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Tips for MS Word Users
Clean up your MS Word files If you're using Microsoft Word 6
or 7, you may want to give FileCleaner a try. This $30 program cleans up common typographical problems in electronic manuscripts, including the bad habits of double spacing after periods or using two dashes instead of a
long dash. The program, which runs as a macro or a pull-down menu, can also turn underlining into italics; change straight quotation marks and apostrophes into curly ones; put periods and commas inside
quotation marks; and standardize formatting. To download a copy, visit the Weird MS Word feature Here's something peculiar. In Microsoft Word, spell check zzzz. Saving scraps of documents as boilerplate If you use boilerplate text over and over again in your documents, particularly if you use it
in different programs, here is a useful trick for you. Copy the scrap of text you want to use as boilerplate (highlight it and use control-C, for example). Then go to your desktop (this being the screen with all the
shortcut icons on it). Find a blank spot and right click your mouse. You should see an option for pasting. Take this option. Like magic, Windows will create something called a "document scrap," which you can
paste or drag and drop into other documents. Unlike MS Word macros, which do the same thing, document scraps can be dropped into other Windows programs. Using revision marks MS Word includes a handy feature that lets you show the changes you make to
a document. And it includes a better-known feature that does this same thing much more poorly. The hard way to show changes is as follows. Before you start editing, click Tools and then Revisions. Click the boxes
called Mark Revisions While Editing and Show Revisions on Screen. This will insert marks to show you where the document was changed, and how. You can then use the Review feature to accept or reject changes. The
problem with using revision marks this way is that they make it very difficult to edit the document. The marks appear as you go, making it harder to spot mistakes afterward. You often end up with weird double spaces,
double punctuation or missing punctuation. But there is a way around this. Before you start editing a document, save it with a different file name. When you're done, go to Revisions again, click the same two boxes,
and hit Compare Versions. Click on the original file, so that it appears in the Original File Name box. Now the revision marks all appear, and you can use Review to accept or reject the changes. Speller oddity Here's something peculiar. In Microsoft Word, spell check zzzz. Formatting speeches When you're putting together the final
draft of a speech, keep two things in mind: make sure no paragraph breaks across two pages; and number the pages, starting on the speech's first page (not on the cover page).
To keep paragraphs from breaking over pages, here's what you do in Microsoft Word 6.0: 1) Press the "Control" key and the "A" key. The whole screen should be highlighted.
2) Go to the "Format" menu and scroll down to "Paragraph." 3) Behind the "Indent and Spacing" options, you'll see a tab for the "Text Flow" options. Click on this.
4) Click on "Keep Lines Together." To get the page numbering right, here's what you do: 1) Do the cover page first. At the end of the cover page, go to the "Insert" menu and choose
"Break." 2) Click on the "Next Page" option in "Section Breaks." 3) On the first page of the speech itself, go to the "Insert" menu and select "Page Numbers."
4) Scoot over to "Options." 5) Click on the "Start At" option. 6) The one hitch now is that your cover page will be numbered, too. This is easy to fix. Go back up to the cover page and repeat
Step 3. Unclick the option that says "Show Number on First Page."
Cornerstone is a writing and editing firm
that uses marketing and PR principles to create "words you can build your business on." Call us from anywhere in the world for rush work.
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