Razzmatag

By Jack Lyon | Published: September 4, 2002

I'm excited to announce the release of our new program, RazzmaTag! Cute name, but what does it do?

Well, do you need to tag characters and formatting in Microsoft Word so your documents can be imported into a typesetting program?

Do you ever need to turn typesetting tags into formatting in Word?

What? You never work with tags? Then how would you like to turn directly applied formatting (such as Baskerville 26-point bold centered) into a Word style (such as Heading 1)?

If you need to do any of those things, you need RazzmaTag. RazzmaTag is a universal tagging utility that finds formatting in Microsoft Word and marks it with tags for use in QuarkXPress, Ventura, PageMaker, TeX, or pretty much any other typesetting program. As an extremely simple example, RazzmaTag can find text in italics and mark it with italic tags, like this: [I]italics[I].

RazzmaTag can also do the reverse, finding tags and changing them to formatting, so if you have old proprietary typesetting files, you can now convert them to Microsoft Word documents. That's also the key to converting directly applied formatting into styles: tag the formatting, then turn the tags into styles.

In addition, RazzmaTag can find and tag special characters. For example, you could have it find em dashes and replace them with tags. RazzmaTag can do all of this in a single document, all open documents, or all documents in a folder.

To use RazzmaTag, you prepare a "master list" that tells the program what formatting or characters to find and how to tag them, which means you're always in control. It also means you're not limited to certain tags but can use anything you need. For example, let's say you want to import a document into QuarkXPress. A simple master list might look like this (consult your Quark manual for the tags you need):

Body|@Body:^&+P

Emphasis|<@Emphasis>^&<@$p>+A

it|^&+F

The first line tells RazzmaTag to find text formatted with the Body paragraph style (+P) and replace it with the Quark tag @Body: followed by whatever text was found (^&).

The second line tells RazzmaTag to find text formatted with a character style (+A) named Emphasis and surround it with the Quark tags <@Emphasis> and <@$p>.

The third line tells RazzmaTag to find text in italic character formatting (+F) and surround it with Quark italic tags, and .

After you run RazzmaTag using that list, your document text will look something like this:

@Body:This is some text tagged <@Emphasis>beautifully <@$p> by the Editorium's new program, RazzmaTag!

Other kinds of tagging (or untagging) work in much the same way.

I'm particularly excited that I can now take an author's unstyled document, tag directly applied formatting, and then convert those tags to styles. RazzmaTag will save hours of applying styles by hand.

If you're using our QuarkConverter program, you know how handy it is, but it's limited to tagging files for QuarkXPress. RazzmaTag will do much more. If you're one of those Ventura users who keep asking for help, here's the program you've been wanting. I hope you enjoy RazzmaTag!

You can learn more about RazzmaTag and try it free of charge here:

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

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Last week's article about what the ideal editing software might look like brought some interesting responses.

Jeanne Pinault wrote:

Hi--great question!

I'd like the software to use publishing terms, like flush left, recto & verso, etc., and not make me translate computer language into my language.

I'd like Word to have something like WordPerfect's Reveal Codes, on demand--when you can't undo something because you don't know how you did it.

I'd like to have software that would undo authors' fancy formatting and give me plain text at a keystroke (Quark coded, of course, since we're dreaming, for ital, en dashes, etc.), as required for some publishers. (For all others, there's Editor's ToolKit!)

That said, I am devoted to Word 97 and do not intend to upgrade EVER. But I might start over with something perfect.

Steve Hudson wrote:

ME! ME! PICK ME SIR!!!!

RIGHT. Fourth division, sweep left. 21st division, cover that hill. Light armored . . . CHARGE!!!

First--C M Y friggin K. I will not harp, I will sit back as the cannons roar and you immediately agree you showed MASSIVE oversight in NOT including this. Consider thyself SPANK-ED! 🙂

Next--custom text run-around-paths.

The ability to create/modify GRAMMAR rules.

A proper, unlimited, compressed user spelling dictionary with decent tools.

Base file format is XML--not some unreadable binary behemoth.

More comprehensive document statistics--such as list hyperlinks/index entries/any field type/any metadata.

Built-in batch processing for documents from the facade.

Reveal ALL codes.

Rajesh Haldipur wrote:

I work with a typesetting service provider, and also provide typesetting and other services using Word. Some case studies of what we have done are available here (http://www.newgenimaging.com/datasheets/word.pdf) and here (http://www.newgenimaging.com/casestudies/xml.pdf) for download. I am also a confirmed user of Word, and a regular reader of the Editorium Update. I haven't purchased the Editorium product because, by the time I did discover the Editorium, I had developed most of the utilities in-house. I thought I would burden you with my tuppence-worth of comments on the wish list, with the backdrop of my experience in this area:

1. Word completion based on previous entries--do you mean something like the "AutoComplete" feature in Excel? That can be used in case tabular matter with large amount of repetitive content is to be keyed in, and the result taken to Word.

2. Re Export to XML We have developed for in-house use (customised for every DTD) the ability to convert XML into a styled, nearly paginated Word files, including loading of figures and formatting of tables. Separately, I have also developed a program to convert a styled Word file to XML based on a DTD, as long as the document is styled using a special template meant for that DTD. I have also built a utility to parse the resultant Word file and get the resultant error log entries hyperlink to the location of the error.

3. Real-time display of the Index We have developed a utility which converts an Excel List of Text of Index Entries (2,3 or 4 levels) and the relevant page number/ paragraph numbers into an Index in Word by a single click of a button. It also appropriately handles special characters, forcing particular Index Entries to appear in an order other than natural alphabetical order, and page ranges. This also generates an XML Index Entry list which verbosely lists every paragraph referenced as separate entries, where paragraph ranges are referenced by the index entry.

4. Some other features we could add to the wish list are:

? Search and Replace facility to allow searching for Widows or Orphans

? Style definition flexibility to allow for

? different specification for Widows and for Orphans

? specifying how many characters permissible before and after hyphen, in addition to hyphenation zone

? many more styles of underlining

? font in embossed and engraved effects besides shadow

? placing special emphasis characters above or below each character of style

? superscript and subscript sizes and positions to be varied as percentage of normal font sizes

? creation of decimal aligned tab to align at a comma or any other character by treating it as the decimal character

? setting a grid for a Reference style and for the base line of another style to snap to the grid of the reference style

? alignment of characters of para to base or top where a few characters in a paragraph are in significantly larger font than others.

? Allow part of a document to be designated at Read Only

? Allow hyperlinking of document content to a particular e-mail

? Support for CMYK as well as RGB colour

? Ability to define a user-definable hierarchy (classification) of styles in a template to classify styles for easier access and maintenance

? Ability to anchor objects to even a character or page and not just a paragraph

? Ability to enter References directly into a built-in bibliographic database and call them in a document (now separately available as third party plug-ins to MS Word)

What might interest you is that these features were not all needs felt and documented by me, but are a partial list of features which I have noticed are available with Open Office, which is a free 50MB download from here. In addition to almost everything that Word has to offer, it supports not one, but two programming languages (its own version of Basic in addition to Java) and hence is arguably more programmable and customisable than Word is with VBA.

David Parton (david.parton@abbeyfield-nottingham.org.uk) wrote:

Great list.

Can I add: Columns that don't rely on sections. I have a document that is in 8 real sections and would like to be able use these sections as references and to print and navigate using these sections, but the document also uses columns and therefore there are actually over 30 Word section breaks making cross referencing very difficult.

Martin Fitch wrote:

If you want to see what a real publishing program can do, check out Interleaf. After working with Interleaf for many years, trying to do half as much in Word with four times the effort is just sickening. Interleaf Corp. was bought out by Broadvision a few years ago, and the product is now called Quicksilver. Here's a link to their datasheet:

Click to access quicksilver.pdf

Thanks to one and all for their excellent insights and ideas!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Wordmeister Steve Hudson sent a terrific tip for serious Word users:

As a lot of your newsletter specifically deals with Microsoft Word, I thought the following resource might be of interest. It's www.kbAlertz.com; one of the best features is a regular mailout of the new Knowledge Base articles posted by Microsoft. I am trying to keep a running commentary on the Word 2000 ones via my "daily" entries in my blog for those folk who don't want to have to wade through MS guff to decipher what's the latest info.

You can check out Steve's blog here:

http://blog.tdfa.com

Posted in Programs | Leave a comment

Ideal Software

By Jack Lyon | Published: August 28, 2002

With some customization, Microsoft Word makes a pretty good tool for editing. The fact that it can be customized, in fact, is one of its finest features. I also like its use of styles, spell-checking, wildcard Find and Replace, and notes. There are also plenty of things I *don't* like, including Word's general "bugginess" and over-helpfulness. So I started thinking about what would make the ideal software for use in a publishing environment. What would that software look like? What features would it have?

So far, I have the following list, which includes some features that are already part of Word, others that are part of our Editorium software, and others that haven't been invented yet or are available in other programs:

1. Features designed specifically for editing, such as:

a. Batch Find and Replace using regular expressions (wildcards).

b. Quick and easy navigation.

c. Transposition of words and characters.

d. True title-case conversion.

e. Revision tracking and control.

f. Single-sourcing.

g. Automatically numbering notes and lists (that actually work).

h. Automatic backup and archiving.

2. Typesetting features:

a. Excellent hyphenation and justification.

b. Notes that can break over pages and be set in columns independent of body text.

c. Master pages for setup of headers, footers, folios, and so on.

d. Support for automatic ligatures, old-style numbers, and true small caps using master fonts.

e. Paragraph, character, and table styles.

f. "Long-document" features such as cross-referencing, indexing, and tables of contents.

g. "Book-building" features (in other words, a useable Master Document feature).

3. Indexing features with:

a. Embedded entries.

b. Display of entries sorted by page or alphabetically.

c. Real-time display of the index as it's being written.

d. Sorting word-by-word or letter-by-letter, with the ability to ignore introductory words and punctuation.

e. Word completion based on previous entries.

f. Automatic checking of cross-references.

4. The ability to export as:

a. PDF.

b. HTML.

c. HTML Help.

d. XML.

5. Cross-platform compatibility.

I know, I know: Dream on. But wouldn't it be great to have one program that did it all?

What would you add to the list? What would your ideal publishing software look like? Please let me know and I'll publish your response in the near future. You can send your ideas here: mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Jacci Howard Bear has a great Web page on choosing desktop publishing software at About.com. Lots of reviews, comparisons, and other good information:

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/softwarechoice/

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

Automated Letter-by-Letter Index Sorting

By Jack Lyon | Published: August 21, 2002

Last week's newsletter explained how to sort Word's index entries letter by letter rather than word by word:

Using "Found" Macros

But it didn't explain how to do it in an automated way. So here's an automated way, using wildcard Find and Replace. You can learn more about using wildcards in some of our past newsletters:

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=1706069286

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706069286

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706365638

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706458823

Here's the procedure, which you can record as a macro for future use. Or, better yet, just use the prerecorded macro I've included at the end of this article. Work through the procedure if you want to know more about using complicated searches, or if you just want to see how my devious little mind works. (There's probably a better way to do all this using Visual Basic for Applications, but that's a subject for another day.)

1. Make sure your index entries are visible by showing hidden text (Tools > Options > View > Hidden text).

2. Find the index entries and replace them with themselves colored as, say, plum, so your Find and Replace won't move across entry borders later:

Find What:

(XE "*")

Replace With:

1 (formatted as plum)

Use Wildcards:

Checked

3. Replace escaped colons and quotation marks with arbitrary symbols to be changed back later ("escaped" means they have a backslash in front of them, telling Word to treat them as characters, which is how you can use colons and quotation marks in your index entries!):

Find What:

:

Replace With:

&&&

Use Wildcards:

Unchecked

Find What:

"

Replace With:

@@@

Use Wildcards:

Unchecked

4. Put a colon after main-only (but actually, after all) entries:

Find What:

(XE "*)(")

Replace With:

1:2

Use Wildcards:

Checked

5. Find plum-colored, multiple-word index entries and enter semicolon entries, going from three spaces to one space, which ought to be enough for anybody (and besides, Word can only handle up to five "Find What Expression" wildcards):

Find What:

(XE ")([! :]@) ([! :]@) ([! :]@) ([! :]@): (formatted as plum)

Replace With:

12 3 4 5;2345:

Use Wildcards:

Checked

Find What:

(XE ")([! :]@) ([! :]@) ([! :]@): (formatted as plum)

Replace With:

12 3 4;234:

Use Wildcards:

Checked

Find What:

(XE ")([! :]@) ([! :]@): (formatted as plum)

Replace With:

12 3;23:

Use Wildcards:

Checked

6. Clean up colons at ends of entries:

Find What:

(XE "*):(") (formatted as plum)

Replace With:

12 (formatted as Automatic, which gets rid of all plum)

Use Wildcards:

Checked

7. Restore escaped colons and quotation marks, if any:

Find What:

&&&

Replace With:

:

Use Wildcards:

Unchecked

Find What:

@@@

Replace With:

"

Use Wildcards:

Unchecked

Now move to the bottom of your document and have Word generate your index (Insert > Index and Tables > Index). Well, look at that: The entries are sorted letter by letter. Neat!

If you want to work manually, you can insert a semicolon and alternate spelling after a main index entry to force Word to sort in any way you like. For example, let's say you've got some numbers in your index, ordered like this:

8123

835

86

Ordinarily, that's how they'd sort. But if you edit your index entries like this--

{XE "835;0835"}

{XE "86;0086"}

{XE "8123;8123"}

--you'll make them sort like this:

86

835

8123

If you really wanted to, you could even do something weird like this--

{XE "Zebra;1"}

--and force "Zebra" to the top of your index.

Pretty handy, no? At any rate, you now have an automated way to sort Word's index entries letter by letter. Enjoy!

Here's the prerecorded macro to make index entries sort letter by letter. If you don't know how to use such macros, you can find out here.

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
Sub IndexEntriesLetterByLetter()
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.Font.Color = wdColorPlum
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(XE "")([! :]@) ([! :]@):"
.Replacement.Text = "12 3;23:"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.Font.Color = wdColorPlum
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(XE ""*"")"
.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
.Text = ":"
.Replacement.Text = "&&&"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = """"
.Replacement.Text = "@@@"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.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
.Text = "(XE ""*)("")"
.Replacement.Text = "1:2"
.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.Font.Color = wdColorPlum
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(XE "")([! :]@) ([! :]@) ([! :]@) ([! :]@):"
.Replacement.Text = "12 3 4 5;2345:"
.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.Font.Color = wdColorPlum
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(XE "")([! :]@) ([! :]@) ([! :]@):"
.Replacement.Text = "12 3 4;234:"
.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.Font.Color = wdColorPlum
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(XE "")([! :]@) ([! :]@):"
.Replacement.Text = "12 3;23:"
.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.Font.Color = wdColorPlum
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.Font.Color = wdColorAutomatic
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(XE ""*):("")"
.Replacement.Text = "12"
.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
.Text = "(XE ""*):("")"
.Replacement.Text = "12"
.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
.Text = "&&&"
.Replacement.Text = ":"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "@@@"
.Replacement.Text = """"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

The newsletter for July 31 explained how to make punctuation easier to see by formatting it as big, bold, and red; the following newsletter offered some reader tips on doing so; and last week's newsletter included a terrific macro by Phil Rabichow to automate the process.

This week, Steve Hudson provides a similar macro as an exercise in Visual Basic programming (and of course, it's useful, too!). It's a toggle, so you'll probably want to put the subroutine named SomeToolbarNameToggleBigPunctuation() on a toolbar button for easy access. You can learn how to do this here:

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

As you look through the macro, pay particular attention to Steve's comments, which explain what's going on. The macro is an excellent example of VBA, including find loops, wildcard matching, range objects, optional parameters, design analysis, and much more. Actually, the whole macro has many left-of-center concepts--for example, a Find that can return nothing yet still not have finished (it picks up the Chr$(7) that marks a table start, which can't be included in the wildcard entry). The macro also nicely changes the cursor and screen updating, and it backs out formatting changes. Steve is a master at this kind of stuff, so get ready to learn something. And why not contact Steve to take care of your custom programming needs?

By the way, you'll note Steve's humor throughout. Here is Steve's commentary, edited slightly by me to fit the context of this newsletter:

The past newsletters found and formatted punctuation by inclusion, which rules out Unicode and the like. So I figured a macro would be better with punctuation by exclusion in order to show up all sorts of strange dweebs.

The second problem was your suggestion to create a temporary style that mucks my document up with no subsequent hint of destruction.

The third was "How do I reverse this?" If I have a formula in character styling and another elsewhere in terminal screen, I can't find this style and kill it dead with a known something else. So I have to transpose my edits to have a safe working practice. Ack.

The fourth problem was not acknowledging No Proofing on styles.

So the first one is easy enough, we simply start the square brackets formula for the find with a ! and then what we are not interested in. Thus the string for a trivial solution is [!A-Za-z0-9^160]. Note the ^160 for the nonbreaking space; Word honours the ole caret at a higher priority than anything else. Basically, this finds anything *except* a letter, a number, or a nonbreaking space, but I've added additional characters in the macro itself.

The second is also easy. We all use STYLES like good little folk, so let's keep those in place and add--oooo--MANUAL FORMATTING. We can hunt it down and undo it easy enough later by resetting that range to its underlying style again, so it's a temporary aberration for our temporary aberration. That's the third taken care of as well.

Now, the fourth and last--is there any way we can tell the Find to do only those styles with proofing set? Err, no. So we have to check this ourselves manually. 🙁 Word's find falls down spectacularly with stuff like this. Easy enough, and should be faster as we are doing less styling work, which is expensive.

Now some little style notes--I prefer to use ranges and let the users have their selection object. It may be faster running selection.finds, dunno, duncare 🙂 It makes the resulting code smaller and easier to read and allows me sick puns--the last being the most important reason of course. What's the use of knowing all this junk if you can't have fun with it, I say. I know that some folks hate nonstandard variable naming, but I like code that is human readable.

Next, always reset stuff back to the way it was. If users do a find, do they want your settings?

'THE MACRO STARTS HERE
Public Sub SomeToolbarNameToggleBigPunctuation()
'Attach this to a button on a toolbar
'we use the toolbar name to start the sub so we know where
'this sub is called from
Static Toggle As Boolean
Toggle = Not Toggle
ProofReadBigPunctuation Toggle
End Sub
Public Sub ProofReadBigPunctuation(MakeBig As Boolean, Optional Scope As Range)
'$--------
Author: heretic [at symbol] tdfa.com
'$Short: If makebig is true, it makes punctuation marks BIG
'to aid proofreading as discussed by Editmeister Jack.
'If makebig is false, it removes this formatting
'$Known issues: Destroys original doc highlighting IF
'highlighting is used in the formatting process.
Dim HomeOnThe As Range 'Our findermatic
Dim Finished As Boolean
Dim Progress As Double 'enough space for calcs in big dox
'Be nice, don't assume system settings
Dim Cursor_pholder As WdCursorType
Dim ScreenUpdating_pholder As Boolean
'frilly bits: change the cursor whilst we work!
Cursor_pholder = System.Cursor
System.Cursor = wdCursorWait
'freeze the screen to speed things up
ScreenUpdating_pholder = Application.ScreenUpdating
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
'This basic technique can be used in as many ways as Bill
'has bux.
'________________________________
'Give our range a document range to hang off.
'The first .dupe is strictly speaking unnecc but a good habit
'to get into with range objects--the second one prevents us
'changing the passed scope without realising it!
'We avoid the other parts of the document by setting our
'ranges parent to be the range that is the content only.
'I regularly use Activedocument.Content too.
'Also note how we deal with no explicit scope being passed
'from that Optional parameter
If Scope Is Nothing Then Set Scope = _
ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdMainTextStory).Duplicate
Set HomeOnThe = Scope.Duplicate
'Collapse our range to a point at the start of the doc
'main body content, just like a cursor in a virgin document.
HomeOnThe.Collapse
'We don't have to clearformatting or anything as it's
'a whole new range. Just set up the find
'$Customize: the ! means NOT anything in the following list
With HomeOnThe.Find
'note we don't use If MakeBig = True then
If MakeBig Then 'errant chars
.Text = "[! 0-9A-Za-z^9^12^13^160]" '$Customize
.MatchWildcards = True
Else '$Customize: formatting
With .Font
.Color = wdColorRed
.Bold = True
End With
.Highlight = True
End If
End With
'Get started on a standard manual processing find loop.
While Not Finished
'let the poor user know where we are at
Progress = Int(HomeOnThe.End * 100 / Scope.End)
Application.StatusBar = "Restyling " & Format(Progress) & "%"
'ensure the statusbar change gets through
DoEvents
'the find!
With HomeOnThe.Find
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceNone
Finished = Not .Found
End With
'Our range is now either null, meaning nothing found
'or it contains a range for us to examine
If Not Finished Then 'we caught one!
If MakeBig Then 'style if proofing on
If Not ActiveDocument.Styles(HomeOnThe.Style).NoProofing Then _
FormatFontGruesome HomeOnThe
Else 'unstyle
HomeOnThe.Font.Reset
HomeOnThe.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End If
End If
HomeOnThe.Collapse wdCollapseEnd 'so we keep moving along
Wend 'finished
'destroy our objects
Set HomeOnThe = Nothing
'reset our changes
Application.ScreenUpdating = ScreenUpdating_pholder
System.Cursor = Cursor_pholder
Application.StatusBar = "Finished"
End Sub
Private Sub FormatFontGruesome(Scope As Range)
'$Short: to make shtuff shtand out shorty, you
'gotta problem wid dat?
'$Customize: don't forget to keep this matched with the
'find requirements for the undo
'I don't like the thought of changing font name
'as that could change the displayed character
'Lets just make it BIG, BOLD and RED on a YELLOW background
With Scope.Font
.Color = wdColorRed
.Bold = True
.Grow
.Grow
.Grow
End With
Scope.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
End Sub
Sub TestProofReadBigPunctuationOn()
Dim i As Long
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Documents.Add
DoEvents
For i = 27 To 1200
Selection.InsertAfter ChrW(i)
Next i
ProofReadBigPunctuation True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
Sub TestProofReadBigPunctuationOnSimple()
'run this on any trial doc to be sure
ProofReadBigPunctuation True
End Sub
Sub TestProofReadBigPunctuationOff()
ProofReadBigPunctuation False
End Sub
'THE MACRO ENDS HERE

Many thanks to Steve for the macro and for the tutorial.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

If you're looking for indexing resources, don't miss those supplied by the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia:

http://www.slais.ubc.ca/resources/indexing/index.htm

Posted in Indexing | Leave a comment

Sorting Index Entries Letter by Letter

By Jack Lyon | Published: August 14, 2002

If you've used Microsoft Word's Index feature, you know that Word alphabetizes index entries word by word, like this:

New Deal

New World

Newborn

News release

Most indexers and publishers, however, prefer to sort index entries letter by letter, like this:

Newborn

New Deal

News release

New World

Is there a way to get Word to sort entries in this way? Yes--with some manual intervention. (If you've never used Word's indexing feature, you might want to read about it in Word Help before continuing.)

A typical Word index entry looks like this--

{XE "New Deal"}

--and it will sort in word-by-word order.

However, if you add a semicolon to the entry, followed by a letter-by-letter spelling (in other words, a spelling that omits the space between words), you can make the entry sort letter by letter. (In case you're wondering, this feature isn't documented in Word Help; you have to dig for it on Microsoft's Web site.)

The edited entry should look like this:

{XE "New Deal;NewDeal"}

So for our other examples above, the edited entries would look like this:

{XE "New World;NewWorld"}

{XE "Newborn"}

{XE "News release;Newsrelease"}

("Newborn" doesn't need editing, since it's already just one word.)

If we then have Word generate an index using those entries, they'll be sorted letter by letter, like this:

Newborn

New Deal

News release

New World

Neat!

But now I'm wondering: Is there an automated way to edit those index entries?

[Offstage, right: Loud clanks and clunks as your correspondent rifles through his toolbox.]

Hmmm. Here's something that *might* do the job. I'll try it and get back to you in about a week.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's article "Glorious Color," Word expert Steve Hudson wrote:

I *knew* I had an unsettled feeling about your post. It's gelled.

#1: H9 sure - but yellow on white?

#2: Printing on a black and white printer...

After reading Steve's note, I could see where it might be easy to miss what I had in mind, so here's a clarification:

#1: H9 sure - but yellow on white?

DARK yellow, which looks pretty good on screen. Regular yellow, as Steve points out, doesn't work well.

#2: Printing on a black and white printer...

The point is that you use the colors only while editing on-screen. When you're ready to print, you attach the *real* template for the final look--and then print.

Thanks to Steve for helping me clarify things.

After reading our article about making punctuation big and bold, Phil Rabichow wrote:

I enjoyed your technique for making punctuation stand out for those of us, er uh, those whose eyes may not be the sharpest (or to avoid eyestrain). I took your idea and expanded on it. I created a macro that would:

1. Create a character style called Standout that was Times New Roman, 18 points, bold, and red.

2. Handle the error in case the style already existed.

3. Replace all punctuation marks in one fell swoop with the new style.

Because of the error handling in 2. above, you can run the macro, add text with additional punctuation, and run the macro again. Also, instead of doing successive Find/Replace operations, it uses wildcards and Finds: [.,:;"'""?!] i.e., all types of punctuation. The backslash in front of the question and exclamation marks finds those characters. The macro also finds all quotes (") and apostrophes. Although it doesn't show in an email, what appears to be 7 apostrophes are really 1 set of quotes, 1 apostrophe, 1 opening smart quote (Alt+0147) and 1 closing smart quote (Alt+0148). [On a Macintosh, the character numbers would be 210 and 211.] Replace contains: ^& (the operator for Find What Text) and is formatted for the Standout character style.

The macro is:


Sub BigPunctuation()
' BigPunctuation Macro
' Macro recorded 8/11/02 by Phil Rabichow
' Creates Standout style & replaces punctuation
' of selection with large red bold font
'
On Error Resume Next
ActiveDocument.Styles.Add Name:="Standout", _
Type:=wdStyleTypeCharacter
ActiveDocument.Styles("Standout").BaseStyle = _
"Default Paragraph Font"
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Standout").Font
.Name = "Times New Roman"
.Size = 18
.Bold = True
.Color = wdColorRed
End With
With ActiveDocument.Styles("Standout").Font
With .Shading
.Texture = wdTextureNone
.ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorAutomatic
.BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorAutomatic
End With
.Borders(1).LineStyle = wdLineStyleNone
.Borders.Shadow = False
End With
' Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.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
Selection.Find.Replacement.Style = _
ActiveDocument.Styles("Standout")
With Selection.Find
.Text = _
"[.,:;""" & ChrW(8220) & ChrW(8221) & "'?!]"
.Replacement.Text = "^&"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

Note that this macro will apply to a selection in case you only want to change some of the punctuation. If you remove the apostrophe before the line

Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory

the macro will work on the entire document.

Thank you again for your time and a wonderful publication.

Thanks to Steve for the terrific macro! If you don't know how to use macros like this one, you can find out here.

And you can learn more about improving the visibility of punctuation (including how to get the big, bold punctuation back to normal) here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1710712423

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

The American Society of Indexers is "the only professional organization in the United States devoted solely to the advancement of indexing, abstracting, and database building." Their site has lots of links to indexing and publishing resources and, of course, tons of information about indexing:

http://www.asindexing.org/site/index.html

Posted in Indexing | Leave a comment

Glorious Color

By Jack Lyon | Published: August 8, 2002

In the past, I've recommended using your own template to apply to documents you're editing. This allows you to use a typeface that's easy to read on your monitor, offers plenty of differentiation between double and single quotation marks, and has a long em dash, a medium-sized en dash, and a short hyphen (so you can tell them apart). You can learn more about this here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700934923

One difficulty I've encountered with my custom template is distinguishing between different heading levels. I like to know at a glance how a heading is styled, without having to look at the formatting toolbar or the "style area," which you can learn about here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1710340695

To get around the problem, I've usually formatted my Heading 1 style in 22-point type, my Heading 2 style in 18-point type, and my Heading 3 style in 14-point type, with Heading 1 and 2 centered and Heading 3 flush left. This works okay, but if I need to add Heading 4 and Heading 5 (which is sometimes necessary), I start running out of formatting.

But I've recently discovered a nice solution: color!

Why not make Heading 1 red?

And Heading 2 blue?

And Heading 3 green?

And Heading 4 orange?

And Heading 5 brown?

You get the picture! Some of the standard Microsoft Word colors stand out well on a white background and are easily distinguishable from each other. These are, in my opinion, red, blue, green, orange, brown, pink, sky blue, bright green, and dark yellow (one for each of Word's nine heading levels), but feel free to use whatever works well for you.

You might want to arrange the heading level colors in a way that is easy to remember. The order I used above works for me. I split the colors into groups of three: red, green, and blue (commonly known as RGB); orange, brown, and pink (which makes no sense except that I like orange better than brown, and brown better than pink); and finally (in order of sky, lawn, and dirt), sky blue, bright green, and dark yellow. But you could use the (approximate) order of the spectrum, or maybe some mnemonic device based on the first letter of each word.

Whatever system you choose, using color makes it easy to see and identify heading levels, and it also makes a manuscript much more fun to read!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading last week's newsletter about making punctuation big and bold, Hilary Powers wrote:

Enjoyed the newsletter, as always - but the current suggestion seems like an awful lot of work for a partial solution. I much prefer to edit in a font that has punctuation big enough to see... and everything else, too. If you have Lucida Console on your system, give it a try - it's both denser and easier to read than Courier New, and everything is clear. Even the dots for spaces with hidden characters turned on are the size of lentils. The similarity between en dashes and hyphens is the only problem for onscreen work, and that's easy to deal with.

It looks awful on paper, though, so you do have to change it - basically, switch templates - before giving the file to anyone who plans to print it.

Susan Bullowa wrote:

I highlight all punctuation marks using Search and Replace. No font fuss. Next time, I plan to develop nested macros (if I can in Word).

In a book I just worked on, the author's I's, me's, and my's were all highlighted because my editor asked me to make the book a bit less egocentric! It worked like a charm.

Karen MacKenzie, a Word moderator and WMVP at Woody's Lounge (see the Resources column, below), wrote:

Great tip! I've already placed style and macro in my normal.dot. But I did modify the replace so as to get it all in one fell swoop. The change as follows:

Wild Card search

Search for: [,.;:'"] (What you listed, but I omit the hyphens and dashes... too much for me!)

Replace with ^& (this tells Word to put back what it found)

Many thanks to Hilary, Susan, and Karen for their helpful thoughts and suggestions.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Woody's Lounge, as the name implies, is a great place to hang out and learn more about Word and other Microsoft stuff. Post questions, get answers, and help others with your ever-expanding knowledge. You can visit the lounge here:

http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/wwwthreads.pl

Don't forget to check out Woody's books and other goodies while you're there.

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

Visible Punctuation

By Jack Lyon | Published: July 31, 2002

One of the problems of editing on-screen is that punctuation marks are harder to see than on paper. Is that speck on my screen a period or just spray from my Diet Coke? (Sorry. Didn't mean to gross you out.) There's an easy remedy for this--one I like a lot. Just create a character style that's big and bold and colorful. Then record a macro to find and replace punctuation marks with themselves, formatted with your character style. Here's how:

Creating the Paragraph Style

1. Click the "Format" menu.

2. Click "Style" (in Word 2002, "Styles and Formatting").

3. Click the "New" button (in Word 2002, "New Style").

4. In the "Name" box, type a name for your new style--"Punctuation," maybe, or "Jots and Tittles."

5. In the "Style type" box, select "Character."

6. Click the "Format" button.

7. Click "Font."

8. If it's not already selected, click the "Font" tab.

9. Under "Font," select a font you'd like to use, but make sure it has easily distinguishable punctuation marks. Times New Roman is my all-time favorite for this purpose.

10. Under "Font style," select "Bold."

11. Under "Size," select something nice and big. Try 18 points for starters (for text that is regularly 12 points). You can adjust this as you like.

12. Under "Font color," select red or blue--whatever you like.

13. Click the "OK" button.

14. Click the next "OK" button.

15. Click the "Close" button (except in Word 2002).

Recording the Macro

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Macro."

3. Click "Record New Macro."

4. In the "Macro name" box, give your macro a name, something like "BigPunctuation" (no spaces allowed in macro names).

5. If you like, assign the macro to a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut by clicking the appropriate buttons and following the prompts on your screen.

6. If necessary, click the "Close" button. You should now see the macro recording toolbar with its two buttons, which means Word is now recording what you do.

7. Click the "Edit" menu.

8. Click "Replace."

9. In the "Find what" box, enter some punctuation you want to include--let's say a comma.

10. In the "Replace with" box, enter the same punctuation you included in the "Find what" box.

11. Click the "Format" button (you may need to click the "More" button before this is available).

12. Click "Style."

13. Select your new style from the list.

14. Click the "OK" button.

15. Make sure the "Search" box says "All."

16. Click the "Replace All" button. That will replace all of your commas with themselves but formatted with your new style.

17. Repeat steps 7 through 16 for each punctuation mark you want to format with your new style. I recommend periods, commas, semicolons, colons, single quotation marks, double quotation marks, hyphens, en dashes, em dashes, and anything else you have trouble seeing. Don't overdo it, though. The point is to *see* the little stuff, not to get lost in a forest of overgrown punctuation.

18. Click the "Tools" menu.

19. Click "Macro."

20. Click "Stop Recording."

Now run the macro (Tools > Macro > Macros > [select the macro] > Run), and it will format your punctuation so it's easy to see. Of course, the macro will remain available for future use--you don't have to record it every time you do this.

A possible drawback to all of this is that the enlarged punctuation may expand your line spacing here and there, making your document look kind of funny. But if you can live with that, you'll probably come to like working with those "big commas." Another drawback is that any new punctuation you *type* in the document won't be big, bold, and colorful--unless you format it with the new style or run the macro periodically, but that seems like a lot of extra work to me. There is another solution, but that's a subject for another day.

"How do I get rid of the big formatting after I've finished editing?" you're now asking. The easiest way is just to delete the style from the document. But don't forget to do it! Otherwise, your client will think you're pretty weird. Here's the procedure:

1. Click the "Format" menu.

2. Click "Style" (in Word 2002, "Styles and Formatting").

3. Select the style you created earlier to format your punctuation.

4. Click the "Delete" button (in Word 2002, you must first click the dropdown arrow on the right of the style's name).

5. When Word asks if you really want to delete the style, click the "Yes" button.

6. Click the "Close" button (except in Word 2002).

Now all of your perfectly edited punctuation will be returned to its regular formatting.

You'll thank me when you go to the optometrist.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Charles Kenyon's Microsoft Word FAQ includes an astounding amount of information about Microsoft Word. You'll find tips, tutorials, downloads, links, and lots of other stuff. Explore and enjoy!

http://www.addbalance.com/word/index.htm

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

Tracking Trick

By Jack Lyon | Published: July 25, 2002

If you've done much editing in Microsoft Word, you've probably used Track Changes (Revisions), which marks deleted and added text so you can review (or let someone else review) your editing. If you haven't used it, here's how to turn it on:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Track Changes."

3. Click "Highlight Changes."

4. Put a check in the box labeled "Track changes while editing." (While you're there, you can also decide whether or not to show ["highlight"] changes on your screen or in the printed document.)

5. Click the "OK" button.

Or, what the heck, just double-click the "TRK" box in the status bar at the bottom of your screen. You can also right-click the box to set various options.

One of the options is what color to use to designate deletions and additions--blue, turquoise, and so on (scroll down to see the more unusual colors). The most interesting color is the one labeled "By author." What's it do? Well, my own "author" color, by default, is red. If, however, I open a document from you, your tracked changes will show up in a different color, probably blue. So "By author" tells word to assign a different color to changes from a different user. How does Word know the document is from a different user? Because of the name that was specified under Tools > Options > User Information > Name when the document was created.

And that suggests an interesting trick. If you're going to track changes, why not track different *kinds* of changes in a way that will be helpful to you? The most obvious application of this idea would be to track big changes (such as moving paragraphs around) and small changes (such as moving commas around) separately. All you have to do is change the name under User Information to something like "Big Changes" before getting out the cleaver, and to something like "Little Changes" before getting out the tweezers. The obvious advantage of this is that little changes then show up in a different color *inside* of big changes, which doesn't happen if you make all of your changes using the same user name (and thus the same color).

You can even record each name change in its own macro and assign those macros to menus, toolbar buttons, or keyboard shortcuts for easy access. You can learn more about doing so here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706651129

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

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

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707100224

(Reader's Write column)

After you've finished marking big and little changes (or whatever), don't forget to set your user name back to your actual name.

Now, there are plenty of changes you probably don't want to track at all. For example, before I ever start reading a document, I first clean up multiple spaces, multiple paragraph breaks, and lots of other stuff that gets in the way of real editing. I do this with Track Changes turned off (using our FileCleaner and MegaReplacer programs) because I don't consider these to be significant changes. I don't want to review them, and I don't think my authors care about reviewing them. I do, however, want to have any significant changes available for review, and the tracking trick of changing the user name makes this eminently doable.

You can learn about FileCleaner here:

http://www.editorium.com/14845.htm

And you can learn about MegaReplacer here:

http://www.editorium.com/14843.htm

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading about using background colors in last week's newsletter, Chuck Tucker (ctucker@ieee.org) wrote:

I don't know about your version of Word, but background colors (other than white on blue) only work in Normal view. They go away when you switch back to Print View.

I have a couple of other observations.

1. When I switch to Normal view with ToolsOptionsView Style Area Width set greater than zero I get the usual display of styles along the left margin.

2. When I set a new background color in the Normal view the styles in the margin disappear (Area Width = 0)??

3. Switching back to Print Layout view gets rid of the background.

4. Switching back to Normal view omits the background color and returns the Styles in the margin.

Go figure?

However, if you simply use the standard "white on blue background" option, then the Styles margin display remains when switching back and forth.

Thanks to Chuck for sending these "gotchas."

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

The Microsoft Office "Tools on the Web" site offers some terrific instruction on using the Track Changes feature:

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/legal/track%20changes.asp

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

Background Colors

By Jack Lyon | Published: July 18, 2002

Last week's newsletter suggested various ways to change the view in Word as a way to pick up errors missed during a first editing pass. You can read the newsletter here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1710581825

Unfortunately, I forgot to include one method that is both effective and easy to use--a feature called "Blue background, white text." Here's how to turn it on:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Options."

3. Click the "General" tab.

4. Put a check in the box labeled "Blue background, white text."

5. Click the "OK" button.

That will display your document with white text on a blue background, just like the old WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS--definitely a new way to view your document. You may find that you actually prefer working with this feature turned on--it's certainly easy on the eyes. If so, when you're ready to give your document a second look for missed typos, just turn the feature off, reverting to black text on a white background.

If you want other background colors (bright green!), they're certainly available, at least since Word 97. Here's how to get them:

1. Click the "Format" menu.

2. Click "Background."

3. Click the color you want to use.

Note that using this feature overrides the blue background (but not the white text) of "Blue background, white text," if you have it turned on, so you'll probably want to turn it off before using a background color. Also, happily, background colors don't print; as the Help file notes, they're designed for "viewing documents only"--which is exactly what we want. (Background colors are also useful in creating Web pages, but that's another story.)

By the way, you may find that you like editing in some of the background colors. As I write this, I'm using the light green on the bottom row of standard colors--a nice change from Word's usual stark white. If the standard colors aren't enough, you can click "More Colors" and really get crazy. Furthermore, once you've set a color you like, you can save it in a template that you can attach to any document you like. Just be sure to reattach the regular template before sending the document out into the real world.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

Several readers sent suggestions about reading documents in a new way to catch additional typos.

Nancy Newlin (nancynewlin@earthlink.net), who inspired this week's article, wrote, "Here's another one I learned many years back that 'tricks' the eyes into thinking they're seeing something new: print the document on something other than white paper--yellow, green, blue, etc. Then it all looks NEW. Works for me!"

Preston Earle wrote, "Another effective way to spot typos is to read the document backwards."

Dave Erickson suggested reading aloud as a way to catch errors.

In a follow-up to Lyon's Law of Typos, mentioned in last week's newsletter, Marie Shear wrote, "Shear's Law of Typos, discovered by a widely unheralded writer and editor, specifies that the number of errors is directly proportional to the number of copies that have just been distributed and to the rank of the recipients."

I'd seen the law in action, but now I know its discoverer!

Many thanks to Nancy, Preston, Dave, and Marie for their messages.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

After reading about Lyon's Law of Typos in last week's newsletter, Steve Dobney sent a link to a wonderful article, "Muphry's Law," by John Bangsund, who served for many years as editor for the Australian-based (Victoria) Society of Editors Newsletter. You'll find John's article here:

http://users.pipeline.com.au/bangsund/muphry.htm

You'll also enjoy John's Web site, Threepenny Planet, which features information about him and several delightful articles about the publishing world:

http://users.pipeline.com.au/bangsund/

For readers of Editorium Update, John particularly recommends "On Looking It Up":

http://users.pipeline.com.au/bangsund/ramble.htm)

and "How I Became an Editor":

http://users.pipeline.com.au/bangsund/howcomed.htm

If you're looking for a highly experienced freelancer, you'll probably be interested in John's services. You can reach him here:

mailto:bangsund [at symbol] pipeline.com.au

And you can see his curriculum vitae here:

http://users.pipeline.com.au/bangsund/cv.htm

Thanks to Steve and John.

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

New Views on Typos

By Jack Lyon | Published: July 10, 2002

Lyon's Law of Typos: On your first glance at a newly typeset document, you will immediately discover an error you missed while editing.

Why this maddening experience occurs is a mystery to me, but it's nevertheless true that when I see a document in a new form, I also spot "new" errors. If this is true for you, too, you can use Microsoft Word to turn it to your advantage. How? By changing the way you view a document in Microsoft Word.

Let's say you've already "finished" editing a document--you've made everything consistent, fixed errors of fact, run a spell-check, and so on. Ordinarily, you'd send it off to be typeset--*after* which you'd spot those additional typos. This time, however, why not try reading through the document again after changing the way it's displayed? You could try any of the following:

* If you've been working in Normal view, switch to Print Layout view (under the View menu)--or vice versa.

* Read the document in Outline view (under the View menu).

* Change the Zoom percentage to something radically bigger or smaller than what you've been using (View > Zoom).

* Attach a different template (using the same style names) to display your type in a different color and font. If you're going to do this, make sure you have a "real" template that you can attach later to restore the document's true formatting. You can learn more about this here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704544112

* Switch to Draft font. You've never used Draft font? It shows text in a plain font with a minimum of formatting. Here's how to display it:

1. Click "View."

2. Click "Normal" (you must be in Normal view to use Draft font).

3. Click "Tools."

4. Click "Options."

5. Click the "View" tab.

6. Put a check in the box labeled "Draft font."

7. Click the "OK" button.

Word 2000's Draft font has a bug that prevents the display of bold and italic, as explained here:

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q210585

But in other versions of Word, Draft font works fairly well and is definitely a different way to look at your documents.

Will using one of these methods eliminate typos in typesetting? Well, probably not. After all, Lyon's Law of Typos is a law. But another read-through in a different view should help catch some of those errors.

You can see a long list of other amusing (and often true) laws here:

http://www.cpuidle.de/edition.htm

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

After reading the article above, you may be interested in some other strategies for spotting errors. If so, you'll probably enjoy the Proofreading Strategies page at Purdue University Online Writing Lab. Much of the information is aimed at college students, naturally enough, but there are still some helpful tips here:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_proof.html

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

Identifying Unicode Character Numbers

By Jack Lyon | Published: July 3, 2002

Sometimes to find or replace a Unicode character in Microsoft Word, you need the character's number, as explained in the June 12, 2002, issue of Editorium Update:

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

If you know the name of the character, you can probably look up its Unicode number at Alan Wood's Unicode Resources site:

http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/search.html

But what if you don't know its name? Isn't there a way to find out the number of a Unicode character that's used in your Word document?

Fortunately, there is. Alan Wood has provided a terrific macro for that purpose, and you can get the macro here:

http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/utilities_editors.html#word97

You may have to scroll down a little (past the first, short macro) to find the macro, which is introduced by the following text: "The following macro will attempt to identify a single character that you have selected, and display its Unicode decimal character reference."

Don't know how to use such macros? You can find out here.

I'd recommend that you put the macro on a menu, toolbar button, or keyboard combination for easy access. You can learn how here:

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

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

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707100224

(Reader's Write column)

Please note that you must select a character before running the macro. By the way, the macro also identifies ANSI numbers, which makes it a good substitute for the macro in the November 28, 2000, issue of Editorium Update:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704193319

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READERS WRITE

Melissa Bogen wrote, "I read with interest your recent newsletter on converting Unicode characters to Quark XPress Tags. Is there a resource you can suggest where I can see a complete list of XPress Tags?"

There's a particularly well-done list here, in PDF form:

Click to access XPressTagsList.pdf

Thanks to Meg for her question.

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RESOURCES

All week I've been trying out a program named UltimaShell that completes words as you type. And you know what? I like it, especially because it has so many user-definable options. Here's the information from the program's publisher:

"FlashPeak UltimaShell makes you type as fast as thinking.

"UltimaShell autocompletes words/phrases and autoexpand shorthands in ANY applications on MS Windows. It also provides a wonderful collection of clipboard and shell enhancement functions together with many handy automation utilities."

You can learn more here:

http://www.flashpeak.com/ushell/ushell.htm

The publisher of UltimaShell is offering a 30% discount to readers of Editorium Update. If you'd like to take advantage of this offer, please use the following private purchase link:

http://www.regsoft.net/purchase.php3?productid=38940&pc=14W0n

You can learn more about word-expansion programs for both PC and Macintosh here:

http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/wordprediction2001/index.htm

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