Tips and Techniques for Publishing Professionals

Many of the books I edit in Word are loaded with footnotes, and I've often wished I had a way to see notes and text at the same time while scrolling through them independently. Comes the dawn! It's easy:

1. Open your footnote-laden document.

2. Make sure you're looking at the document in Normal view (View > Normal.)

3. Open your document in a new window by clicking Window > New Window. You'll now have two instances of your document open. Any change you make in one will be reflected in the other, but you can scroll through them independently.

4. Arrange and size your two windows so they're displayed on your screen side by side. (If you have our Editor's ToolKit program, click Windows > Arrange Documents to do this automatically.)

5. In one of the windows (I like the one on the right) open the Notes pane so you can see your notes (View > Footnotes).

6. Use your mouse to grab the divider bar between the Notes pane and the body text. Drag the bar to within about half an inch of the top of your Word window. (If you go too far, the Notes pane will close.) Now most of that window will be taken up by your notes.

7. Use CTRL + SHIFT + F6 to jump back and forth between the two windows while scrolling independently through them to your heart's content.

Now you can see and edit your notes and text at the same time.

You can learn more about Editor's ToolKit here:

http://www.editorium.com/14857.htm

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Literary Machine is one of the most interesting programs I've looked at in quite a while. If you need a way to store free-form notes and ideas, retrieve them at will, and compile them into a document, Literary Machine may be just what you're looking for:

http://www.literarymachine.com

This powerful program comes in two versions: 2000 and Pro. The 2000 version is free but lacks some of the Pro features, and at $20 the Pro version is a bargain. Both versions have a fairly steep learning curve, but I'd like to share some tips that may make things easier if you're interested in trying the program.

The basic element in Literary Machine is the Item, which is simply an independent text note. Literary Machine is designed to hold lots of these. When you're planning your novel and have a plot idea, you'll create a new Item and type your idea into it. When you have another idea, you'll create another Item and type away.

But how will you find your Items again after you've put them away? Before you put them away, you'll assign one or more Concepts to each Item. Concepts are represented by words in a window on the Literary Machine desktop. Drag a Concept word to an Item, and the Item will be associated with that Concept. Drag a Concept word to the desktop, and the Items associated with the Concept will be displayed as small note cards, which you can move around at will.

The idea of associating Concepts with Items is a little difficult to understand, because it's exactly the opposite of how we usually think. Ordinarily, we think of documents as being *under* a certain category. In Literary Machine, categories (Concepts) are *associated* with documents (Items).

Another idea that's a little difficult to grasp is that Concept words and Concepts aren't really the same thing. Here's why: Let's say you have a bunch of Items that discuss cats and a bunch of other Items that discuss canaries. These Items are categorized appropriately using the separate Concepts "cats" and "canaries." Now let's say you have a single Item that discusses the *interaction* of cats with canaries. Yes, you could file it under "cats" and you could also file it under "canaries." But what if that was the *only* Item you wanted to find among a whole bunch of Items on either cats or canaries? You'd have to create a "hybrid" Concept that contained *both* words, "cats" and "canaries," and assign the new Concept to that Item. Then, when you drop the Concept word "cats" or the Concept word "canaries" on the desktop, this "hybrid" Concept will appear along with the two separate Concepts. If you then drop one of the words (it doesn't matter which) from the hybrid Concept onto the desktop, you'll get *only* the Item that discusses both cats *and* canaries. In other words, a hybrid Concept is a way to file and retrieve an Item by combining Concept words. In computer language, it's an "AND." I want to find *only* the Items that are filed under "cats" AND "canaries." The separate Concepts would find the Items filed under "cats" OR "canaries." Remember, though, that you have to *assign* the hybrid Concept to the Items you want to retrieve rather than just dropping the two separate Concept words on the desktop.

Once you've got the Items in the order you want, how can you save them in that order? That's where Projects come in. You create a Project and add your selected Items to it. Then, by dropping the Project on the desktop, you'll display the same *Items* in the same *order* that you had before. You can export a Project, or multiple Projects (think "chapters"), as a separate file (think "book"). You can arrange Projects hierarchically as folders and subfolders, and if you export a group of Projects as an HTML file, the file will include the Project names as Word Heading paragraph styles.

There's one more way to find stored Items--by using the Find function, just as you would in Microsoft Word or other programs. The Items or Concepts containing the search word will be displayed on the desktop.

The program has many other terrific features, but they'll take time and thought to master. You'll probably find, however, that the result is worth the effort.

Another thing I like about Literary Machine is that its genius (literally) creator, Gunnar Sommestad, is open to suggestions about how the program should work, and he's constantly improving it. I, for one, am planning to support his efforts. In fact, I've created a macro that will convert Word documents to Items in Literary Machine. If you're interested in having the macro, let me know:

mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com

The newsletter a couple of weeks ago featured a macro that would set all headings in a Word document in true title case, with articles and prepositions lowercased. But what if you have a document in which an author has typed other stuff in all caps--author names in footnotes, or book titles in body text? It would be nice to have a macro that would look for anything in all caps and turn it to title case. I've modified the macro to do just that:

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
Sub FixAllCapsInText()
'Macro created 10/19/2003 by Jack M. Lyon
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "[A-Z]{2,}"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found = True
Selection.Range.Case = wdTitleWord
Select Case Selection.Range
Case "A", "An", "As", "At", "And", "But", _
"By", "For", "From", "In", "Into", "Of", _
"On", "Or", "Over", "The", "Through", _
"To", "Under", "Unto", "With"
wrd.Case = wdLowerCase
Case "Usa", "Nasa", "Usda", "Ibm", "Nato"
wrd.Case = wdUpperCase
End Select
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend
MsgBox "Finished!", , "Fix All Caps in Text"
End Sub
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can learn how here:

The key to the macro is this line:

.Text = "[A-Z]{2,}"

That tells Word to do a wildcard search for two or more capital letters in a row. If you like, you can make that number larger to avoid such common acronyms as USA and NASA. A better way to take care of such items, however, is to list them in the following line of the macro:

Case "Usa", "Nasa", "Usda", "Ibm", "Nato"

For more information, see the newsletter here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1715119894

And the Readers Write column in last week's newsletter here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1715197755

And if you'd like more information about wildcard searching, feel free to download my paper "Advanced Find and Replace in Microsoft Word":

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

Thanks to Linda Northrup for suggesting this topic.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Jim Pinkham pointed out that the modified macro in last week's Readers Write column had a mistake on one line:

wrd.Case = wdUpperCase End Select

That should actually be two lines, like this:

wrd.Case = wdUpperCase

End Select

If you had trouble running the macro, that's why.

Johanna Murphy wrote:

"The Title Case Headings Macro is awesome! Although I would need one where you only change one level at a time. Also, I have created other styles which are named OUT and OUTNUMBER (with only 5 levels) that we use a lot in our law firm. How can I change the macro to specify those style names?"

I responded:

To use different styles with the macro, do this:

1. Delete these two lines:

For h = 1 To 9

Next h

2. Modify this line--

myHeading$ = "Heading" + Str(h)

--to something like this:

myHeading$ = "MyStyle"

Last week William T. Buckley wrote, "This is not a huge issue, but it does come up once in a while, especially in limited-space conditions. How do I produce a circled-c 'circa' sign or symbol, not to be confused with a (c) copyright symbol?"

Clarke P Gerber responded, "I've checked several specialist texts (including Chicago Manual of Style; NY Times Manual of Style and Usage) and cannot find any authority for using a circled 'c' as an abbreviation for circa. My own regional bible--The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide--says the following: 'When spelled out in full circa is often italicised. When abbreviated as c. or ca. it is now usually set in roman.'"

Thanks to Jim, Johanna, and Clarke for their messages.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

The Microsoft Office Assistance page has a wealth of resources for Word users, including tips, templates, demos, and quizzes:

http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/

Last week's newsletter featured a macro to change all-cap headings into title case. It had some drawbacks, though. It would do only one heading level at a time, and you had to specify which heading level you wanted it to work on. In addition, it didn't lowercase articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. What's really needed is a macro that will cycle through *all* of your heading levels (any paragraph styled with one of Word's Heading paragraph styles, such as Heading 1), make them title case, and lowercase articles, prepositions, and conjunctions unless they occur at the beginning or end of the heading. Oh, and one more thing: It should capitalize any word following a colon and a space. I'm giving away the store here, but here's the macro, which I hope you'll find useful:

'MACRO BEGINS HERE
Sub TitleCaseHeadings()
'Created by Jack M. Lyon
'http://www.editorium.com
For h = 1 To 9
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
myHeading$ = "Heading" + Str(h)
Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles(myHeading$)
With Selection.Find
.Text = ""
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdStop
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found = True
Selection.Range.Case = wdTitleWord
For Each wrd In Selection.Range.Words
Select Case Trim(wrd)
Case "A", "An", "As", "At", "And", "But", _
"By", "For", "From", "In", "Into", "Of", _
"On", "Or", "Over", "The", "Through", _
"To", "Under", "Unto", "With"
wrd.Case = wdLowerCase
End Select
Next wrd
wrdCount = Selection.Range.Words.Count
Selection.Range.Words(1).Case = wdTitleWord
Selection.Range.Words(wrdCount - 1).Case = wdTitleWord
strLength = Selection.Range.Characters.Count
For i = 1 To strLength
If Selection.Range.Characters(i) = ":" Then
Selection.Range.Characters(i + 2).Case = wdTitleWord
End If
Next i
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend
Next h
MsgBox "Finished!", , "Title Case Headings"
End Sub
'MACRO ENDS HERE

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can learn how here.

If you're wondering why you'd want to use a macro like that one, please see my article "The Case against Caps":

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705080679

Please note that you can modify the macro to specify the words you want to be lowercased. Here are the lines you'll need to change:

Case "A", "An", "As", "At", "And", "But", _

"By", "For", "From", "In", "Into", "Of", _

"On", "Or", "Over", "The", "Through", _

"To", "Under", "Unto", "With"

For example, if you wanted to add "Throughout," the modified lines might look like this:

Case "A", "An", "As", "At", "And", "But", _

"By", "For", "From", "In", "Into", "Of", _

"On", "Or", "Over", "The", "Through", _

"To", "Under", "Unto", "With", "Throughout"

You can also delete words. For example, if you wanted to delete "As," the modified lines would look like this:

Case "A", "An", "At", "And", "But", _

"By", "For", "From", "In", "Into", "Of", _

"On", "Or", "Over", "The", "Through", _

"To", "Under", "Unto", "With"

Don't worry about getting the lines too long. You won't. The lowlines _ at the end of each line just break up the macro for easy reading. You can delete them and the following paragraph returns to merge the four lines if you want to.

By the way, you don't have to reserve the macro for changing headings in all caps. You can use it on any headings that need to be changed to true title case. This does not, however, excuse you from editing your headings.

Thanks to Hilary Powers for suggesting the improvements.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Peg Wier wrote:

I agree with you on all counts about the formatting of headings with all caps. I think you left out the most important case against all caps--THEY ARE HARD TO READ!

Bruce White wrote about converting Word documents to HTML:

There are a whole bunch of tools that grew from WinHelp tools. Reworx grew out of HDK by Virtual Media. See the Republicorp website:

Instead of cleaning up Word HTML what you do is get the tool to generate the code from the Word document. It breaks the document into separate HTML pages based on the heading styles in the document. It will preserve the index entries, the links and especially the outline structure (levels of headings--which you can use it in a TOC if you want).

OR the pages can be passed to Dreamweaver and maintained there.

Many thanks for the help and suggestions.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Ever heard of a candrabindu? Want to know the difference between oblique and inclined? You can learn all kinds of interesting things from the Encyclopedia of Typography and Electronic Communication:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/profirst/encycl2.htm#index

During my other life as a copyeditor, I often find myself needing to change the case of words that an author has typed in all caps, LIKE THIS, in chapter titles and subheads. I often perform the task with the handy Cap Title Case feature in my Editor's ToolKit program, but I've also wished for a macro that would do most of the dirty work automatically throughout a document without having to select text. So, I decided to write one. Here it is:

'MACRO BEGINS HERE
Sub FixCaps()
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1")
With Selection.Find
.Text = ""
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found = True
Selection.Range.Case = wdTitleWord
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend
MsgBox "Finished!", , "Fix Caps"
End Sub
'MACRO ENDS HERE

If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can learn how here.

The macro goes through your document finding any words formatted with the Heading 1 paragraph style and changes them to title case. Of course, you'll still need to lowercase articles, prepositions, and conjunctions by hand, but at least the macro keeps you from having to change *everything* by hand.

If you're wondering why you'd want to change all caps to title case, please see my article "The Case against Caps":

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705080679

Worried about all caps in other heading styles? You can modify the macro to find them by changing this line:

Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1")

For example, if I wanted to find text formatted with Heading 2 rather than Heading 1, I would change the line to this:

Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 2")

You can also modify the case the macro will use to change the text it finds. Currently, it makes words title case, as specified in the following line:

Selection.Range.Case = wdTitleWord

Rather than using "wdTitleWord" (title case), however, you can use the following, if you prefer:

wdLowerCase (which formats the words in lower case).

wdTitleSentence (Which formats the words in sentence case).

Now the next time you need to change the case of a bunch of all-cap headings, you'll have an easy way to get the job done.

You can learn about Editor's ToolKit here:

http://www.editorium.com/14857.htm

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Last week Brad Hurley asked for help in cleaning up HTML from Word, and in particular copying the text of a Word document and pasting it into a Dreamweaver page while preserving basic text formatting (headings and any bold or italic body text) and hyperlinks that were created in the Word document.

Keith Soltys responded:

Your reader who wants to be able to get Word into Dreamweaver might want to take a look at the YAWC Pro plugin for Word:

http://www.yawcpro.com/

According to their web site:

"YAWC Pro generates HTML which is much cleaner and smaller than that generated by MS-Word itself. It also places the content of the Word document into a pre-defined HTML template, so that the output HTML is ready for immediate publication on a website. YAWC Pro avoids the need for post-conversion clean-up of HTML documents, and avoids the need for most content creators to have anything but the most basic knowledge of HTML."

It also can generate XML.

Looks like an interesting tool, but I haven't tried it so I can't offer an opinion on how successful it is.

As far as being able to just copy and paste into Dreamweaver, I don't think there's any way he's going to be able to do it without an intermediate conversion first.

Gaston Brisbois suggested using converters from Logictran:

http://www.logictran.net/products/

http://www.bykeyword.com/pages/detail7/download-7337.html

Cecelia Munzenmaier wrote:

Dreamweaver MX has an Import option that will automatically clean up Word HTML, as well as a separate "Clean Up Word HTML" command. If that's not heavy-duty enough, there's also Word Cleaner; I have no personal knowledge of it, but there's a description here:

http://www.wordcleaner.com/dreamweaver_details.htm

LeAnne Baird wrote:

I'd recommend looking at WebWorks Publisher for Word by Quadralay. With it you can map styles in Word to web styles and control how the formatting is changed on the web side. It's really slick once you get your their standard template customized for your look and feel.

You don't even have to cut and paste. Just run the WebWorks conversion utility on your file and you're done.

http://www.webworks.com/products/wwpp_w/default.aspx

Many thanks to all for their help and suggestions.

Do you ever need to change your keyboard layout from one language to another? If so, you've undoubtedly noticed that your English-language keyboard doesn't always match the keyboard layout used by your computer. If this drives you crazy, you'll be happy to know about Microsoft's Visual Keyboard add-in for Word 2000 and 2002. Visual Keyboard displays the keyboard for another language on your screen so you can see the character you're going to get *before* pressing the key. You can learn more about Visual Keyboard (and download the free software) here:

http://tinyurl.com/rzle

And you can see a screen shot at Alan Wood's fabulous Unicode Resources site:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities_fonts.html#visual

Once you've installed and activated the software, you can use Visual Keyboard by clicking its letters with your mouse. Or, you can simply use it as a visual reminder while typing on your regular keyboard. Pretty slick!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Brad Hurley (bradhurley@sympatico.ca) wrote:

Although I still do a lot of editing for print publications, most of my work these days involves Web content. I edit documents in Word 2000 and pass them on to my company's Web designers, who primarily use Dreamweaver to make Web pages. I'm looking for ways to facilitate the transition from Word to Web. Saving a Word document as HTML isn't the solution, because Word famously inserts a lot of proprietary garbage into the code, and my clients want clean, standards-based HTML, formatted with external stylesheets instead of font tags.

There are Word-to-HTML tools in Dreamweaver and online (such as Textism's excellent HTML Cleaner: http://www.textism.com/resources/cleanwordhtml/), but if you want to generate text formatting that resembles what you had in your Word document, you have to first replace your custom styles with Word's standard styles. That can be tedious.

I want to be able to copy the text of a Word document and paste it into a Dreamweaver page, while preserving basic text formatting (headings, and any bold or italic body text) and hyperlinks that were created in the Word document. I wish we could bypass Word altogether and create content directly in Dreamweaver, letting my clients review and edit directly with content-editing tools such as Macromedia Contribute. But Contribute doesn't have Word's "track changes" feature, which is crucial to our document review process.

Any advice that you or your readers could provide would be appreciated!

So, gentle reader, do you have any advice for Brad? If so, please send it to me and I'll include it in the next newsletter. Thanks!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Aaron Shepard is making available a free article titled "Books, Typography, and Microsoft Word." The article explains how Word can be used to set type of a quality high enough to be used in desktop book publishing:

http://www.aaronshep.com/publishing

Aaron also offers an expanded version of the article in ebook form. One of the most interesting things about the ebook (which I bought) is the impressive quality of its typesetting, done in Word, of course. Check it out!

Thanks to Aaron for his valuable article.

Word 2002 and Word 2003 include a long-awaited feature: the Style Separator. The Style Separator is a special, hidden (and undocumented) paragraph mark. Rather than creating a paragraph *break,* however, it marks the spot where one paragraph style ends and another paragraph style begins--*all in the same paragraph.* That's right--starting with Word 2002, you can use two or more paragraph styles in the same paragraph.

Why should you care? Mainly because it gives you more control over what's included in a table of contents. Let's say you're editing a manuscript whose first chapter begins like this:

"Paris, City of Lights. After an excruciating ten-hour flight, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where my daughter was waiting with a large cardboard sign bearing the inscription 'Dad.'"

Since Word will create the table of contents from the Heading styles you've applied to your chapter headings (Insert > Reference [in Word 2002 and 2003] > Index and Tables > Table of Contents), you try applying the Heading 1 style to the paragraph. But that's no good, because you don't want the entire paragraph to show up in the table of contents. All you want is "Paris, City of Lights."

The workaround for this problem in earlier versions of Word was to break the paragraph in two:

"Paris, City of Lights."

"After an excruciating ten-hour flight, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle International Airport . . ."

Then, after applying the Heading style to the first paragraph, you would select its carriage return (paragraph mark) and format the return as Hidden text (Format > Font > Hidden). You might then have to insert a space to make everything look nice. And when you inserted the table of contents, sure enough, only the first bit would be included. Yes, you can still do that if you don't have Word 2002 or 2003.

If you do have Word 2002 or 2003, however, you can now use Word's built-in Style Separator instead of a hidden paragraph mark. First though, you'll have to drag it up from the storehouse of hidden Word commands and make it available on a menu, toolbar, or keyboard combination. You can learn how to do so here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707444986

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707286867

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1713088939

The name you're looking for on the Commands list is InsertStyleSeparator. Okay, I'll make it easy for you:

1. Click Tools > Customize.

2. Click the Commands tab.

3. In the Categories list, click All Commands.

4. In the Commands list, scroll down to InsertStyleSeparator.

5. Drag InsertStyleSeparator to the Formatting toolbar.

6. Click the Close button.

To actually use the Style Separator, you'll still have to start with the paragraph split in two:

"Paris, City of Lights."

"After an excruciating ten-hour flight from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport . . ."

Then follow this procedure:

1. Place your cursor anywhere in the text of the first paragraph.

2. Create a Style Separator (which will be inserted at the *end* of the current paragraph and not at your cursor position) by using your new toolbar button, menu item, or keyboard combination. The two paragraphs will magically become one, with the Style Separator between the two.

3. Select the text before the Style Separator and style it with the Heading style you want to use in the table of contents.

When you generate your table of contents, the text before the Style Separator will show up there, but not the text after it.

By the way, you can actually see the Style Separator (it looks like a regular paragraph mark with a thin dotted line around it). To do so:

1. Click Tools > Options.

2. Click the View tab and put a checkmark in the All checkbox under Formatting Marks.

3. Click the OK button.

Note that if you open your Style Separator document in an earlier version of Word (97, for example), your Style Separators will become nothing more than hidden paragraph marks. Hmmm. Maybe the Style Separator isn't so revolutionary after all.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent a terrific tip for creating a printable list of document properties without opening the document:

I accidentally found an article on Microsoft's MVP Site called, "Using VBA, how can I get access to the Document Properties of a Word file without opening the document?" The link is:

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

This document has a link to a MS Knowledge Base article which has the DSOFile download. The article also has a link to a template to download and put in the Word Start Menu. When you do this it puts another option on the Tools menu to run the List File Properties. You then have to select which document properties you want to be listed. Bingo! The result is a table listing the document properties of each document in the folder. Actually, it only lists Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Fortunately for me, most of my documents are Word or Excel.

I have my document properties set up in the footnotes such as file name, subject, comments, author, etc. I wanted to keep an index of all documents so have manually entered the document properties for nearly 3,000 documents into an Excel spreadsheet. But now that I have the DSO file and template, I can run it to list the properties which I list in the spreadsheet and in the same order so that all I have to do is copy the table and paste it in the spreadsheet.

I keep all my new documents in the same folder until I have enough to put on disk. From now on, when I copy them to disk, I will run the properties list, paste it to the index, then either delete the documents or move them to another folder. That way, I will be sure that no document appears on the index more than once. The great thing about the Excel spreadsheet index is that I can sort by subject, or whatever.

This DSO file is going to save lots of time for me!

Many thanks for the great tip!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Inquisitor, from Word guru Steve Hudson, detects and reports corruption in Word documents. Here's Steve's description of the new program:

Inquisitor is a tiny tool for MS Word 97+ by the Word Heretic www.wordheretic.com. It uses two different methods to report on the levels of document corruption within the content of your document. Version 1 has no fancy graphics--it is a bare-bones report of the active document--but it is free.

The larger your document, the longer the report takes in a direct linear relationship. On a PIII machine the speeds are quite acceptable in that it is not worth getting up from your desk for reports on documents up to several hundred pages. Extensive advice for getting your code to run as fast can be found in the Word VBA Beginner's Spellbook from www.wordheretic.com.

When strange things start happening in your documents, or your sense of Word paranoia kicks in, click the button on the toolbar and you will have one of two reactions:

Oh, my document is not too corrupt; it must be something else. I'd better ask the Tech Whirlers for help:

http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/

Struth! Let's get started on some cleaning.

The actual cleaning of the document is left up to the user. The www.wordheretic.com site provides numerous goods and services for treating document corruption:

* The Word Spellbook has a manual cleansing procedure.

* The site offers a cleaning service for rapid, thorough cleansing of documents at the standard hourly rate.

* The site will offer an Enterprise edition tool to completely rebuild libraries of documents and templates.

Installation

Extract the template to a Word startup directory; full instructions are in the template if required.

For a limited time, the template is available from the Editorium. You can download it by clicking here:

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

Thanks to Steve for making this program available.

Ever find yourself needing to convert a Word document into PDF (Portable Document Format)? Adobe Acrobat, the program usually used to create PDF documents, is fairly expensive, so you may be interested in some cheaper or even free alternatives:

The free OpenOffice.org software is made specifically to work with Microsoft Word documents, and it allows you to save documents in PDF:

http://www.openoffice.org

PDF995 allows you to print as a PDF document from inside Microsoft Word. The program works well, but the free version does insist on displaying ads unless you pay the reasonable price to make it stop:

http://www.pdf995.com/

You can use the free Ghostscript program to create PDF files:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

And you'll find an excellent tutorial on how to do so here:

http://tinyurl.com/ma5h

About a month ago, PC Magazine featured an article titled PDFing Cheap that reviewed a dozen alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for creating PDFs:

http://tinyurl.com/ma1v

Need other options? You'll find a bunch of Web sites that will convert Word documents to PDF. Just go to Google.com and search for "convert word to pdf free."

Finally, if you have a Macintosh running OS X, you'll find that the operating system itself includes the ability to create a PDF document through the print dialog box.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article "Quote, Unquote," LeAnne Baird wrote:

I had to smile at the subject of this issue. I have a trick that wasn't my discovery, but I've passed it on to a lot of writers. To get a quotation mark to go the right way, type two of them in a row, then delete the first one. The second one stays as is, going the right direction. This is a slick workaround for people who remain unconvinced of the practicality of shortcut keys.

Derek Halvorson sent this useful information and important warning:

You've suggested in your latest update that Microsoft's use of CTRL+' then ' (or SHIFT+') for closing quotation marks is inconsistent, but it is actually completely consistent with their scheme for accented characters. You can add an accent aigu to any vowel by typing CTRL+' before typing the vowel. So, you only have to remember that, any time you want a superscript accent that is slanted upwards from left to right, you need only key CTRL+' first. If one follows your suggestion and makes CTRL+' the shortcut key for a closing single quotation mark, then one loses the keyboard shortcuts for accented vowels. In this case it seems that there may be some sort of method to the Microsoft madness.

Responding to the article "Style by Microsoft," Linda Gray wrote:

I get rid of those hyperlinked URLs and e-mail addresses by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F9 to unlink field codes, although your Editor's ToolKit uses a different key combo, I believe. The publishing company I work for most often, Sage Publications, doesn't want any field codes in the Word files I send to them, so as part of my final check (and usually before that because they're a pain to work around), I press Ctrl+A to select the whole file and then Ctrl+Shift+F9 to unlink the field codes, which turns all those URLs and e-mail addresses into regular type without being linked to anything. It won't take care of any URL or e-mail address that's been underlined, but that's also easily changed by selecting the whole file and pressing Ctrl+U -- unless the file has text that needs to be underlined, which doesn't happen often in the work I do.

Many thanks to all for their comments.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Planet PDF is the place to go for all things PDF:

http://www.planetpdf.com

If you've read many past issues of this newsletter, you know that I loathe Word's AutoFormat options, although I do use one of them--"Replace straight quotes with smart quotes." But sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I can't insert a quotation mark going the right direction. If I want a closing quotation mark, Word insists on giving me an opening one--or vice versa. If you've run into this problem, you know how maddening it can be. Wouldn't it be nice to type precisely the kind of "smart" quotation marks you need without having Word second-guess what you're doing? It turns out there's a built-in way to do that. Here are the key commands you need:

OPENING DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

To get an opening double quotation mark, press this key combination:

CTRL + `

(That little character on the end there is the single quotation mark on the key to the left of the "1" key on your keyboard.)

Next, press this:

SHIFT + '

(That little character on the end is an apostrophe. In other words, just type a quotation mark as you usually would.)

There's your opening double quotation mark.

CLOSING DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

To get a closing double quotation mark, press this:

CTRL + '

Then press this:

SHIFT + '

OPENING SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

To get an opening single quotation mark, press this:

CTRL + `

Then press this:

`

CLOSING SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

To get an closing single quotation mark, press this:

CTRL + '

Then press this:

'

Now that I've told you all of that, I've got to say that I don't much like those key combinations. They're hard to type, and they seem inconsistent. Luckily, Word allows us to create our own key combinations, so let's try setting up a more natural and consistent system:

1. Click Insert > Symbol > Symbols tab.

2. Make sure the "Font" list shows "(normal text)."

3. Make sure the "Subset" list shows "General Punctuation."

On the bottom row in the fifth column, you'll see an opening single quotation mark.

In the sixth column, you'll see a closing single quotation mark.

In the ninth column, you'll see an opening double quotation mark

And in the tenth column, you'll see a closing double quotation mark.

Now let's assign some keys:

1. Click the opening single quotation mark.

2. Click the "Shortcut Key" button.

3. Press the new key combination you want to use. I'm thinking this one:

CTRL + '

4. Click the "Assign" button.

5. Click the "Close" button.

While we're still in there, let's assign the rest of the quotation marks. To do so, repeat steps 1 through 5 for each quotation mark. Here are the other key combinations I'm going to use:

For the closing single quotation mark: ALT + '

For the opening double quotation mark: SHIFT + CTRL + '

For the closing double quotation mark: SHIFT + ALT + '

When you're finished, press that final "Close" button to put away the "Symbol" dialog.

That should do it. Note that you can continue to use Word's AutoFormat quotation marks if you want. But when you need to, you can easily specify exactly the kind of quotation marks you need to use.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article "Style by Microsoft," quite a few readers sent additional Microsoft "style" nominations for our "hall of shame." Many thanks to all of them!

Kenneth Sutton wrote:

Here's my nomination of the "replace internet paths with hyperlinks". Bah!

In a similar vein, India Amos noted:

How about this classic: e-mail addresses underlined (not to mention blue and hotlinked). Yecch! Have you ever _deliberately_ clicked a linked e-mail address in a Word file? Me neither.

Finally, Andrea Balinson wrote:

The "style by Microsoft" example that drives me crazy is "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks," which makes Web addresses appear underlined in blue. It's one thing if the document you're writing is designed to be read on a computer; in that case, having URLs as hyperlinks can actually be useful. Most of the time, though, I see printed letters, memos, and other paper materials in which the URLs are underlined -- obviously because whoever created the documents didn't know or care enough to stop Word from formatting them as links.

LeAnne Baird wrote:

Here's my pet grammar-spelling peeve:

If you don't know that 'til is a contraction of until, Microsoft spell checker only gives you till as an option, not till and 'til. What would it cost them to fix this? .00000000000001 per licensed copy.

Caryl Wenzel wrote:

I have complained many a time of "style" imposed by Microsoft that is not accepted in an editorial style manual. Yet, someone at Microsoft thinks he or she is doing someone a favor by providing all these so-called helpful ideas.

I routinely omit such formatting and follow traditional editorial guidelines. I just wish Microsoft would learn the same. In fact, even Microsoft publishes it own style manuals for the books its publishing arm produces, and many of these imposed styles are not allowed.

Peg Hausman wrote:

My pet peeve about Word's "help" is its default enforcement of the alleged rule against using "which" to introduce a restrictive (essential) clause in a sentence. I've appended a longish e-mail (below) that I sent to a local electronic discussion group a while back explaining why the rule doesn't hold water. But the short version is that it was originally simply a mild preference expressed by H. W. Fowler in his famous _Modern English Usage_ (1926). The preference got picked up by AP and was soon presented as grammatical gospel, reproducing itself via journalism teachers all over the United States, in spite of the fact that it fails to reflect most normal educated usage.

Redmond has picked up this fiction and incorporated it into its Grammar function. Type a sentence like "The only document which really mattered was the one they neglected to send" into Word, and it will put the well-known wavy green underline under the fourth through the sixth words. A couple of investigative clicks will get you this message:

"If the marked group of words is essential to the meaning of your sentence, use 'that' to introduce the group of words. Do not use a comma. If the words are not essential to the meaning of your sentence, use "which" and separate them with a comma."

I have two problems with this. One is that it is too dogmatic: If MS wants to help people abide by AP (and AP-influenced) rules, that's fine, but it should be noted as a matter of AP house style and not as law.

The other problem is that a lot of people won't get as far as the second click, so won't know what the wavy green line is about. They may, however, discover through experiment that adding a couple of commas will make the wavy green line go away. I've seen quite a number of restrictive clauses incorrectly garnished with commas for this reason, and the effect can be most confusing. If you add commas to the sentence above--"The only document, which really mattered, was the one they neglected to send"--it promptly sounds witless and absurd.

As noted below, there's a longer discussion at this URL:

I'm afraid even the abbreviated polemic in this e-mail may be too long for you to use [Editor's note: Not at all. It's fascinating!], but in any case, thanks for the chance to cast my vote against a really annoying Wordism!

-------- Included Message --------

Subject: Re: [dcpubs] Which old which? The wicked which!

DATE: 09/03/2003 12:00:00 PM

From: Peg Hausman

To: DCPubs mailing list

References: <1a5.d64a18a.2b279f11 [at symbol] aol.com> <3DF646D8.2050704@cox.net>

Failure to observe the which/that distinction doesn't reflect evolution of any sort, for the simple reason that it has never at any time been a normal rule of English.

Apparently we owe the rise of the which/that rule to Fowler's _Modern English Usage_ (1926). Fowler mentions that some writers seem to follow a practice of using "which" only for non-restrictive clauses, and says he thinks it would be a good idea. But he certainly doesn't present it as a law of the language, current or past: "Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers."

In fact, a couple of centuries earlier the feeling was that "that" was a rather dubious pronoun, best avoided by careful writers. Here's part of a thumbnail history of which/that from the _Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage_:

_That_ is our oldest relative pronoun. According to McKnight 1928 _that_ was prevalent in early Middle English, _which_ began to be used as a relative pronoun in the 14th century, and _who_ and _whom_ in the 15th. _That_ was used not only to introduce restrictive clauses, but also nonrestrictive ones. . . .

By the early 17th century, _which_ and _that_ were being used pretty much interchangeably. . . . During the later 17th century, . . . _that_ fell into disuse, at least in literary English. It went into such an eclipse that its reappearance in the early 18th century was noticed and satirized by Joseph Addison in _The Spectator_ (30 May 1711) in a piece entitled 'Humble Petition of _Who_ and _Which_ against the upstart Jack Sprat _That_.'

Unfortunately, Fowler's "it would be nice" notion about keeping "which" nonrestrictive was apparently picked up by someone at AP and incorporated into the AP stylebook. As a result, professors at journalism schools across the land started teaching the which/that rule as gospel, and editors influenced by AP style have been trying to impose it on the general public ever since. It's in quite a number of stylebooks now. The only hitch is that it has never made it into the common language--not only of those who barely made it through English 101 but even of the professionally literate. As the _Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage_ noted in 1989:

If the discussions in many of the handbooks are complex and burdened with exceptions, the facts of usage are quite simple. Virginia McDavid's 1977 study shows that about 75 percent of the instances of _which_ in edited prose introduce restrictive clauses; about 25 percent, nonrestrictive ones.

We conclude that at the end of the 20th century, the usage of _which_ and _that_ --at least in prose--has pretty much settled down. You can use either _which_ or _that_ to introduce a restrictive clause--the grounds for your choice should be stylistic--and _which_ to introduce a nonrestrictive clause.

Please look at Ms. McDavid's figures again: "which" introduced restrictive clauses *three times as often* as it introduced non-restrictive ones, in *edited* prose. Read a few novels by good, sensitive authors, and note the same pattern. Listen to intelligent people talking, and note the same pattern. In trying to browbeat the US at large (forget the UK) into observing the which/that "rule," we're tilting at windmills, spitting into the wind, beating our heads against the wall, trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, and otherwise wasting our precious time.

A perverse recent development is that our buddies at Microsoft have incorporated the rule into their grammar-checking software. As a result, people who have no notion of the rule are mystified by seeing wiggly green lines underneath sentences that look just fine to them. On experimenting, some of them find that adding a couple of commas makes the green lines go away. The result is mispunctuated restrictive clauses ("the product, which drew the most attention at the inventors' show, was the autopiloted heat-seeking mousetrap. . ."), surely a worse plague than the original alleged problem.

I agree that it would be a nice rule if it existed in a linguistically meaningful sense. There are, in fact, a lot of things on my wish list for the English language, including a decent spelling system and a genuine gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, but wishing won't make it so.

There's a long but interesting discussion of the issue at

I think the remarks by Jane Lyle in this posting, in particular, are dead on (she's managing editor of Indiana University Press and one of the mavens of copyediting-l). Or just look at very thorough treatment of the question in the _Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage_. (I'm forever recommending this book and hope I'm not too monotonous about it, but I do think leaves all other usage guides in the dust.)

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Garbl's Writing Center

Garbl (Gary B. Larson) provides a free editorial style manual, an annotated directory of writing Web sites, a concise writing guide, and a personalized advice and writing forum. Lots of good stuff for writers and editors:

http://garbl.home.comcast.net/