.com) created a macro to turn off updating for all styles, and Bill Rubidge edited the macro to turn on updating. Thanks to Bill for sending the macros, and thanks to Gary for giving permission to use them. Enjoy!

'MACRO THAT CRAWLS ALL THE STYLES AND TURNS AUTO-UPDATE ON
Public Sub TurnOnAutomaticallyUpdate()
' TurnOnAutomaticallyUpdate Macro
' Created by Gary Frieder, edited by Bill Rubidge to turn on, not off
Dim aSty As Style
For Each aSty In ActiveDocument.Styles
   If aSty.Type = wdStyleTypeParagraph Then
   aSty.AutomaticallyUpdate = True
   End If
Next aSty
End Sub
 'MACRO THAT CRAWLS ALL THE STYLES AND TURNS AUTO-UPDATE OFF
Public Sub RemoveAutomaticallyUpdate()
' RemoveAutomaticallyUpdate Macro
' Created by Gary Frieder
Dim aSty As Style
For Each aSty In ActiveDocument.Styles
   If aSty.Type = wdStyleTypeParagraph Then
   aSty.AutomaticallyUpdate = False
   End If
Next aSty
End Sub

RESOURCES

Microsoft Product Support Services is actually one of my favorite places to find information about using Microsoft Word:

http://support.microsoft.com/

I just use the dropdown list on the left to select the version of Word I want to learn about (Word 2000, for example). Then I type some key words in the box just below that ("modify styles," for example), and click "Search now." The site has a lot of information, although you may have to dig to find just what you need.

Shifting Styles

Scene 1: You go through your document, fine-tuning its style formatting to the peak of perfection. Then you carefully save your document for posterity.

Scene 2: A week later, you open your document. What the . . . ? All of your styles have shifted back to their original formatting. You'll have to do all of that work over again! And how can you be sure it will stick?

Here's the secret:

1. Open the document.

2. Click "Tools > Templates and Add-Ins."

3. *Remove* that dadburned checkmark in the box labeled "Automatically update document styles."

4. Resave your document.

The next time you open the document, your exquisite style formatting will remain intact.

So what's the point of the "Automatically update document styles" feature? Well, let's say that your boss just loves to tinker with the look of your company's forms and stationery, mandating Helvetica one week and Comic Sans the next. If you turn on "Automatically update document styles" for every company document you create, changing the formatting is a snap. Just open the template on which the documents are based, modify the styles, and resave the template. The next time you open one of those documents, its styles will automatically update to match those of the template.

It's a slick feature, as long as you know when--and when not--to use it. And now you do!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading about the fraction macro in last week's newsletter, Bill Rubidge (william.rubidge.es.80@aya.yale.edu) wrote:

The fraction macro is an excellent start, but I suspect many of your readers would need to add an additional search process at the beginning of the macro, to search for dates formatted with slashes and mark those so that they do not get converted to these fancy fractions.

Without much thought, I would imagine you would need to run a wildcard search for:

([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,4}) (Note that the last item, the year, has space for up to four digits, being used a lot lately as we turn centuries.)

I would then (probably crudely) replace with 1DATESLASH2DATESLASH3DATESLASH

Then run the macro you provide, but add a final replace at the end to replace DATESLASH with / to get back my XX/XX/XX dates.

It's worth reminding readers that the most challenging part of writing any of these search and replace macros is making sure that you write your search criteria and/or mark out items that might otherwise be unintentionally replaced.

Many thanks to Bill for this important caveat.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

If you don't subscribe to Woody's Office Watch, a free email newsletter from Woody Leonhard, the Grand Poobah of Microsoft Office, you're missing out on advice, tips, and news that no Office user should be without:

http://www.woodyswatch.com

Why not sign up today? While you're there, check out Woody's books and software. You might find just what you need to make your life easier and more productive.

Fraction Macro

Last week's newsletter explained how to make your own typographical fractions in Microsoft Word. You can read about the technique here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1709983687

But if your document is full of plain-text fractions, like these--

1/3 2/3 5/8

--why not let a macro do the work? I owe my thanks to Wordmeister Steve Hudson for the idea. Steve would probably take a more elegant approach, but this macro will definitely work. Enjoy! If you don't know how to use macros like this one, you can learn how here.

And now, the macro:

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "([0-9]@)/([0-9]@)"
.Replacement.Text = "|sp|1|sp|" + ChrW(8260) + "|sb|2|sb|"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find.Replacement.Font
.Superscript = True
.Subscript = False
End With
With Selection.Find
.Text = "|sp|([0-9]@)|sp|"
.Replacement.Text = "1"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find.Replacement.Font
.Superscript = False
.Subscript = True
End With
With Selection.Find
.Text = "|sb|([0-9]@)|sb|"
.Replacement.Text = "1"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

What's basically going on here is that Word uses a wildcard search to find all numbers that have a slash between them:

Find What: ([0-9]@)/([0-9]@)

Then it replaces those numbers with *themselves* surrounded by arbitrary codes denoting superscript (|sp|) and subscript (|sb|). It also replaces the slashes with the fraction bar character, Unicode number 8260:

Replace With: "|sp|1|sp|" + ChrW(8260) + "|sb|2|sb|"

(If you were doing this by hand, you could insert the fraction bar into your document using Insert > Symbol [as explained in last week's newsletter], then copying it, and then pasting it into the Replace dialog's "Replace With" box. The result would look something like this: |sp|1|sp|/|sb|2|sb|)

Finally, the macro uses parentheses to group the numbers so that after they and their surrounding codes are found, the numbers can be replaced by *themselves,* properly formatted and without the codes, using the "Find What Expression" wildcard:

Find What: |sp|([0-9]@)|sp|

Replace With: 1 [formatted as superscript]

Find What: |sb|([0-9]@)|sb|

Replace With: 1 [formatted as subscript]

You can learn more about wildcard searches here:

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

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Gentle reader, I've run into a fairly serious problem that I'm hoping you may have some ideas about. The problem is that QuarkXPress doesn't import Unicode characters--the old 256 are all it will deal with. Several people have asked me if there's a way to find and replace Unicode characters in Word with other lower-level characters that Quark could deal with. For example, if you type a, b, c in Quark and then format it with a Greek font, you get alpha, beta, gamma. Maybe a similar approach could be taken with Unicode characters, if you could figure out what to replace them with in Word (and actually do the replacing) before importing the Word document into Quark. I don't know--this looks like an almost insurmountable problem to me. If you are successfully importing Unicode characters into QuarkXPress, especially using XPress Tag files, I'd love to hear from you. Please write to me here: mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com

Sage Rountree (srountree@dukeupress.edu) wrote:

"When we insert notes to compositor and authors in electronic manuscript files, we want those inserts to be bold and in either angle brackets (for coding and notes to compositor) or curly brackets (for queries to authors). Sometimes, our freelance copyeditors neglect to toggle on the bold for these queries, and we go through and manually convert them to boldface. (By manually, I mean we search for the opening bracket, highlight, and toggle--a big waste of time.)

"I'm able to figure the search-and-replace for toggling short coding with fixed letters (, ) to boldface, but how can I replace all text between the brackets <> and {} *with the brackets themselves* and the text they contain in bold? The substance of the note can sometimes be a few sentences long, and I don't know how to denote that with wildcards. It's like the opposite of the process you outlined in the 10/25/2000 newsletter on replacing with "find what text."

"This has been an interesting mental puzzle for me, but I'm ready to throw in the towel.

Minutes later, before I could respond, Sage wrote again:

"Jack, I spoke too soon about throwing in the towel, and I added the backslash so Word would recognize the angle brackets as characters, not as the start and end of words. To that end, I wrote this macro:

Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

Selection.Find.Replacement.Font.Bold = True

With Selection.Find

.Text = "<*>"

.Replacement.Text = "^&"

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = True

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Many thanks to Sage for this useful macro (which I edited slightly). I'd add that if your comments are between curly brackets, you could replace the sixth line with this:

.Text = "{*}"

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

So, you kind of like all this programming stuff, eh? Want to learn more? There's an excellent tutorial, "Getting to Grips with VBA Basics in 15 Minutes," by Word expert Bill Coan, at the MVPS Web site. You'll find the tutorial here:

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/MacrosVBA/VBABasicsIn15Mins.htm

Fractions

Using fractions has always been a challenge in Microsoft Word. A few (1/2, 1/4, and 3/4) have been readily available. But what about 1/3, 2/3, and other common ones?

Microsoft recommends creating additional fractions by using equation fields or the Equation Editor. You can learn more about these methods here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q137734

Unfortunately, these methods are inadequate, for a couple of reasons:

1. They're ugly. The fractions they create are typographically unacceptable.

2. They're clunky. Using them is a chore, and they create fields or graphics, not actual text.

Fortunately, better methods are available.

ROLL YOUR OWN

The "roll your own" method consists of creating a fraction by hand, using a superscript number, a fraction bar, and a subscript number. Here's how it works:

1. Type the top number of your fraction (the dividend, if you're mathematically inclined).

2. Insert a fraction bar (which is different from [more slanted than] the virgule, diagonal, solidus, slash, or whatever you want to call that character below the question mark on your keyboard). To do this:

a. Click Insert > Symbol.

b. Click the Font list

c. Select "Symbol."

d. Find the number 4 on the top row and count down five squares. See the fraction bar? (ANSI 164.)

e. Click the square containing the fraction bar.

f. Click the "Insert" button.

g. Click the "Close" button.

3. Type the bottom number of your fraction (the divisor). Your fraction should now look like this: 2/3.

4. Select the top number and format it as superscript (Format > Font > Superscript).

5. Select the bottom number and format it as subscript (Format > Font > Subscript).

That's it! Not a bad-looking fraction, if you ask me. And once it exists, you can turn it into an Autocorrect or Autotext entry so you don't have to create it from scratch the next time you want to use it.

UNICODE

Unicode fonts include *lots* of characters, including quite a few fractions. So why not use them? You can learn more about Unicode characters here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1709529895

Here's the easiest way to insert Unicode fractions (if your fonts, operating system, and version of Word support it):

1. Click the Insert menu.

2. Click "Symbol."

3. In the Font list, select a Unicode font, which will display the Subsets list to the right of the Font list and have lots of subsets available (such as Latin-1, Spacing Modifier Letters, and so on).

4. In the Subset list, select "Number Forms."

5. Somewhere in the characters displayed, you should see some fractions. Click the one you want to use.

6. Click the "Insert" button.

7. Click the "Close" button.

There's your fraction. Again, you can turn it into an Autocorrect or Autotext entry for easy access.

If you like entering Unicode characters directly (using ALT + X in Word 2002), here are the Unicode numbers you'll need:

1/3: 2153

2/3: 2154

1/5: 2155

2/5: 2156

3/5: 2157

4/5: 2158

1/6: 2159

5/6: 215A

1/8: 215B

3/8: 215C

5/8: 215D

7/8: 215E

Thanks to Maggie Brown for suggesting this topic.

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READERS WRITE

Jeffrey White wrote:

I am an attorney who writes appellate briefs. That often involves cutting and pasting from other sources. I need to make sure that case names appear in italic. For instance, General Motors Corp. v. Ford Motor Co., 123 F.2d 456 (1990).

It occurs to me that I could use search-replace. Using your discussion of wildcard searching, I have tried to construct a command that will find the most common pattern: One or more words beginning with an initial capital letter, followed by "v. ", followed by one or more capitalized words, ending with a comma.

I have been able get one capitalized word, followed by "v. " Is there any way to ask Word 2000 to find a string of one or more capitalized words?

I responded:

The following string will find three capped words in a row (including any periods, commas, and spaces):

([A-Z][a-z.,]@ [A-Z][a-z.,]@ [A-Z][a-z.,]@ )

However, when you put in the "v. " and then *repeat* the string, like this--

([A-Z][a-z.,]@ [A-Z][a-z.,]@ [A-Z][a-z.,]@ )v. ([A-Z][a-z.,]@ [A-Z][a-z.,]@ [A-Z][a-z.,]@ )

--Word will tell you that the string is "too complex." (Theoretically what you want to do should be possible, but in practice it's not. MS Word just ain't that smart, unfortunately.) I haven't been able to get variations to work either. For example, you'd think that you could use this string to find from 1 to 4 occurrences of a capped word followed by a space:

([A-Z][a-z]@ ){1,4}

But no--at least not in Word 2000. And this *should* work. The wildcard search and replace definitely has some minor bugs, especially with complex searches. I've also tried using the "start of word" and "end of word" wildcards (<, >) without success.

There is a workaround you may be able to use, however:

1. Identify all of the names used in the case names in your document (General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., etc.).

2. Find and Replace them with uppercase abbreviations (GMC, FMC, etc.).

3. Use a wildcard Find and Replace to italicize the abbreviations. To do so, put this (possibly with some tweaking to fit your situation) in the "Find What" box:

(<[A-Z]{2,}>) v. (<[A-Z]{2,}>)

Put this (possibly with some tweaking) in the "Replace With" box:

1 v. 2

Format the "Replace With" box as italic (CTRL + I).

4. Click the "Replace All" button.

5. Find the abbreviations and Replace them with the actual names.

Jeffrey then responded:

Building on your suggestion, the following will select the one capitalized word preceding the v. , along with the rest of the case name.

[A-Z][a-z]@ v. [A-Z]*,

That probably does the job for 90% of my case names. If I replace one at a time, instead of Replace All, I can keep an eye out for preceding words that also need italics. That's still a time savings over a wholly manual edit. Or I can make a second pass, repeating the initial string to find case names beginning with 2 words:

[A-Z][a-z]@ [A-Z][a-z]@ v. [A-Z]*,

And then 3, and so on. It's hard to know when to stop, because some case names are quite lengthy.

Slowly but surely, many law offices have moved from WordPerfect to Word. Those of us who appreciate the value of working smarter appreciate your newsletter and tools.

Thanks to Jeffrey for sending this interesting challenge. To learn more about wildcard searching, see these back issues of

Editorium Update:

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

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RESOURCES

Webopedia bills itself as "the only online dictionary and search engine you need for computer and Internet technology." If you're doing technical editing, you'll probably find it useful:

http://www.webopedia.com

Typesetting with Microsoft Word

So, you've got a client (or a boss) who wants you to create a *finished* document in Microsoft Word. In other words, you get to do typesetting--in a program that isn't really designed for typesetting. Here are some tips you might find useful:

1. Consult Word's Help file or, better yet, a good reference book to learn about Word's Page Setup, Section Layout, and Heading features. Then use those features to set up different sections of your document in the way you need them--for example, you can use roman numerals for page numbers in front matter and have different running heads in different chapters.

2. Attach a good-looking template to your document by clicking "Tools > Templates and Add-ins > Attach," being sure to check the box labeled "Automatically update document styles." For this to work, you'll need to format your document with paragraph styles that have the same names as those in the template. You can create your own template, use one of Word's built-in templates, or use a template from one of the sources mentioned here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704952768

3. Turn hyphenation on by clicking the "Tools" menu, clicking "Language," and then clicking "Hyphenation." Put a check in the box labeled "Automatically hyphenate document." Set the hyphenation zone to about half an inch or the equivalent. (You may need to experiment with this.) Limit consecutive hyphens to 3 or 4. (The more consecutive hyphens you allow, the better Word can adjust justified text--but you'll also get more word breaks.)

4. Make sure that styles allow hyphenation to occur. For each paragraph style, click "Format > Style > Modify > Format > Paragraph > Line and Page Breaks" and make sure the box labeled "Don't hyphenate" is empty. Also, make sure the box labeled "Widow/Orphan Control" is checked.

5. Turn on kerning for all text. For each paragraph style, click "Format > Style > Modify > Format > Font > Character Spacing" and make sure the box labeled "Kerning for Fonts" is checked and the box labeled "Points and Above" has a value equal to the smallest point size in the document (usually 8 points). This is probably overkill, but that's okay.

6. Set line spacing to an exact point size. For each paragraph style, click "Format > Style > Modify > Format > Paragraph > Indents and Spacing > Line Spacing" and set line spacing to an "exact" amount. This should be about 120 percent of the character point size. If your character point size is 10, for instance, you should probably set your line spacing to 12 points.

7. Adjust all of your styles to fit your design. This even includes such styles as Footer, Header, Footnote Reference, and Page Number, which should not be left with their default formatting. For example, if you're setting body text in Garamond, you should set your footnote references in Garamond as well.

8. Using "File > Page Setup," set your right and left margins to create an easily readable line length. One rule of thumb is that lines in body text should be roughly as long as an alphabet and a half in the current font and point size, like this:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm

That may not seem long enough, but go look at several of the well-designed books on your shelf. You'll be surprised at how short the lines are. If you want to use a longer line, you should also increase your line spacing so the reader's eye can "track" more easily from the end of one line to the beginning of another.

9. If you're using Word 97 or higher, click the Tools menu (Edit in Word 2001), click "Options" (Preferences on a Macintosh), click the "Compatibility" tab, and put a check next to these options:

* "Do full justification like WordPerfect 6.x for Windows." (Or better yet, use our WordSetter program to adjust word spacing to your own liking.)

* "Don't add extra space for raised/lowered characters."

* "Don't center 'exact line height' lines."

* "Don't expand character spaces on the line ending Shift-Return."

* "Suppress 'Space Before' after a hard page or column break."

* "Use printer metrics to lay out document."

At this point, your text should look pretty good, but you can make it even better by applying the principles described in such books as these:

Desktop Publishing with Word for Windows, by Tom Lichty.

The Printed Word, by David A. Kater and Richard Kater.

The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst

The Art of Desktop Publishing, by Tony Bove, Cheryl Rhodes, and Wes Thomas.

The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams.

The PC Is Not a Typewriter, by Robin Williams (for beginners only).

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READERS WRITE

Ned Humphrey wrote:

Thought you might be interested in another bug report. Actually, it's not so much a bug as one of Word's irritating quirks. I call it:

HOW'D WE GET ONTO THAT SUBJECT?

I'm sure you're familiar with the way Word automatically inserts the first line of any new document in the Title box of the Summary (located in the Properties dialog box). Of course, the first line is often not suitable as a title at all. If that were the whole problem, I could live with it. But it creates further problems down the road.

There are two things wrong with it: First, the "title" persists even after the first line changes. That's not so bad. You can change the title at will, or simply ignore it . . . with one major exception. Which brings me to the second problem: Because I edit multiple documents and then immediately email them on to the graphics department every day using Outlook, I systematically rename files sent to me by my various authors so that the graphics people know what to do with them just by looking at the filenames (saves time in writing email explanations), and so I myself can easily find them in my archives. When I click on the "Send to Mail Recipient (as Attachment)" button, what I want to have happen is for the filename to be inserted as the Subject line in the new Outlook email. That works fine if there's no title entered in Summary. But if Summary contains a Word-generated "title," the email subject head defaults to that instead of using the filename. So I have the extra work, each time, of going to File/Properties/Summary/Title and deleting the (often nonsensical) title. Only then am I able to send the email with the proper subject head automatically inserted.

Of course, if you create all your documents yourself, you can avoid this by checking the "Prompt for document properties" box under Tools/Options/Save and then deleting the suggested title when the Properties dialog box pops up before saving a new document for the first time; but as most of my stuff comes from other people, I have to perform the above routine to get rid of previously created "titles."

What I would like Word to do is give you the option of turning off the "automatic titling" feature altogether.

Do you, gentle reader, know of a way to take care of Ned's problem? If you do, please send your solution here: mailto:hints [at symbol] editorium.com

Microsoft Word's Layout Features

Microsoft Word includes a number of layout features that you'll need if you're doing serious typesetting or desktop publishing. They're not always easy to get to, however, or to understand. For various reasons, Microsoft has strung them all over the place, under File, View, Insert, Format, and Tools. Good grief! I recommend that you use Word's Customize feature (Tools/Customize) to put them all in one place on a new menu or toolbar where you can easily find and use them together.

Basically, these features are related to document sections or to the document as a whole. I've listed some of the most important ones below, with the command name following the descriptive name (so you'll know what commands to use if you want to create your own menu or toolbar):

Templates and Add-ins (FileTemplates)

Style Gallery (FormatStyleGallery)

Style (FormatStyle)

Page Setup (FilePageSetup)

Hyphenation (ToolsHyphenation)

Insert Break (InsertBreak)

Section Layout (FormatSectionLayout)

Header (ViewHeader)

Page Numbers (InsertPageNumbers)

Columns (FormatColumns)

Note Options (NoteOptions)

Once you've brought these far-flung cousins together, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to set up a document so that it looks and works right.

Feeling lazy? Our new WordSetter program puts all of these features together under a new Layout menu and on a Document Formatting toolbar for easy access. It also provides other new features for section and document formatting, including:

* Crop marks

* Adjustable word spacing (tracking)

* Thin spaces

* Automatic styling for block quotations, lists, and poetry

* Ligatures (Macintosh only)

You can download the WordSetter program at http://www.editorium.com/14000.htm.

SURVEY RESULTS

In our last issue, I asked for help in knowing what to write about by offering a survey, which 56 subscribers took time to return. Many thanks to all who participated! Your responses gave me some valuable information. The survey asked:

What would you like to see MORE of in Editorium Update?

1. Explanations of useful features in Microsoft Word.

2. Macros to help you work more efficiently.

3. Discussion of general issues related to editing on the computer.

4. Reviews of add-in programs for Microsoft Word from various software publishers.

5. Links to useful publishing resources on the Internet.

6. Explanations of nifty things you can do with programs from the Editorium.

Interestingly enough, the clear winners were numbers 1 and 2 (1 had 25 votes for first position and 11 for second; 2 had 19 votes for first position and 17 for second). Next, in roughly equal proportions, were 5, 3, and 6. Number 4 came in dead last. That means our past newsletters have pretty much been on track, which is gratifying, and a number of subscribers asked me to "keep up the good work," which I'll try to do by following the survey results. I'll focus mostly on Word features and macros, with some of the other stuff thrown in from time to time just to keep things interesting. Thanks again for your help in improving Editorium Update.

THE WINNER

I promised to hold a drawing for those who responded to the survey. To do so, I created a Word macro that randomly selected a number from 1 to 56 (the total number of respondents). The macro came up with the number 12, which is the number of the response from Gail Welborn, making her the winner of a free registration for our Editor's ToolKit Plus program! I've contacted Gail privately to arrange for the registration. Congratulations!