Writer, Editor, Helper

3 Easy E-Tricks for Writers, and 1 for Fun

Almost every writer I know has a love-hate relationship with their writing program, whether it’s Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, or a yellow legal pad. It’s clear there’s no single perfect choice for drafting, editing, and formatting your work for publication.

Scrivener is great for drafting but has limited formatting capabilities. Docs is great for collaborations, and it can handle basic formatting, but it lacks compatibility with professional formatting and editing tools like PerfectIt and the add-ins from the Editorium. MS Word is the publishing workhorse, more or less required for submitting to agents and editors and publishers, but it’s pricey and not always friendly.

Getting to know your word processor better will help you love it more. Here are some moves you can use in Word and Docs and sometimes Scrivener.

How to Reorganize Book Chapters with a Click

One of my favorite MS Word tricks allows a novelist (or any book writer) to view and organize their chapters in the Navigation pane (an option under the View tab). Using this feature, I can see all my chapter titles at a glance, and I can go instantly to the one I want by clicking on its title. Moving a chapter to a different location is as easy as clicking and dragging it down the pane. Numbered chapters renumber themselves like magic any time I change their order.

If you ever need to add, delete, or move a chapter while you’re drafting, you can make good use of this trick.

Counting Pages or Words in a Manuscript Submission

Long before a book is printed, while the text is still in manuscript form, editors at publishing houses speak in terms of word count, not page count. An appropriate word count for a project depends on the kind of book. A picture book editor might think in terms of 0–750 words. An editor acquiring young-adult fantasy novels will consider anything from about 80,000 words and up. Thrillers, graphic novels, romances—their editors all have target ranges for the length of book readers expect. There are always exceptions, of course.

Page counts, on the other hand, are for printed books. Designers and production editors use a manuscript’s word count to estimate how many pages the published book will be, taking into account how they want it to look: how large the pages will be, how much white space is wanted, whether illustrations will add to the page count, etc.

Why then, at the querying stage, are writers almost always asked to submit a set number of pages instead of a set number of words?

10 New Favorite MS Word Tricks for Editors

I love Microsoft Word shortcuts, and I post them from time to time when I stumble across a new one. But how’s a body supposed to discover all the features of this gigantic application when so many of them aren’t even visible on the ribbon? Now and then I go online and browse around.

Half these tricks were new to me, even though most of them aren’t new to Word. I can’t decide which one I love best! Maybe number 10, although it’s galling that it’s been right there in plain sight all this time and I could have been using it.

Vote for your favorite in the comments—or share a good one of your own. And if you’ve known about these forever, go ahead and boast. Just please don’t make fun of me.

Why Can’t a Computer Index My Book?

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

Recently a reader wrote to us questioning some of the alphabetizing recommendations in The Chicago Manual of Style:

“In all computer-based systems that are in current use, the ASCII sort order is used. Any sort order that violates the ASCII order cannot be maintained except through repeated manual adjustments. Solutions such as sorting St. as if it were Saint violate this order and thus cannot be correctly manipulated in MS Word, for example. What is your thinking on this issue?” 

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 Photo: Selmer van Alten, Iceland phonebook is sorted on first names.

Shortcuts in Editing (Are They Allowed?)

I'm blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

Shortcuts in editing may be frowned upon, but when it comes to word processing, editing shortcuts are not only allowed, they’re essential. If you’re still fumbling around in the pull-down menus, fighting with features that won’t leave you alone, and wasting time on tasks that could be done with lightning speed . . .

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Photo: Shortcut, erfan a. setiawanr

Too Late to Learn? Helping the Reluctant with Technology

 

 Image: "Creative daydreaming" Found on flickrcc.net

Everyone has at least one friend, relative, or colleague who is not yet competent in even the most basic computer tasks: creating a document, e-mailing, browsing online.

It’s hard to imagine an academic with poor computer skills. And yet, they aren’t that rare. I know, because I work with them. One correspondent doesn’t know how to open an attachment to an e-mail. Another asks me to convert the edited chapters of his book to an old version of Microsoft Word. Another asks to dictate her page-proof corrections over the phone. One author still sends his manuscripts in WordStar, for pity’s sake. (You have to be a best seller to get away with that, by the way; others must submit work in an approved format.)

I understand the frustrations and inefficiencies of wrestling with technology. Nothing has sent me closer to the brink, and I still struggle with my attitude. This week my colleagues and I must learn a new markup technology for the manuscripts we prepare for typesetting. I am beyond grumpy about this. On the training agenda I see a blur of items that mean nothing to me. “Item 1: Review WFDW concepts.” Googling WFDW takes me to the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. I see a possible connection with opening a can of worms.

In “Ten Reasons People Resist Change,” Rosabeth Moss Kanter summarizes with great insight reasons that apply well to our resistance to technology. “More Work” and “Ripple Effects” pretty well explain my suspicion of WFDW, but Kanter suggests other, more serious insecurities and fears: of uncertainty, of loss of control, of incompetence.

And yet there are compelling reasons—especially for the elderly—to be able to navigate and communicate online. Obviously, it will allow them to work longer into their dotage and to maintain contact with friends and relatives, but beyond that it opens a world of help and entertainment and solace. I’m convinced that computer skills can significantly improve the quality of life even in the face of gradually failing faculties.

Because impaired vision and hearing and motor skills are practical impediments to computer use, the earlier a person acquires the skills, the more likely they will be able to continue and adapt them as needed.* If you have a friend or relative or colleague who struggles with the most basic computer tasks, and whose only real impediment so far is a lack of motivation, consider encouraging them. Determine which type of skill is of most use or interest, and coach them in it.

If I could wish just one computer competence for everyone, it would be for everyone to learn how to use e-mail or social media to send and receive photos, documents, and links to Web sites.

My second wish would be easier: for everyone to learn how to conduct online searches. In helping someone master this, I would make Google** or another search engine the home page of their Internet browser; I would make sure that either the browser icon or the Google icon were visible on the desktop; and I would show them how to type queries into the box. I would help them find sites they are motivated to visit (travel, business, health, or hobby sites) and then show them how to bookmark their favorite pages and create folders for organizing them. I would show them how to look at their browsing history and—since privacy is sometimes a debilitating concern—how to delete that history.

Since scholars are a minority, a wish that everyone would learn to use MS Word to produce flawless manuscripts must fall to third place. But if I were the queen of academe, here are the minimum word-processing competencies I would bestow on my subjects:

—How to indent paragraphs, either by using a tab character or by setting the “ruler” or by applying a “style.”

—How to add an embedded footnote or endnote using the automatic feature, and how always to add notes that way, rather than by typing some of them in manually.

—How to track changes when editing a document so someone else can review it.

When they are comfortable with word processing, writers have the flexibility to edit and improve their work. The stress of writing for publication is reduced; relationships with editors and publisher are enhanced. What’s more, well-prepared documents are more likely to appear in print the way they are intended. The less time a copy editor has to spend to clean up a document, the lower the risk of her introducing errors and deleting things, and the more time she can spend on actual editing. The work will benefit. The reader will benefit.

And once I figure out the WFDW, I might have time to go fishing.

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*To complain about my use of they as a singular, you can go here or here or here.

**I like Google because its home page is spare and simple, and it prompts a single task: to type a search term. It also has a menu at the top that includes Google Maps and YouTube—two extremely useful Web sites for information and amusement.

Originally published at Lingua Franca blog, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2013.

 

 

Tech Tips: Two Chores Made Easy

Today I have tips for disposing of two tasks in mere seconds. While less savvy writers and editors are laboring over for the same chores for hours, we can go dancing!

[NB: Back up work before making any global change to a document.]

Removing All Field Codes (Including Hyperlinks) from a Document

Do you ever run across strange, shadowy, curly-bracketed expressions lurking in your documents? Or chunks of text that turn gray when you click anywhere within them? Or lots of hyperlinked URLs that are merely excess baggage if a document is headed for a print publication? These bits of tagged text can be extremely useful—essential—for compiling data, updating documents, and other chores I almost never need to do. You might actually need your field codes, so consider carefully before you wipe them out. Once you’re certain they’re disposable, there’s a way to trash them all at once, in two seconds. (Don’t worry about disturbing automatically numbered or bulleted lists or linked footnotes or endnotes. Although they may fall within the scary gray description, they’re a bit more difficult to dislodge. See below.)

1. Highlight the chunk you want to remove fields from. (Ctrl-A highlights the entire document.)

2. Hit Shift-Ctrl-F9.

Ta-daa! All gone.

Learn more about inserting and deleting field codes.

Converting Automatic Numbering to Typed Numbers

Like field codes, automatic numbering can save lifetimes of word processing. This feature allows you to add or delete an item near the top of a numbered list and watch all the numbers below it neatly increase or decrease by one. However, when the auto-feature isn’t needed or welcome, simply removing the numbered formatting in Microsoft Word leaves the text without any numbers at all.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to save yourself keying in all the missing numbers. It involves putting a toe into the waters of Visual Basic, but don’t be frightened.* I promise: you can do it. I did it, and I’m here to tell the tale. Back up your document and go for it:

1. Highlight the chunk of text that contains the automatic numbering you want to convert to typed numbers. (Don’t worry about automatically numbered footnotes and endnotes; they’ll survive.)

2. Click Alt-F11. A Microsoft Visual Basic screen will open.

3. Under the View tab, choose Immediate Window. A little window will open across the bottom of the Visual Basic screen.

4. Type the following or paste it in:

Selection.Range.ListFormat.ConvertNumbersToText

5. Hit Enter.

6. Close the Visual Basic screen.

That’s it—your numbering should now be typed instead of automatic.

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*I confess that I never work in Visual Basic and have no idea what it is. My level of understanding is like that of a rat running a maze to get a hit of cocaine: I do the steps; I get what I want. I’m telling you this so you don’t come back to me if it goes wrong. You did back up your work, right?

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Going Up? Plan Ahead

                                     Photo: Alyson Hurt

A few months ago I encountered a bank of hotel elevators that made a big impression on me. This might be old hat to you,* but to me it was a wondrous invention: there were no buttons inside the elevators for choosing your floor.

Instead, you chose your floor from a panel outside the elevators. You pressed 14, and a display told you which elevator to wait for. Meanwhile someone else pressed 5 and was given a different elevator. If a conference session ended and twenty people rushed the elevators, they would each pick a floor and obediently sort themselves into little groups outside their assigned elevators.

Once inside, everyone was a little creeped out that there were no buttons for choosing a floor. “What if I picked the wrong floor?” someone asked. I had to admit I’d already done that. I’d had no choice but to get out on the wrong floor and ring for another elevator.

Over the next few days, everyone was talking about the elevators, and nearly everyone I talked to hated them. In spite of my initial detour, I loved them. If you have six elevators and thirty people going to fourteen floors, you can either let the crowd randomly and inefficiently choose the number of elevators, floors, and stops—or you can let a nifty computer algorithm minimize the number of stops each elevator makes by assigning the elevator based on floor choice. What’s not to love? Waits are short; trips are fast.

So . . . I know you can’t wait to see what cockamamie* metaphor for copyediting this inspires. It’s this: copyeditors can improve their efficiency by devising strategies before editing begins.

I’ve reviewed plenty of manuscripts where a copyeditor has gotten into deep trouble by conforming a document to house style when it doesn’t suit. A thoughtful review before barging in would have prompted doubts: is it really wise to change all book and article titles to headline casing? Will the section numbers you’re deleting be needed later?

To preview a document, look closely at any material that isn’t a straight text paragraph. Look especially at the styling of subheads, lists, bullets, tables, and captions. With regard to each element make a strategy:

—If no particular style dominates, plan on editing to house style.

—If an element is not written to house style but is clear and consistent, ask whether it can stay as is. If you have to get permission for this, your best argument (after the most obvious one of saving time) is that in changing it, you are likely to introduce errors and typos.

—If an element is in a foreign style and is sloppy and inconsistent, look over all the instances of that element and devise the most efficient remedy. Don’t assume it will be your house style.

There’s nothing more disheartening to a copyeditor than having to start over midway through a job in order to cut losses. There’s no quick button to press once you’ve committed to a bad choice. Better to make the right choices before you get on board.

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*I’m older than you, so I get to say things like that.

 

 

So You Think You Know Where You’re Going?

Photo courtesy Erin O'Keefe

Have you ever been put out of a cab after you waited forever and finally lassoed one and got in, and after sailing past a street where you would have turned (if you had been driving), you said, “Shouldn’t you have turned there?” and the driver slammed to the curb and said, “You can get another cab,” leaving you incredulously asking “What­—? Are you kidding? Are you putting me out?” and, seeing his face, had to grab your things and slam the door (cab drivers hate that) and hike back four blocks to the thoroughfare and wait for another cab?

Me, too.

And isn’t that exactly the feeling you get when you suddenly run into trouble with a tricky word-processing feat that you’ve done before with no problem? “What­—?” you think, as you start the slog back to the beginning.

In my case, it’s always my fault. I left out a step, didn’t prepare properly, hit the wrong key. Or as that cab driver might say, I thought I knew the fastest route and bullied my way to a dead end.

This time it was the NoteStripper macro,* which miraculously unlinks all the endnotes or footnotes in a document, leaving the superscript callouts in the text and compiling the corresponding notes into a matching list. Even more miraculous: the program can do the reverse; that is, it can embed notes that have been hard-typed.

Embedding notes is the more complicated macro and calls for careful preparation of the document. NoteStripper comes with clear and detailed directions,** but for those of you who like to find your own way, let me just mention a few that will kick you to the curb if not followed:

—The number of notes must match the number of callouts.
—Every note must start with a numeral: clear out any stray spaces or tabs.
—All note callouts must be formatted as superscripts.
—Nothing else in the document can be superscripted.

I was using the easier macro, converting notes into text, but even then, my attempts to convert a large file (with 1,040 notes) failed on my first three tries. On an impulse, I read the instructions, which told me that sometimes a file can simply be corrupted at some point. I tried again and saw that the file converted successfully up to a point before it crashed. So I deleted the first note after the crash point. That did the trick: the file converted in seconds, after which I typed the corrupted note back in.

On the night I lost that cab, the second one made up for it: a brand-new car, a quiet jazz CD, and a lovely driver who didn’t smoke or text. He took the same route as the other guy, but this time I kept my mouth shut—and was home in record time.

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*From Jack Lyon’s Editorium.

**Not all products offer such helpful guidance. If you find yourself trying to make sense of gobbled directions, read my Troubleshooting Guide to Following Instructions.

 

 

Random Advice for Copyeditor Newbies

If you’re new to copyediting, consider these snippets of advice. (Be sure to check with your supervisor if any of them contradict your usual instructions.)

• Don’t query a word or spelling or locution without looking it up. If a writer uses an unfamiliar word or spelling more than once, it’s very possibly intended. It’s easy to paste “eat one’s cake and have it, too” into a search engine and learn that the writer doesn’t have it backward.
• Don’t waste a writer’s time by continually asking for approval. (“Okay? If you don’t like this, I can put it back.”) Rather, indicate your flexibility in the cover letter. On the manuscript, use queries for giving or asking for information.
• Save grief later by e-mailing the author before you make editing decisions that are hard to undo. (“Re romantic/Romantic: do you have a system for capping? Should I meddle?”)
• Don’t track changes that will be invisible or confusing on a black-and-white printout, such as deletions of hyphens.* If the editing is difficult to read, the writer won’t easily see that the results read well.
• Be conservative in editing until you have more experience. You should be ready to explain every mark you put on the page.
• Remember the copyeditor’s creed: First, do no harm.

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*My workaround is to explain in the cover letter that I have edited common compounds silently in accordance with CMOS and Webster’s 11th Collegiate, and that otherwise I track the opening or closing of compounds respectively like this: right_wing or home-townhometown.

Photo by Jamey Boelhower from Pixabay

Subversive Tech Tip #8: Coloring Your Copy

If you write or copyedit in Microsoft Word, have you thought about using color as a tool? Here are two ways I use color in editing and word-processing.

(1) You know how sometimes you need to work with different versions of the same document open at the same time, and the first time you go to save your work, you find out you’ve been editing the wrong version, and you want to kill yourself? To prevent this, in addition to saving compulsively, I color the text of the old version to make it obvious that it’s not the working copy. Hit Ctrl+A to highlight the whole thing, then open the Format Font dialog box (Alt+O+F). In the Font tab, find Font Color and open the drop-down menu. Pick your favorite color (I love that soothing olive called dark yellow), hit Enter, and Bob’s your uncle. (I’m older than you are, so I get to say things like that.)

(2) If you have to provide typesetting codes or check someone else’s, and if they’re the kind that are in angle brackets, you can color them in a wildcard search so they’ll “pop” when you’re viewing the document on screen. Hit Ctrl+H, and expand the box with Alt+M (for “more”). Alt+U will turn on the wildcard feature. In the Find box, type \<*\>, and in the Replace box make sure there’s nothing there, not even a space.* Choose a color for the Replace box following the steps in project #1. (I like red for codes.) Let ’er rip. (Replace All.) Everything between angle brackets should now be your favorite color.

When you’re finished playing with colors, you can remove them all by repeating the steps in (1) and choosing Automatic as the color.

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*If there’s a space or any character in the Replace box, there will be unpleasantness when you hit Replace All. But don’t worry—that’s why God gave us Ctrl+Z.

Photo: Wax Crayons, by Charles Rondeau, licensed under CC0 Public Domain

Bad Editing and the Word Processor

Two popular types of bad copyediting are (1) editing that didn’t need doing in the first place, and (2) needed editing that didn’t get done. Both types can be accomplished with or without the aid of a computer, but there are reasons why a copyeditor deploying a word processor is likely to end up committing both.

Put simply, the reason for type 1 is “Because she can,” and the reason for type 2 is “Because she can’t.”

Perfectionists are helpless to resist the tweaking and refining that comes at the peck of a few keys, even if it’s ultimately unhelpful to the publishing process, even if the original was good enough, even if errors are introduced in the meddling. It’s just so darned easy, and it takes only a few seconds. Well, maybe just a few more—oops—that wasn’t what I meant to happen, but that’s okay, because I can fix it . . . oops—wait, I’ve got it now! Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes: talking about editing that didn’t need doing.

More laid-back types are no better off if they haven’t mastered the word processor. Freelancers regularly send me work that isn’t properly cleaned and coded. Are they simply blind to all the little e-boogers? Or does it not occur to them that there’s an efficient way to fix them? Either way, we get the type 2 problem of editing that goes undone.

The solution doesn’t lie in editing on paper any more than the problem lies in the machine. If all the copyeditors in the world throw themselves in front of that train to Technology, it’s still going to roll on by.

Might as well get on.

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Photo: Jonathan Cardy, Bullet Train in York, licensed under CC BY-SA

Best Practices in Copyediting: Paper vs. Plastic

Copyeditors who are allowed to edit on paper are dwindling in number, but judging from my mail, copyeditors who would like to are legion. I don’t get it. For short works, sure—I enjoy scribbling with a pencil, and it’s easy enough to keep track of style choices. But when a manuscript is more than a few pages long, I get twitchy: without proper tools (i.e., a word processor), I’m simply not confident that my work will be up to par.

Editors who love working on paper may believe that their razor-sharp mental abilities, their long experience, and their diligence in record-keeping guarantee a superior job, but I’m skeptical. A few of the reasons:

• Our style sheets and mental maps are a poor substitute for the ability to search through an e-file. (Maybe your memory is better than a computer’s, but sometimes I can't even remember where I put my computer.)
• Searching a document to undo a bad style decision takes a long time and risks missing a few instances.
• Some nonessential but desirable tasks that could be done in mere seconds electronically are not feasible on paper. Although we could do them, it would seem wrong to waste the time (in other words, our employers’ money).

But, weirdly, that brings me to how word processors can contribute to two kinds of bad editing.

(Next time.)

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Photo: Rosenfeld Media, Paper or Plastic: The Eternal Question, courtesy of Flickr

Master the Basics and Feel the Power

Not long ago I watched over a friend’s shoulder as she made corrections to a document in MS Word, lumbering along in slow motion with her mouse, and after about two minutes of this, it was all I could do to keep from snarling “Let me drive!” and knocking her out of the chair.

Okay, so I’m working on the patience thing. But meanwhile, I have a feeling that copyeditors everywhere are wasting billions of hours and a lot of carpal tunnel nerves simply because they don’t know the most basic moves in word processing.

An example: when my friend wanted to undo an action, she motored her mouse up to the toolbar and clicked on the Undo arrow. About the fifth time she did that, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You know, Ctrl+Z is easier.” Embarrassed, she mumbled something about bad habits.

Here’s what I propose, and it’s simple, and it will change your life: over the next few days, make note of the computer action you perform most, and if you aren’t using a keyboard shortcut for it, find one. Here are two good ways to find a shortcut:*

1. Search online, e.g., “MS Word undo.”
   
2. Within Word, go to Tools, then Customize, then Keyboard. (In Word 2007, start with the Office Button, then Word Options, then Customize, then Keyboard Shortcuts.) I always scroll down in the Categories box and choose All Commands, which provides a list in the Commands box of everything you might want to do. Click on the chore you want to do faster, and you’ll see what the keyboard command is for that chore. And (this is the most exciting part), if you don’t like it, you can change it. And if there isn’t one, you can assign one.
   

The next part is admittedly more challenging: force yourself to use the shortcut. But I guarantee that after the first awkwardness, you will feel the power! And you’ll go back for more.

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*You can also try the Help files in MS Word, although older versions tend to recommend clicking on menus and toolbar icons instead of using the keyboard.

Photo: She Ra, 1980s Princess of Power Doll, by Speckled Owl, courtesy of Flickr