I finally went out and bought that new monitor I mentioned last week--a 19-inch Sony that looked great in the store (playing the Jurassic Park DVD!). But when I got it home and hooked it up, it didn't look so good. The characters in Microsoft Word looked jagged, and the toolbar icons were huge! Couldn't it do better than that? Then it struck me: on a monitor that was capable of 1600 by 1200 resolution, I was displaying 1024 by 768. No wonder! I quickly increased the resolution to the max, using the following procedure (I'm running Windows 98; if you're a Macintosh user and would like to explain how to do this on a Mac, I'd love to include your instructions in next week's newsletter):
1. Right-click the Windows desktop.
2. Click "Properties."
3. Click the "Settings" tab.
4. In the "Screen area" box, move the slider all the way to the right.
5. Click the "OK" button.
6. Follow any additional on-screen prompts.
Wow, were those characters ever fine! And tiny! Maybe I'd gone a little overboard. I repeated the procedure, this time setting the resolution at 1400 by 1050. Much better! And still beautiful to look at. After doing some editing in Microsoft Word, however, I decided that the lettering on Word's menus was still a bit small for my middle-aged eyes. But I liked that high resolution. What could I do?
I increased the menu font size with this procedure:
1. Right-click the Windows desktop.
2. Click "Properties."
3. Click the "Settings" tab.
4. Click the "Advanced" button.
5. Click the "General" tab.
6. In the "Font Size" box, select "Large Fonts."
7. Click the "OK" button.
8. Click the next "OK" button.
9. Follow any additional on-screen prompts.
Better, but the menus could still be easier to read. How about putting them in bold? I tried this procedure:
1. Right-click the Windows desktop.
2. Click "Properties."
3. Click the "Appearance" tab.
4. Click the "Normal" menu in the sample display window.
5. On the bottom right, click the "B" (bold) button.
6. Click the "OK" button.
(Actually, while I was in there, I also selected "Icon" in the "Item" box and set its font to bold.)
For the first time in years, reading my computer's menus and icon labels was easy. I should have adjusted those settings a long time ago.
If you spend most of your day editing on the computer, trying to differentiate between opening and closing quotation marks, between em dashes and en dashes, you too may benefit by setting your computer display exactly the way you want it.
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READERS WRITE
After reading last week's newsletter on hardware for editors, one subscriber wrote:
"I'm a big fan of the Kensington Turbo Mouse (aka the Expert Mouse, I think), which is really a trackball. It doesn't *look* ergonomically designed, but it seems to work for a great many people, and because it's got 4 programmable buttons you can create very useful shortcuts. I've used one for years at home and at work, and was horrified when a few months back it looked like they weren't going to produce a USB version, but they did.
"I haven't tried any of the newer Kensington trackballs (the things that have scroll rings, etc.) because the device itself does not fit a small hand.
"I'd be interested some time in discussion of voice-input software (or whatever you call it) for editors. (If you've dealt with this before, ignore this and let me know where!) This has been discussed briefly and intermittently on the copyediting list, and I know some people use it to cut down on repetitive motions. Me, I want it because (I confess) I knit while I'm doing the last read-through on a long project (it helps me stay focused, or at least awake), and I'd love a way to get the document to scroll up and down without having to put down my knitting!"
Thanks for this interesting suggestion. If you're an editor who uses voice-recognition software, we'd love to hear how you use it.
