Remember WordPerfect, with its cardboard template that showed which function keys did what? I liked it; you can tell because I created similar templates for my Editor's ToolKit and DEXter programs:

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

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

But if you just want to see the function-key assignments in regular old Microsoft Word (2000 and above), there is a secret way:

1. Click Tools > Customize.

2. Click the Toolbars tab.

3. Put a check in the box labelled "Function Key Display."

4. Click the Close button.

At the bottom of your screen, you should now see a toolbar that displays Word's function-key assignments. You can move or float it just like any other toolbar. If you like, you can click the "keys" on the toolbar with your mouse while holding down the SHIFT key, the CTRL key, key combinations, and so on to reveal the various functions of the keys. But why not just use the keyboard?

As you type or edit, the toolbar will change. Different functions will become grayed out or even hidden, depending on what you are doing. It's a handy tool to see what functions are available on those keys.

If you want to *print* a list of the function-key assignments, do this:

1. Click File > Print.

2. In the "Print what" dropdown list, select "Key assignments."

3. Click the OK button.

You can also see a list on-screen:

1. Click Help > Microsoft Office Word Help.

2. Click the Answer Wizard tab.

3. Type "function keys" in the "Search for" box.

4. Press ENTER.

5. Click "Keyboard shortcuts for Word" in the Task Pane.

6. Click the items in which you are interested. A list of functions and their associated keys will be displayed. You can also click "Show All" at the top of the window to display *all* of the keys and their functions. Note that you can print this information by clicking the printer icon at the top of the window.

I highly recommend learning all of Word's keyboard shortcuts. No more reaching for the mouse!

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading the September 1 article, "Managing Projects and Tasks in Microsoft Outlook," Brad Hurley wrote:

I also use Outlook for managing projects and tasks, and like you I work on many projects simultaneously, but my system is very pared-down and simple.

I don't bother assigning categories to tasks or organizing them in any way; I just focus on creating a deadline for each task and then setting a reminder for that deadline far enough in advance so I can meet it.

My project deadlines are usually determined by my clients. When I put together a "creative brief" or description of the project for a client, I also set up a schedule of due dates for milestones along the way. In Outlook, I create a new task for each of those milestones and assign it a due date. Outlook automatically uses the due date as the reminder date, but I change the reminder date manually so I get reminded well in advance of the date something is due. For example, if I have a Web article due on September 14 and know I need a week to write it, I'll set the due date for September 14 and the reminder date to September 7. No need to put anything on my calendar; at 8:00 a.m. on September 7, Outlook will pop up a reminder that I need to start working on that article. I start working on it, and I hit the "snooze" button to remind me again in a day or two in case I get distracted by another task. Once the task is done, I mark it as complete in Outlook.

In older versions of Outlook, each task reminder would pop up in its own window, which got to be annoying when lots of reminders came up at once. One of the great features of Outlook 2003 is that it puts all the reminders in one window, which to me was worth the price of the upgrade. When the reminder window pops up, I can see at a glance all the things that are on my plate; I snooze them if I don't have time to work on them right away, and then I'm reminded again in a few hours or days, depending on the snooze time.

One more thing: when an e-mail comes in that requires me to take some sort of action, I just drag it to my task button to create a task for it, assign a due date and a reminder date, and then move the e-mail out of my in-box. The only things I ever put on my Outlook calendar are meetings and appointments.

It's true that with this approach I can't sort my tasks by project or client, but to me that doesn't matter. What matters is that I get reminded when I have to start work on something and that I know when it's due. I've been using this simple system for about four years now, and it works well for me.

Many thanks to Brad!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

EditFast is an online proofreading and editing service, so if you need help--or want to provide help--it may be a good place to look:

http://www.editfast.com/

The site also provides some useful tools, including a grammar resource, a world clock, a currency converter, and a free editorial newsletter:

http://www.editfast.com/english/editoria.htm

Why not sign up?

In trying to explain how Word's Find and Replace (FnR) wildcard mechanism works, I'll also present a practical solution to the multitude of problems encountered by the seemingly innocuous ^p^p to ^p, whose usual objective is to remove unnecessary blank lines. In doing so, we shall traverse the width of Word's pitfalls that never fail to trip up a traveller.

First up, the Word Help system has some excellent help on wildcards. It is a complete pain to access, but you can find something. In Word 2000: F1 - help > Answer Wizard | Index > Search on: wildcard. The second topic down is the master list of all FnR stuff. Select it. Pick the Wildcard Characters topic down that list. Now select the *type a wildcard* hyperlink. Hooray! Print it out, fast, and use it as a guide from now on. You have just found the first excellent Quick Reference in the Help system.

The very last two paragraphs are the key to what I am attempting here.

To replace double paragraph breaks with a single one, we would think that finding ^p^p and replacing with ^p would do the job, right?

Well, not really. If you do it via VBA, you find yourself stalling forever if your document is terminated by a blank paragraph, as you have to perform it iteratively until you get a Not Found condition. Why does it fail to replace the last paragraph mark? Well, you *can't* delete the last paragraph mark--ever. When you a start a brand new virgin document and turn on View Formatting, that paragraph mark you see is the End Of Document paragraph mark. As the document does exist and thus has a finite end point, that magic pilcrow (backward P) has to appear. It is also the marker point in memory to place the nasty little objects we infest our nice clean ASCII text with: style definitions, table formatting, list templates, graphical objects, and the list goes on. See Alt + F11 > F2 > Enter for more information.

So, to get around the VBA problem, we simply pre-process the final paragraph. If it is blank (just a paragraph mark), then kill the second-to-last character--which must be the penultimate paragraph mark. Manually, press CTRL + END and use the backspace key as often as required.

The main problem with the simple FnR replace postulation is similar. If you just delete a paragraph mark, you lose the style for that paragraph. So, we can get around that by ensuring it is always the trailing paragraph that gets deleted. It won't do the final blank paragraph in a document, but that is solved above.

First, we need to understand how the brackets work, and the Help topic explains that nicely. So let us put the guide into good use. (^p)^p means that we have marked the first paragraph mark as our first "text chunk." If we use 1 in the replace string, it means to leave the first text chunk--the paragraph mark with the holy styling applied--in place. Unfortunately for us, we still haven't got there yet.

Why? We get an error: We can't use ^p if we are using wildcards. ($#%*! Microsoft.) So we have to use ^013 instead. Herein lies our next problem--paragraph marks that aren't! Oh, yes, kiddies, just because you see a pilcrow does not mean you are looking at a paragraph mark. Oh no. Not with Paste Special and even weirder applications handing in Clipboard data streams without thought. Word dutifully displays a pilcrow when it encounters an ASCII 013, but the background machinery may not have resolved into a paragraph object to be kept dynamically updated.

How do I know it is ASCII 013? Well, I cheat. I select the paragraph mark, or whatever character I need to know, and use VBA: Alt + F11 (VB Editor or the VBE), CTRL + G (Immediate Window), Enter: ? ASCW(Selection)

I use ASCW() rather than ASC() because I want the full Unicode value. For ASCII characters, the Unicode value is the same. Go ahead, work out the wildcards' ASCII numbers and write them on your guide.

So, if we are going to use replace (^013)^013 with ^013, we have to make sure every ASCII 13 is a bona fide paragraph mark. Without wildcards on, find ^013 and replace it with ^p. Honest paragraphs will see no change; fake paragraphs get converted to your will on the spot.

Now you can get serious and stick your wildcard search on. Replace (^013)^013 with 1 and we're in the clear. Done.

In a similar fashion, the much simpler exercise of replacing a colon that occurs after a ket--a ")" character--without destroying the ket itself, would be to use wildcards and replace (^041)^058 with 1.

However, if we were searching for a bra--a "(" character--we would run into another peculiar little Word problem with managing RTF strings. If you insert a symbol from the Wingdings range, or many other non-Unicode graphical fonts, Word actually stores a marker there instead, and then it stores the actual font character off beyond the end of the section mark. That marker is ASCII 40, our unfortunate bra. So an ^040^058 sequence could very well be *any* symbol followed by a colon.

If we were using two blank paragraphs before every heading and no space before to ensure that our new pages always start at the very top, no matter the method used to page break, and we wanted to get rid of scads of three or more blank paragraphs in excess of a single hit (are we listening, VBA people?), we could do something evil and wicked like this: find (^013{2,2})(^013)@ and replace it with 1. That leaves us with a maximum of two following blank paragraphs anywhere in the document, even at the end--in one single Find operation.

Interestingly enough, for those still able to follow, (^013{2,2})^013{1,} fails with an invalid pattern. I forced it with the brackets for the above solution.

That brings us to the final solution for editors and writers seeking to mass destroy all blank lines. It has taken a while, but boy haven't we learned a lot of useless stuff about Word on the way! Find (^013)(^013)@ and replace it with 1 to kill all blank paragraphs in a single pass, with the exception of the first paragraph (there is no start-of-document paragraph mark to give us a two-in-a-row target) and the last paragraph mark (which is excluded from the Find range).

Copyright 2005 by Steve Hudson. All rights reserved.

Word Heretic, Sydney, Australia

Tricky stuff with Word or words for you.

www.wordheretic.com

ABN: 86 453 419 554

"Qualified Good Tech Writer Dude"

Free Association of Words Without prejudice

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

In the August 19 newsletter, Pru Harrison asked about how to make sure commas following italicized text are not themselves italicized. The newsletter included one solution, but reader Jeanne Pinault sent an additional one:

"Replace [any letter] [comma] [italic] with [^&,] [not italic] and you get two not italic commas for every italic comma you started with. Then replace the double commas with single commas and run through and fix the relatively few that need to stay italic. I got a bunch of tildes when I tried it your way, but I have Windows XP, and it won't let FileCleaner replace hyphens in number ranges in live notes, where I need it most, either. (My cure for that is to replace all the hyphens with en dashes and go back and fix the few places that need hyphens.)"

Many thanks to Jeanne!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Speaking of wildcard searching, if you haven't yet downloaded and read my free paper "Advanced Find and Replace in Microsoft Word," you owe it to yourself to do so. The techniques it explains will save you from having to make thousands of tedious, repetitive changes by hand. Understanding these techniques is, in my opinion, the most important thing you can do if you want to work more efficiently in Microsoft Word. You can download the paper by clicking here:

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

I'm a book editor by day and a writer and programmer by night, which means I have dozens of projects going at any one time, and numerous tasks for each project. I've been looking for a way to manage all that and have finally figured out a system (using Microsoft Outlook) that seems to work. Hoping others might find my system useful, I decided to pass it on in this newsletter. Here's the procedure (which is not as complicated as it looks with all this explanation):

1. Create broad Outlook categories for the areas you need to manage (click Edit > Categories). For example, I have categories for Editorium, Home, Personal, Publishing, Work Chores, Work Projects, and Writing. But the actual category names look like this:

$Editorium

#Home

#Personal

$Publishing

*Work Chores

*Work Projects

$Writing

Why the symbols? So the categories will sort like this--

$Editorium

$Publishing

$Writing

#Home

#Personal

*Work Chores

*Work Projects

--thus grouping the categories by broader areas. (You'll notice I have three categories that I hope will make some money aside from my day job. There's always that possibility!)

Unfortunately, Outlook doesn't (at least in the 2002 version) handle subcategories, but you can overcome that limitation by creating "compound" categories like these:

$Editorium:Programs

$Editorium:Documentation

$Editorium:Marketing

I also have categories for the *kinds* of work I have to do:

.Editing

.Reconciling proofs

.Checking corrections

.Indexing

.Marketing

.Programming

.Debugging

I'll explain why later.

2. Create an Outlook task (CTRL + SHIFT + K) for each project you need to work on. For example, a few of my projects are:

Revamp website

Create new program

Write editing book

As you create a project, assign it to one of those broad categories you created earlier (click the Categories button on the lower right of your task). For example, "Revamp website" has the $Editorium category. Give each project a due date.

3. Create at least one task (CTRL + SHIFT + K) for each project. In my "Revamp website" project, for example, one of my tasks is "Create new design." Give the task the same category as the project it belongs to (in my case, $Editorium). Then click the Details tab, and in the space for Billing Information, enter the name of the project: "Revamp website." This task is now associated not only with the category but also with a specific project under that category. (Note that you can have multiple projects under one category.) Give your task a start date (the date on which you want to do the task) but not a due date. Why? Because projects have due dates but tasks do not.

4. So you can see and manage all of your projects and tasks in context, create a View for them (in just *14* easy steps--yow!). You'll only need to do this once:

a. Make sure you're in the Tasks folder (toward the bottom of the Folder List).

b. Click View > Current View > Define Views.

c. Click the New button.

d. Enter a name for your view, something like "My Projects," and click OK.

e. Click the Fields button.

f. Under "Select available fields from," select "All Task fields."

g. Under "Available fields," select "Billing Information.

h. Click the Add button. You'll now see "Billing Information" at the bottom of the list on the right.

i. Click the Move Up button until "Billing Information" is just below "Attachment."

j. Also add "Start Date" and move it just before "Due date." You can add other fields you think might be useful, but don't get too carried away. Click OK to get back to the "View Summary" dialog.

k. Click the "Group By" button.

l. Under "Select available fields from," select "All Task fields."

m. Under "Group items by," select Categories. Under "Then by," select "Billing Information." Click OK.

n. Click OK again, and then click Apply View.

What you're now looking at are expandable/collapsible groups for all of your categories and the projects under those categories. Go ahead--click some of the little + boxes on the left to see what you've got. Pretty slick, eh? Note that to work with the tasks, you don't have to open them individually (by double-clicking). You can change the information right in the table you're looking at. I don't like mousing around, so I use the cursor keys, the F2 key, and the ENTER key to quickly modify entries (try it!). To sort by one of the columns, click the column header at the top of your screen.

I also recommend creating other Views to fit your needs. For example, you might want to create a View that groups projects by Due Date and another View that groups tasks by Start Date.

Remember those categories for *kinds* of work?

.Editing

.Reconciling proofs

And so on?

A task can have multiple categories, so if I'm editing the manuscript for a certain project, I'll give it the .Editing category as well as the *Work Projects category. Then I can see, in a group, all of my editing tasks at once.

Okay, now let's get some of those individual tasks into specific times on your calendar:

1. Click the Calendar folder in your Folder List.

2. Click View > Work Week (Month is also useful, but not right now).

3. On the right you'll see the TaskPad, which is a list of tasks.

4. Click View > TaskPad View > Active Tasks for Selected Days. (You'll only need to do this once--unless you change it later.) That will set the TaskPad to show only the tasks that start on the day you've selected in the calendar. Click a different day, get a different list of tasks.

5. In one of the days in the calendar, click a time you want to schedule a task. Then drag a task from the TaskPad onto the calendar. The task will open with the selected start time already in place. Click Save and Close to put the task away.

6. You'll now see the task as an appointment on your calendar, and you can adjust the start time and end time by using your mouse. You can also drag the appointment to a different day or time.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for other tasks you want to schedule.

8. Unlike me, actually do and check off (in the TaskPad) the tasks, following the schedule you've laid out in the calendar. This, by the way, is the key point.

Do you have a better system? Please let me know, and I'll share it in the newsletter.

mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com

By the way, the most tedious part of all this, for me, is dragging the tasks to my calendar. There ought to be an easier way. I'd also like to do more than just schedule things; I'd like to know if I can actually do my tasks in the time I have available. In other words, I need to know if my deadlines are realistic (not). For anyone in the publishing field, that's essential. It's possible to do that with Microsoft Project or other complex project-management software, but I really have no interest in Gantt charts and the like, and for me to use project-management software would be like swatting a fly with a baseball bat; I simply don't need that much power.

So, I've found an alternative that is almost perfect for what I need. It does the job without being overly complicated; in fact, it's easy to use. It's a brilliant Outlook add-in called Taskline. For more information, see today's Resources column.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading the article "Divide and Conquer, Part 2," Erika Remmy wrote:

My second pass is usually to go through and fix en and em dashes--making sure the right kind of dash is used in each place and getting rid of stray spaces. (The copy I work with involves a lot of date spans, so there are always en dashes aplenty.)

I do it manually, with some search-and-replaces. (I can't figure out an automated way for a macro to specify what correction is needed in each instance. For example, " -" [space hyphen] could need to be an em dash or an en dash, or could be a situation where the hyphen is correct and the space in front of it just needs to be deleted. I could try to learn how to do dialog boxes, but I can't picture that method saving any time in this dash cleanup step, because there would be so many permutations to allow for.)

-------------------------

Hilary Powers wrote:

The Editorium wrote:

* Editing all headings at the same time to make sure they match in tone

and are parallel in construction:

> 1. Click View > Outline.

> 2. In the middle of the Outline toolbar, click the "Show Level" dropdown

list (*not* the "Level" list, on the left) and select the depth of the

heading levels you want to show.

Easier, and allows you to see the context at the same time:

Click View > Document Map.

Right-click on the pane that opens.

Select the heading depth you want to see.

Clicking on a heading in the pane moves the insertion point in the main document pane to that heading, so you can see what it modifies as you work on it while still seeing all its companion headings.

The idea was to start by editing the really big stuff (such as paragraph

styling), then move down to medium stuff (spell check), and finally get

down to the nitty-gritty of line editing.

Me, I run the spelling checker last, to make sure I didn't introduce any errors in the course of the job. I fix errors that jump out at me during the edit, but don't look for them - and my select-o-vision pretty much ignores things the spelling checker will catch, while zeroing in on unusual stuff and misused words likely to slide by it. It's gotta happen at the end, anyway, so why do twice what once will take care of?

Re Gretchen's

"I think people need to be reminded that 'Replace All' can be dangerous

if you have references. 'Labour' might be the correct spelling in a

reference. What I would do is start just above the references and do a

backward replace."

"Replace All" is dangerous, period. I use it a lot anyway, though. Safety tips: Except for the most mechanical sorts of changes, and for carefully vetted wildcard replaces, track changes should always be on when it's in use, and the relevant portion of the file should be selected if there are bits like reference sections where it's likely to do more harm than good. AND never ever use it on text that won't be read all the way through again.

---------------------------------------

Many thanks to Erika and Hilary!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Taskline is an Outlook add-in that will automatically schedule your tasks, based on the total hours you specify for each task and on the hours you have available in your work week. You can learn more here:

http://www.taskline.com

When I first saw the program, I was afraid it would take control of my schedule and do things I didn't like. After actually using it, however, I now understand that it actually gives me more control, and in a broader way, than I had when I was scheduling my work manually.

To use Taskline, I follow the procedure I outlined in today's article, with just a few differences:

1. Instead of specifying a project under "Billing Information," I specify it under "Project," a new field that Taskline provides. Nice! I also modified my View to include Project rather than Billing Information.

2. Rather than specify a start date and a due date, I use one of the Taskline "Constraints," which include:

* Start on

* Start on or after

* Finish on

* Finish on or before

That last one is perfect for setting production deadlines. You can also specify which tasks must be done before others are started.

3. I specify Total Work so Taskline will know how many hours to schedule for the task. That automatically clears the checkbox (included in my View and checked by default) for "Ignore this task" (a Taskline exclusive) for the tasks I want scheduled.

4. I set task order based on Priority, which means that if I've set a priority of High (!) for any of my tasks, they'll be scheduled first. (Taskline can also use priorities set by letter and number--A1, B3, and so on--but I don't feel the need to get that specific.)

5. I run Taskline.

The program schedules all of my specified tasks (on the Outlook calendar) based on the parameters I've set. If it can't schedule something (because I have too much work for the time available), it tells me which tasks are causing the problem. Rescheduling is a piece of cake--two simple clicks--and I was surprised at the flexibility the program provides.

Taskline really is an ingenious piece of work. I highly recommend it. Again that address is:

http://www.taskline.com

In our last issue, I wrote about increasing editorial efficiency by fixing one kind of problem at a time. This raises (*not* "begs") the question, "What kinds of problems lend themselves to this approach?" Some possibilities for your consideration:

* Fixing typographical errors with a spell check:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1700310413

* Editing all headings at the same time to make sure they match in tone and are parallel in construction:

1. Click View > Outline.

2. In the middle of the Outline toolbar, click the "Show Level" dropdown list (*not* the "Level" list, on the left) and select the depth of the heading levels you want to show.

* Editing all of your notes at once:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1701016860

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1711082975

* Finding and replacing commonly made errors:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708048908

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708127357

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1708293844

Do you, gentle reader, have additional suggestions? If so, please let me know, and I'll include them in the next newsletter:

mailto:editor [at symbol] editorium.com

Some time ago, I wrote a related article called "Editing from the Top Down":

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707878802

The idea was to start by editing the really big stuff (such as paragraph styling), then move down to medium stuff (spell check), and finally get down to the nitty-gritty of line editing. This is a good approach because (1) it gets rid of the messy stuff up front so you can concentrate on the details without distraction, and (2) it lets you concentrate on one thing at a time.

If that's "vertical" editing, then the approach suggested in today's article might be called "horizontal" editing. Both approaches are useful and will make you more efficient.

Just don't forget to actually *read* the manuscript after you've done all this wonderful electronic stuff. 🙂

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading the article "Divide and Conquer," Hilary Powers wrote:

"If you're editing on a computer, separate passes are much faster than trying to do it all by hand. And Adam Smith had a point (you should pardon the expression) for his day--splitting up jobs as he describes did make for much higher production of basic manufactured goods. But a whole lot of 21st-century organizational development effort goes into undoing the damage the pin-factory mentality did to the human quality of working life and recreating occupations (like ours) that feed the mind and soul as well as the pocket."

---------------------------------------

The previous newsletter said:

"One approach to working in this way [divide and conquer] is to fix every instance of a certain problem the first time you encounter it. For example, if you're reading along and see 'supersede' misspelled as 'supercede,' don't just fix the word and move on. Instead, use Word's Find and Replace feature to 'Replace All.'"

To which Gretchen replied:

"I think people need to be reminded that 'Replace All' can be dangerous if you have references. 'Labour' might be the correct spelling in a reference. What I would do is start just above the references and do a backward replace."

Another possible solution to this problem appears here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1702836319

---------------------------------------

Pru Harrison wrote:

"I have a recurring problem with italicised commas. Unfortunately your FileCleaner fixes it the wrong way, as far as I'm concerned!

"The problem is this: many authors when wanting to put a book title into italics are careless with their highlighting and include a final comma (when present), which is NOT part of the title. It is extremely tedious looking out for this error (at least, as far as I'm concerned because I know very little about programming in Word). Can anybody come up with a program to fix this for me?"

Here's my response:

It depends on which style you prefer. The old printer's rule is that punctuation follows the format of the text preceding it. The Chicago Manual of Style used to follow the rule, but the latest edition goes the other way. I'm planning on releasing a version of FileCleaner that gives you the option, along with many other new alternatives. If there's anything else in particular you'd like FileCleaner to do, please let me know.

For now, I'd recommend fixing the problem with a two-step Find and Replace:

1. Click Edit > Replace to bring up the Replace dialog.

2. Leave the Find What box empty but format it as Italic (CTRL + I).

3. In the Replace With box, put this:

^&~

4. Click the Replace All button.

5. In the Find What box, put this, with No Formatting (click the button labeled that):

,~

6. In the Replace With box, put this, formatted as Not Italic (press CTRL + I twice):

,

7. Press the Replace All button.

That should do the trick.

---------------------------------------

Many thanks to Hilary, Gretchen, and Pru!

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

The ingenious Greg Chapman has developed a number of free, useful Word add-ins. You can check them out here:

http://www.mousetrax.com/downloads.html

Back in the days of working on paper, editors had to keep an eye out for all kinds of errors and problems--all at the same time. The human brain, which is wired to think about *one* thing at a time, often missed things, and editors were forced to comb through a manuscript over and over again. They also needed to keep style sheets (still a useful practice) to recall earlier decisions. Changing one's mind could have disastrous consequences; it often meant having to re-read the manuscript, unmaking previous decisions and implementing new ones.

If you're still working the same way on the computer, it's time to change. Researcher David Meyer from the University of Michigan explains why multitasking is so inefficient:

"People in a work setting who are banging away on word processors at the same time they have to answer phones and talk to their co-workers or bosses--they're doing switches all the time. . . . In effect, you've got writer's block briefly as you go from one task to another. You've got to (a) want to switch tasks, you've got to (b) make the switch, and then you've got to (c) get warmed back up on what you're doing."

You'll find more information about the university's study on multitasking here:

http://www.applesforhealth.com/HealthyBusiness/multihealth3.html

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/08/05/multitasking.study/

http://www.umich.edu/%7Ebcalab/multitasking.html

In the classic book Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, economist Adam Smith explained basically the same principle, but with the organization rather than the individual in mind. In fact, the first chapter in his book is titled "Of the Division of Labour." You can read the chapter here:

http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c1.htm

Smith illustrated his ideas with the example of manufacturing pins:

"A workman not educated to this business . . . could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, . . . it is divided into a number of branches. . . . One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations. . . . I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. . . . They could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. . . . But if they had all wrought separately and independently, . . . they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations."

The principle can also be applied to editing, especially on the computer. Rather than trying to find and fix all problems at once, try going after one kind of problem at a time. For example, rather than putting all commas and periods inside quotation marks as you come to them, why not use Microsoft Word's Find and Replace feature to fix them all in one fell swoop? Once you've done that, you won't have to look for them or even think about them again, and you can be confident that you didn't overlook any. Then, go on to another kind of problem and fix that.

One approach to working in this way is to fix every instance of a certain problem the first time you encounter it. For example, if you're reading along and see "supersede" misspelled as "supercede," don't just fix the word and move on. Instead, use Word's Find and Replace feature to "Replace All." When you come to another problem, fix it in the same way. As you do this, you'll find that your manuscript is cleaner and cleaner the farther into it you read, because many of the errors you would have had to fix manually have already been fixed electronically. This, by the way, feels really good.

Another approach is to keep a list of errors and problems you commonly see and fix them all before you even touch anything else. My FileCleaner and MegaReplacer programs are ideal for this kind of work:

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

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

Whatever your approach, try looking for ways to focus on one thing at a time. Divide and conquer! Doing so will make your work easier, better, and more efficient.

You'll find other good articles on this topic here:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/03/your_brain_on_m.html

http://www.lifetimefitness.com/magazine/index.cfm?strWebAction=article_detail&intArticleId=372

http://www.rentquick.com/news06.html

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RESOURCES

Editorium Update reader Paul Sensecall's reference-checking software, ReferenceChecker, is a sophisticated reference-checking program for name+date-style (Harvard and APA) references in Word files. The program's site includes a download section where you can obtain a free, fully functional 30-day trial version:

http://www.goodcitations.com

Paul notes that the software is generating lots of interest among various editing societies. Maybe you'll find it interesting too. And useful! Why not try it today?

Thanks, Paul!

A book I recently edited had lots of lists--with no terminal punctuation. The lists looked something like this:

1. Text of the first item

2. Text of the second item

3. Text of the third item

As I worked, I found myself jumping to the end of each line and typing in a period, like this:

1. Text of the first item.

2. Text of the second item

3. Text of the third item

Then this:

1. Text of the first item.

2. Text of the second item.

3. Text of the third item

And finally this:

1. Text of the first item.

2. Text of the second item.

3. Text of the third item.

After two or three lists, I realized how silly this was. The solution is elementary, but I suspect that many readers haven't thought of it. Here it is:

1. Select all the items in your list, including the paragraph mark on the final item.

2. Click Edit > Replace.

3. In the Find What box, enter this (the code for a paragraph mark):

^p

4. In the Replace With box enter this (a period followed by the code for a paragraph mark):

.^p

5. Click Replace All.

6. If Word asks if you want to search the rest of your document, click No; all you want to search is the list you selected.

That should do the trick.

And, of course, if you want to *remove* periods rather than add them, follow the same procedure but swap the contents of the Find What and Replace with boxes.

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READERS WRITE

Rob Dilworth wrote:

After Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 was installed on a colleague's PC, he noticed that he could no longer customize his toolbars in Word. Specifically, if he removed a button from a toolbar or tried to add a template that added a button/pull-down menu to his menu bar, the customizations only lasted as long as his session in Word. Once he started Word again, the customizations were gone.

For the record, here are the workarounds for the problem that Acrobat creates in customizing toolbars in Word:

* If the Acrobat add-ins (Adobe PDF and Acrobat Comments) are in Word, the user can save customizations to Word's toolbars by holding Shift on the keyboard; then, in the menu, by pressing File > Save All.

* The add-ins can be removed from Word by going into the Windows Registry. If the add-ins are removed, then Word works without any problems. Here's how to remove the add-ins:

Run: regedit. Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Office > Word > Addins. Then click LoadBehavior and set the value at 0. Once the value is set at 0, the add-ins won't load in Word.

Thanks, Rob!

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RESOURCES

Have you checked out the reviewing features in Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional? If not, you really should. You can try the program free for thirty days. I'll be writing an article on these features in the near future:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/main.html

Before installing, be sure to see the Readers Write column above.

Michael Coleman wrote:

I have a minor problem that I thought you might find interesting. Whenever I hold down shift and control at the same time, then let them go, it acts as a keyboard shortcut for formatting the paragraph I'm in as right-to-left. This is described in the Help file:

--------

Keyboard shortcuts for right-to-left formatting

The feature described in this Help topic is only available if support for a right-to-left language, such as Arabic, is enabled through Microsoft Office Language Settings. In addition, you must be running a Microsoft Windows operating system that has right-to-left support--for example, Microsoft Windows 2000.

CTRL+RIGHT SHIFT: Activate right-to-left paragraph direction

CTRL+LEFT SHIFT: Activate left-to-right paragraph direction

--------

It's actually kind of neat, and I'm sure I'll find a use for it at some point. But I find that I use that key combination often--starting to use the arrows to highlight text and then changing my mind. I'd like to get rid of the shortcut or assign it to a more reasonable key combination. When I check the keyboard shortcuts, it's not listed.

Do you, gentle reader, have a solution for Michael?

In earlier versions of Microsoft Word, it was possible to print comments separately from tracked revisions. You can still do that with Word 2002 and later versions, but how to do so is no longer obvious. Here's the trick:

1. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing.

2. On the Reviewing toolbar, click the Show button.

3. Remove the checkmark from "Insertions and Deletions." This will turn off the display of tracked revisions (but leave them intact if you want to redisplay them later).

4. Click File > Print > Print what > List of markup.

Word will print a list of your comments without including your revisions.

Fairly easy, once you know how.

Here's another way of approaching the problem:

1. (Temporarily) accept all revisions. This is now trickier than you might think:

a. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing.

b. On the Reviewing toolbar, click the down arrow to the right of the Accept Change button.

c. Click "Accept all changes in document."

2. Click File > Print > Print what > List of markup.

3. Click OK, which will print comments alone, because the document no longer includes any revisions.

4. Close the document *without saving,* thus preserving your revisions.

Simple but effective.

Thanks to Dan Goldstein for suggesting this topic.

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READERS WRITE

More readers sent their results from this deceptively difficult spelling test from Mindy McAdams:

http://www.sentex.net/~mmcadams/spelling.html

Kathleen Much wrote, "I just got around to taking the spelling test today. 100%--and if I had missed any, my children would have excoriated me! Don't ask me why, but I've had an eye for misspelled words since I was in grade school. The California State Spelling Bee put me through college; I won it on my 13th birthday. Good to know I haven't slipped in the past half-century."

Judy Stein wrote, "I want to file a belated report that I made one error (battalion, one of my "demon" words; can never remember which letter is doubled--I probably misspelled it just now). I wouldn't have missed any of the words the other correspondents cited, so I didn't cheat by reading their posts. I'm not asking you to put me in the next newsletter, just wanted the chance to blow my horn, even if you're the only one who hears it."

Thomas Way wrote, "I missed only one word on that spelling test--miniscule. The only thing I can do really well is spell."

Judy Richards wrote, "I did the test--three wrong! but, like a couple of others, was brought up on "judgement." Liquefy and desiccate--no excuses.

Thanks to all!

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RESOURCES

You'll find a couple of hundred excellent articles about editing and publishing on the EServer TC Library:

http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Editing

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Sometimes, in a document that's been reviewed by several people, it's nice to be able to accept all changes by a single reviewer--maybe the author or a proofreader whose judgment you trust. (Or maybe yourself!) In Word 2002 (XP) and later versions, this is easy:

1. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing to display the Reviewing toolbar.

2. On the toolbar, click Show > Reviewers.

3. Select the name of the reviewer whose changes you want to accept (and deselect any others that are checked).

4. Click the > Accept Change button (blue checkmark, middle of the toolbar).

5. Click Accept All Changes Shown.

In Word 97, 98, 2000, and 2001, it's not so easy; it requires a macro. This one, in fact:

Sub AcceptRevisionsByAuthor()
Dim aRevision, ThisAuthor As String
For Each aRevision In ActiveDocument.Revisions
ThisAuthor = aRevision.Author
If ThisAuthor = "Jack M. Lyon" Then
aRevision.Accept
End If
Next aRevision
End Sub

If you don't know how to use such macros, you can learn how here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706922855

When you use the macro, of course, you'll want to replace "Jack M. Lyon" with the name of your choice.

If you want to accept changes for all reviewers *except* Jack M. Lyon, you can change this line--

If ThisAuthor = "Jack M. Lyon" Then

--to this:

If ThisAuthor <> "Jack M. Lyon" Then

You can also *reject* all the changes by a single reviewer. To do so, change this line--

aRevision.Accept

--to this:

aRevision.Reject

In Word 2002 and later, you can reject all changes by a single reviewer by clicking the Reject Change/Delete Comment button (to the right of the Accept Change button) and then clicking Reject All Changes Shown.

Thanks to Anna Marshall for requesting this article.

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READERS WRITE

After reading the previous newsletter on marking revisions for WordPerfect, Adam C. Engst wrote, "[The macro] sounds quite useful, but what about going back in the other direction? Can a macro take styled text from WordPerfect (or other app) and turn it back into revisions and comments?

I tried writing a macro to make this work but was unsuccessful. If you, gentle reader, know of a way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks to Adam for his message.