Before getting into today's main article (\"Spelunking in Microsoft Word\"), I want to mention a great resource: master copyeditor Laura Poole's Editorial Bootcamp<\/a>, which covers everything from style guides and software to style sheets and spelling. I had the good fortune to sit in on one of Laura's sessions at this year's Communication Central<\/a> conference. I sat down, buckled myself in, and set my brain to \"absorb\"! And wow, what a ride! Laura's training is fast, furious, and thorough\u2014serious training for serious editors. Here's what Laura herself has to say:<\/p>\n The Editorial Bootcamp offers live and virtual training for copyeditors, proofreaders, groups, and publishers. With a variety of training topics available, you can find a course for you or have one customized for your organization. We have many years of experience in scholarly publishing and freelancing, and we work hard to impart useful, practical knowledge to attendees. Please see http:\/\/www.editorialbootcamp.com<\/a> for details and information.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n If you need editorial training from the ground up, or just need to brush up your skills, I highly recommend Laura's services.<\/p>\n Spelunking is the recreational pastime of exploring caves<\/a>. It\u2019s a dark and dangerous hobby, an extreme sport for those who are confident in their ability to climb, navigate, and even swim (there\u2019s usually water down there).<\/p>\n I try to avoid such hazards, but I\u2019m not afraid to explore some of the deeper reaches of a computer program\u2014Microsoft Word, for example. That\u2019s one reason I know quite a bit about that particular program. Some of my friends, however, seem terrified of making a \u201cmistake\u201d on the computer. They want a concrete series of steps to follow in everything they do. \u201cHow can I make a word bold?\u201d they ask. I reply:<\/p>\n Then they say, \u201cOh, that\u2019s wonderful! Let me write that down for next time.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with learning to use a computer in that way, and those who are comfortable with that should keep a big Microsoft Word reference book close at hand. These are probably the same people who would enjoy taking a guided tour of Timpanogos Cave<\/a>, which is about an hour away from where I live.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s a far cry from spelunking, and I doubt that any of the people on the tour discover something new.<\/p>\n So what kind of a person are you? Do you like someone to hold your hand along the well-marked trail? Or would you rather descend into the dark depths of the cavern with only a flashlight as your guide? Either way is fine, but sometimes it\u2019s nice to get off the beaten path; you never know what you might find. As Henry David Thoreau once said, \u201cNature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.\u201d<\/p>\n Want to learn something new about Word? Try exploring Word\u2019s features that aren\u2019t<\/i><\/em> on any menu, the caverns that aren\u2019t on the map. Here\u2019s how:<\/p>\n Now, in the window under \u201cMacro name,\u201d you\u2019ll see all of the commands available in Microsoft Word<\/em>, whether they\u2019re on the Ribbon or not. If you click one, you\u2019ll see a description of its function under \u201cDescription,\u201d at the bottom of the dialog. These descriptions are minimal at best, but along with the name of the command, they\u2019ll give you some idea of what the command does. You can also click the \u201cRun\u201d button to run the command, which may give you even more insight. (Be sure to do this only with a junk document; you don\u2019t want mess up an actual project.)<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look. Don\u2019t be afraid; I\u2019ll be right behind you all the way.<\/p>\n So we\u2019re scrolling through the list of Word commands in Word 2013<\/em>, and what do we see? \u201cCharacterRemoveStyle,\u201d which, according to its description, \u201cClears character style from selection.\u201d What?!? Does this mean it\u2019s possible to remove a character style without<\/i><\/em> affecting text-level formatting (such as italic)? If so, I sure didn\u2019t know about it. Let\u2019s find out. We type a junk sentence into a junk document:<\/p>\n This is a test to see what will happen.<\/p>\n We apply italic formatting to \u201ctest\u201d and the character style \u201cEmphasis\u201d character style to \u201csee\u201d:<\/p>\n This is a test<\/i><\/em> to see<\/em> what will happen.<\/p>\n The formatting of those two words looks<\/i><\/em> the same, but\u00a0the formatting is not the same. Now let\u2019s see if the \u201cCharacterRemoveStyle\u201d\u00a0command works. We select the sentence, press ALT+F8, scroll down to \u201cCharacterRemoveStyle,\u201d and run it. Look at that! Our test sentence becomes:<\/p>\n This is a test<\/i><\/em> to see what will happen.<\/p>\n The character style is gone, but the text-level formatting is still there. Neat!<\/p>\n Okay, one more, and then we\u2019ll go back up to the surface. Down, down, down, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. What\u2019s this? \u201cRestoreCharacterStyle.\u201d I\u2019ve never noticed that command before. The description says \u201cRestores character style and removes direct formatting.\u201d Could this be the inverse of the command we just finished exploring? Again we type our junk sentence and apply the same formatting as before:<\/p>\n This is a test<\/i><\/em> to see<\/em> what will happen.<\/p>\n Then we select the sentence and run the \u201cRestoreCharacterStyle\u201d command. Yes! The sentence now looks like this:<\/p>\n This is a test to see<\/em> what will happen.<\/p>\n The text-level formatting is gone, but the character style remains!<\/p>\n But why does Microsoft say that this command restores<\/i><\/em> a character style? If we remove the character style from our sentence and then run the command, does the character style come back? A quick experiment shows us that no, it doesn\u2019t. Then why the odd name? I suspect that under the hood, Word is removing all<\/i><\/em> character-level formatting but then restoring <\/i><\/em>any formatting applied with a character style. It\u2019s the equivalent of (1) identifying the character style, (2) pressing CTRL+SPACEBAR (to remove character-level formatting), and then (3) reapplying the character style \u2014 which means that the command was named from the programmer\u2019s perspective rather than the user\u2019s perspective. There\u2019s a lot of stuff like that down here in the dark, and it\u2019s part of what makes exploring so interesting.<\/p>\n Back up in the daylight, we assess our adventure, which I\u2019d have to say has been a success. We\u2019ve discovered two commands we didn\u2019t know about before. Could they be useful in our actual editing work? Yes, indeed!<\/p>\n Personally, I enjoy crawling around down there in the bowels of Microsoft Word. Yes, it\u2019s dark and it\u2019s dirty, and sometimes I find something nasty under a rock. But I also make lots of interesting discoveries, and I nearly always learn something new.<\/p>\n How about you? Ready to go spelunking on your own? Have fun, and don\u2019t forget your flashlight!<\/p>\n Jack Lyon (<\/em>editor@editorium.com<\/em><\/a>)\u00a0owns and operates the <\/em>Editorium<\/em><\/a>, which provides macros and information to help editors and publishers do mundane tasks quickly and efficiently. He is the author of <\/em>Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals<\/a> and of <\/em>Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word<\/a>. Both books will help you learn more about macros and how to use them.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Laura Poole’s Editorial Bootcamp Before getting into today’s main article (“Spelunking in Microsoft Word”), I want to mention a great resource: master copyeditor Laura Poole’s Editorial Bootcamp, which covers everything from style guides and software to style sheets and spelling. I had the good fortune to sit in on one of Laura’s sessions at this […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editing","7":"category-microsoft-word","8":"h-entry","9":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3gfno-hp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1085,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions\/1085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}And now, let's go spelunking!<\/h2>\n
\n
\n