In Word 2008 for Macintosh, Microsoft removed all macro capability. In Word 2011 for Macintosh, Microsoft brought it back—sort of. The capability is there, but compatibility with Word for Windows is somewhat lacking. And that's why the programs from the Editorium have not been available for Word 2011.

I'm pleased to report, though, that our FileCleaner program is, at last, available for Word 2011 on Macintosh. You can download the program by clicking here.

FileCleaner cleans up common problems in electronic manuscripts, including multiple spaces, multiple returns, unnecessary tabs, improperly typed ellipses, ells used as ones, and much more. It turns double hyphens into em dashes, and hyphens between numerals into en dashes. It can also remove directly applied font formatting (such as Times 12 point) while retaining styles (such as Heading 1) and character formatting (such as italic and bold). The program includes batch processing so you can clean up all open documents or a whole folder full of documents to maximize your productivity, doing in minutes what used to take hours to do by hand. This new version also includes the option to track the changes made while cleaning up.

This is a major new version of FileCleaner that has taken much time and expense to create. For that reason, users will need to purchase a new license for the program, even if they already have a license for the previous version. (A previous password/registration code will not work.) But at $29.95 it's a bargain. The program will pay for itself the first time you use it on any substantial editing job. Then it will pay for itself again on the next job. And the next. Out of all of our programs, this is the one I use most. It's a real workhorse that every serious editor should have.

You can, of course, try the new version for 45 days to make sure it does what you need. After that, you'll need a password/registration code to keep the program from timing out. When you're ready to buy a license for the new version, you can do so by clicking this link.

I'd also be grateful for any feedback you'd care to provide after trying the new version.

Now that I have most of the kinks worked out on the Macintosh, our other programs will also become available, one by one, in the near future. Next up: NoteStripper. Thanks for your patience!

Jack Lyon (editor@editorium.com) owns and operates the Editorium, which provides macros and information to help editors and publishers do mundane tasks quickly and efficiently. He is the author of Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals and of Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word. Both books will help you learn more about macros and how to use them.

Programs from the Editorium

Have you checked out the Editorium's latest Microsoft Word add-ins to help with your work?

IndexLinker creates hyperlinks from index page numbers back to the text to which they refer. If you're creating ebooks or PDFs with indexes, you need this program.

BookMaker automates typesetting and page layout in Microsoft Word. Stop fighting with page breaks, headers, and footers. Let BookMaker do the heavy lifting.

LyXConverter converts Word documents into LyX documents.

And, of course, many other useful add-ins are available as well, including Editor's ToolKit Plus.

A Special Deal: Editor's Toolkit Ultimate!

Editor's ToolKit Ultimate combines three great products:

• Editor's ToolKit Plus from The Editorium.
• PerfectIt Pro from Intelligent Editing.
• EditTools from WordnSync.

The three products work together to create a powerful editing package to take you through three separate stages of copyediting.

Communication Conference

Wondering how to launch or improve an editorial business, whether you offer writing, editing, proofreading, indexing or other related services? Come to “Be a Better Freelancer! (Re)Invent Your Business,” the ninth annual Communication Central conference for freelancers, September 26–27, 2014, in Rochester, NY, with an Editorial Bootcamp on September 28 at the same location.

Topics include launching your business, macros and other efficiency/productivity tools, working with MS Office, organization tips, a self-publishing roundtable, balancing freelancing and family life, resources, benefiting from social media, and more. Keynote speaker is Jake “Dr. Freelance” Poinier. Other speakers include Erin Brenner, Ally Machate, April Michelle Davis, Daniel Heuman, Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, Dick Margulis, Greg Ioannou, Geoff Hart, Jack Lyon, Laura Poole, Ben Davis, Amy Schneider, and Ruth E. Thaler-Carter.

Interested in Laura Poole’s editorial bootcamp? Info for the Editorial Bootcamp is included in the conference registration PDF. The Editorial Bootcamp may be taken without attending the conference.

You'll find more information here:

http://www.communication-central.com/

Questions? Contact Communication Central owner Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, at conference@communication-central.com or 585-248-0318.

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today;

Oh, how I wish he’d go away!

—Hughes Mearns

 

In a post on his blog “An American Editor,” Rich Adin posits that eBooks may be sounding the death knell for authorial greatness:

http://americaneditor.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/are-ebooks-the-death-knell-of-authorial-greatness/

Why? Because unlike printed books sitting on a shelf, eBooks are not immediately visible to our view; we have to go find them on our eReader, or search for them online. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as the saying goes.

I won’t repeat Rich’s arguments here; you should go read them for yourself. But I do believe that Rich is onto something important, and his post made me think about other things that are becoming invisible in this modern age.

Note References

A recent trend in book publishing is the use of “blind” notes—that is, notes that exist in the back of a book but have no indication in the text that they exist. The only way to see if a particular passage has an associated note is to turn to the back of the book and check. “Fascinating paragraph,” you think. “I wonder if there’s a note about this.” You turn back to the notes and look. “Nope.”

What if your cell phone worked that way? Suppose your phone gave no indication—no ringtone, no flashing light—that a call was coming in. The only way to know would be to pick up your phone periodically and listen. Does that seem like a good system?

Is an author’s text really so elegant that it should not be besmirched with superscript note references? Give readers a break; if there’s a note, give them some indication.

Well-Written Indexes

Professional indexers and seasoned readers know that a good index is an essential part of a good nonfiction book. Not only does it allow you to find particular passages, but it also gives you an overview of a book’s contents. Does the latest tome on Microsoft Word have anything new to say about macros? Check the index.

But some authors and publishers think that an index can be generated by a computer—just feed the computer a list of important terms, and it will mark those terms as index entries in the text. Generate the index, and off  you go! (Microsoft Word actually includes a feature that will do this; I don’t recommend it.)

Similarly, those who publish in electronic form often think that a program’s “search” feature is all that’s needed for readers to find what they’re looking for. But consider the old saying “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” It refers to motherhood, of course, but if you look for “motherhood” in a computer-generated index or with an electronic search, “The hand that rocks the cradle” won’t show up. A good index is a form of writing; it requires the application of a human mind, which can see meanings where a computer sees only words. (This, by the way, is why grammar checkers don’t work.)

Functional User Interfaces

Some web designers think that how a web page looks is much more important than how it works. They’re wrong about that. Imagine a web page so “artfully” done, so minimal in its design, that it offers no indication of how users should navigate the site. You would actually have to move your cursor around the screen to see what areas might be “clickable.” That’s the extreme, of course, but there are sites that offer little more than that. Google “minimalist web page” and you’ll find some.

Several years ago I attended the product launch for a specialized search engine. The interface had an elaborately designed logo with the word “Search.” Below that was a box where users could enter the text they wanted to find. Wanting to demonstrate the simplicity of the new search engine, the CEO invited his wife to step onto the platform and search for something, implying that if she could use the program, anyone could. (Unfortunately, this also demonstrated his own stupidity and callousness, but that’s another story.)  His wife entered some text but then couldn’t find where to click to activate the search. There was no button, no menu, nothing. Finally the CEO grabbed the mouse and clicked on the logo to activate the search. After all, it did say “Search.” The problem was, it didn’t look like something to click; it looked like a logo. Further, it was above the text box; but things should always appear in the order of use: First enter your text, then click “Search”—which means that the Search button should have come below the text box, not above it.

Form should always follow function; how something looks should always be subordinate to how it works. A button should look like a button.

Not that there’s anything wrong with simplicity. As Albert Einstein once said, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but never simpler.” Those who are involved in any kind of communication—which means all of us—need to keep that in mind.