Manual or Automatic?

When working electronically, editors often have to decide whether to make certain corrections manually or automatically, using such features as Find and Replace. Some corrections *have* to be made manually, but, in my opinion, editors often make more manual corrections than they should. For example, many editors change restrictive "which" to "that" by hand, making each change separately as it shows up in the manuscript. But how bad would it be, really, to change *every* "which" to "that" throughout the manuscript? You're going to read the manuscript all the way through anyway, right? So if you later come to a few "thats" that actually should be "whiches," you can fix them manually--which is much easier and faster than changing *hundreds* of "whiches" to "thats" by hand.

You have to use some judgment when doing this kind of thing. If a certain automatic correction will just make reading the manuscript too weird for you, don't use it. Or, you might try making the automatic correction with revision tracking turned on and showing--

Tools > Track Changes > Highlight Changes > Track changes while editing + Highlight changes on screen

--so that when you're reading through the document later, you'll know that the odd reading of that problem sentence is something you (rather than the author) introduced. Of course, if an automatic correction will result in *more* manual manipulation later on, you shouldn't use it.

Another possibility is to use wildcards in your Find and Replace corrections. In our "which" to "that" example, you could search for the word "which" whenever it *doesn't* follow a comma and replace it with "that," which would leave nearly all of the nonrestrictive occurrences ("blah blah, which blah blah") intact. Here's how:

1. Click the "Edit" menu.

2. Click "Replace."

3. In the "Find What" box, enter this:

([!,]) which

4. In the "Replace With" box, enter this:

1 that

5. In the "Use Wildcards" or "Use pattern matching" box, put a checkmark (you may need to click the "More" button before you can do this).

6. Click the "Replace All" button.

You can learn more about searching and replacing in past issues of Editorium Update--October 24, 2000, to November 21, 2000, and March 21 to April 25, 2001:

http://editorium.com/euindex.htm

Of course, if the idea of making such sweeping changes scares you, you can use the Find and Replace dialog to "Find Next" and "Replace" items individually, which still beats doing them all by hand.

Don't forget that there are certain corrections you'll almost *always* want to make, such as fixing commonly misspelled words. You'll probably want to make your own list, but here are some of my favorites:

FIND WHAT REPLACE WITH

accomodate accommodate

supercede supersede

independant independent

embarass embarrass

annoint anoint

occurrance occurrence

accidently accidentally

concensus consensus

wierd weird

mischevious mischievous

definate definite

transcendant transcendent

To automate things even further, don't just do these replacements one at a time on job after job; instead, record them in a macro that you can use over and over again. You can learn more about macros in past issues of Editorium Update--May 9 to May 23, 2001:

http://editorium.com/euindex.htm

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READERS WRITE

In a follow-up to her question in last week's Readers Write column about combining chapters into one document before editing, Ann Redmon (ann@gant.org) wrote:

"I'd already flogged myself earlier this year for not having purchased and used your Editor's ToolKit much sooner, but just shoot me for not having used the Add Documents feature much sooner too! I've only received half of this month's issue of the journal I regularly copyedit, so I didn't combine the whole issue into one document, but even doing it in two halves is saving me enormous amounts of time and vastly improving my consistency. Thanks again for a fabulous utility."

After reading last week's article on making separate passes through a document, Pamela Angulo (pamarama@empire.net) wrote:

"Hint for making passes: I have a 'Task' chart (a table, really) that I customize for each job. First, I fill in the details (number of pages, tables, figures, equations, and boxes) for each chapter, so I can track my progress. Below are check boxes for essential tasks: running the spellchecker, cleaning up spaces, checking and marking figure callouts, editing in-chapter headings, cross-checking references, editing references, editing figures and tables, editing boxes and appendices -- all those niggling details that can't be remembered in one pass. I find this chart especially helpful if I have to put a job aside for any time longer than an hour (!); when I come back, I don't try to do things that I have already done.

"And yes, I have a check-box grocery list on the fridge that I find very helpful in streamlining my shopping trips. YMMV! :-)"

Thanks to Ann and Pam for their comments.