You are here: Books --> Effective
onscreen editing --> Errata/additions in the 4th edition
Vous êtes ici : Livres --> Effective onscreen editing --> Errata/additions in the 4th edition
Errata and additions in the 4th edition of Effective
Onscreen Editing, plus miscellaneous useful
additions
All corrections and additions to the book will appear on this page. If
you find an error or problem that isn't included
in this list, please
report the problem to me so I
can fix it. Comments and suggestions for improvement
(including new material) are also welcome!
Missing chapters? Chapter 2 from previous editions of the book has been removed from the book and can be accessed here: Advantages of Onscreen Editing. Chapters 17 and 18 from previous editions have been removed from the book and compiled as a short new book, Implementing Onscreen Editing.
This page contains the following topics:
Miscellaneous points
Chapter 1: My goal and approach in this book
Chapter 2: Writing and editing are human endeavours
Chapter 3: Personalizing your software
Chapter 4: Moving around and selecting things
Chapter 5: Using revision tracking
Chapter 6: Inserting text, deleting text, and commenting
Chapter 7: Using the search tools
Chapter 8: Developing style sheets
Chapter 9: Spelling and grammar checkers
Chapter 10: Automating your edits
Chapter 11: Special situations
Chapter 12: Coping when revision tracking isn't available
Chapter 13: Internet research
Chapter 14: Developing safeguards
Chapter 15: Proofreading
Appendix I: Backups
Appendix II: Protecting yourself from injury while using a computer
Appendix III: Troubleshooting Word
Appendix IV: Word keyboard shortcuts (plus selected operating system shortcuts)
Glossary
Miscellaneous points
- Keyboard keys stopped working? A while back, two sets of keys on my new Microsoft keyboard stopped working: the function keys (F1 to F12 at the top of the keyboard) and the keys on the numeric keypad used to enter the four-digit Alt codes for special characters. In the first case, the problem was that I'd inadvertently pressed the "F Lock" key at the right end of the group of function keys; this toggles between activating and inactivating the keys, so a second press restored the functionality. In the second case, I'd inadvertently pressed the NumLock key at the top left side of the numeric keypad; this toggles between using the keypad to enter numbers and perform simple calculations and an older mode in which the keypad emulates navigation keys (e.g., left arrow, Home) that don't exist on certain keyboards (e.g., old laptops). Pressing the NumLock key re-enabled the entry of the four-digit codes.
- What if one key on your keyboard breaks? When my current keyboard is getting old, I buy a new one—but I keep the old one as a backup in case the new one breaks. But what can you do if you're in the middle of a job, one of the keys on your keyboard stops working, and you have no backup keyboard and lack the time to run to the nearest computer store to buy a replacement? Use various built-in tools provided by your operating system that let you enter the problem character using your mouse. In Windows, try the "onscreen keyboard". On the Mac, try "Show input menu in menu bar" and use the character viewer. If it's going to take a while to replace the physical keyboard, you mayfind it more efficient to create an AutoCorrect entry (see chapter 11 for details). For example, if you can't type the letter "e", select an existing example of the letter, and create the shortcut ]ee that, when typed, will type the letter. Alternatively, use a placeholder character such as * everywhere that you need to type the letter, then use search and replace to change that character to the missing letter. (Of course, you'll need to copy/paste the letter into the "replace with" field, since you can't type it from the keyboard.)
- Provide feedback about Word: Microsoft now provides a forum in which you can provide feedback about Word to Microsoft. I'm not convinced that important points will be detected amidst all the noise, but it can't hurt to try!
- Using the eBook: I've provided a document entitled "Using
eBooks in PDF format" that provides
tips to help you use the book more efficiently.
- Need to run Office in your browser? You can do this for free using Office Online.
- Turn off automatic updates of Word: Microsoft has a pretty good record with Windows updates, but Word updates can significantly screw up the software. Fortunately, you can turn off Office Updates. (Scroll down to the heading "If you're using Windows [your Windows version number]" for the simplest method.) This approach lets you install updates only after the consensus in the online community is that they're safe. Of course, before you do any major updates, back up your Word templates and other customizations! Details are provided in Appendix I for the Windows version and Mac version of Word.
- Free online version of Word: If you need access to Word on the go, try Microsoft's Free Office Online Apps, which you can run in your Web browser. If you're using a tablet computer such as an iPad, try using the free Office Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows) tablet editions. They won't be as feature-complete as your desktop version, but may be enough for simple work. You'll need to establish a Microsoft account if you don't already have one.
- Word versions for Mac: To learn what version of Word you're using, open the Word menu and select "About Microsoft Word". Word 2016 will have a version number that begins with 16.16; Word 2019 his a version number that begins with 16.19. Infer what you will about the fact that the prefix (16.) doesn't differ between the versions.
- Automatic uploading and tagging of photos: In Word 2016, images embedded in Word files may be automatically uploaded to Microsoft's cloud servers. This is enabled by default. To turn this off, Options > Ease of Access > Automatic Alt Text, then deselect the checkbox "Automatically generate alt text for me".
Chapter 1: My goal and approach in this book
Chapter 2: Writing and editing are human endeavours
- Collaborative editing via DropBox: The DropBox cloud-based storage service now offers their "Paper" tool for real-time editorial collaboration over the Web.
- Collaborative editing via WordPress and GoogleDocs: If you want to collaborate on a blog post, try a collaboration add-in for WordPress.
- Collaborative editing using Microsoft Teams: I haven't had time to play with this software, but Microsoft Teams seems promising. In summary, you create a "team" of people who have access to a workspace where you can upload files and edit them interactively. The software is designed to integrate simultaneous changes from multiple team members, so you shouldn't have to check out and check in documents to allow editing. I'll try to test this out when it's time to create the 4th edition of the book.
- Project management: There are many ways to predict project times and manager your projects. ClickTime's "project cost estimation: templates, tools, and more" provides some helpful insights.
- Don't trust "the cloud": Cloud-based computing services such as Microsoft's Office 365 and OneDrive are lovely concepts, but they're still in their early days. Specifically, they tend to disappear or develop problems with little warning. Always have a plan B: back up your data somewhere that isn't on the cloud, and ensure that you have a way to work locally (e.g., with a copy of Word installed on your computer) if you lose access to the cloud version of your software. However, I've seen suggestions of a glitch that limits offline use of the online software if you've been logged out for more than 30 days. So if you're going to be away for a long time, try logging in at least once while you're away to reset the clock. Worse, Microsoft may revoke your license for the version of Office 2019 that you rent annually instead of buying outright if anything looks suspicious about your license.
Chapter 3: Personalizing your software
Chapter 4: Moving around and selecting things
- Keyboard shortcuts in the Mac Word Find dialog box: Microsoft used to offer the following useful keyboard shortcuts for navigating the dialog box, and may restore them again some day:
Command+E opens the Special menu
Command+G switches to the "Go to" tab
Command+I toggles the "Highlight all items found in..." option
Command+M (more options) expands the dialog box to show the advanced options, and shrinks it again
Command+O opens the Format menu.
Command+P switches to the "Replace"
tab
Command+S toggles the option "Sounds like"
Command+U toggles the "Use wildcards" option
Command+Y toggles the setting to find only whole words
- Searching the Web from within Word: The simuSearch utility for Windows Word lets you search the Web (via Google, Wikipedia, and an acronym lookup tool, plus three translation tools) directly from inside Word. Simply select a chunk of text and click the appropriate toolbar icon; simuSearch copies the text, sends it to the Web tool you selected, and then automatically displays the results in your Web browser. That saves several keystrokes each time you need to look something up, possibly hundreds of times daily in some manuscripts. Mac Word provides a limited form of this: select the text, then Word menu > Services > Search with Google.
Chapter 5: Using revision tracking
Chapter 6: Inserting text, deleting text, and commenting
- Actionable comments: I'm repeating this advice as a reminder that, wherever possible, your comments should tell the author what to do about a problem. A comment that only describes the existence of a problem is rarely helpful.
- Reminders: Comments are useful as reminders to yourself, that the author will never see, that you need to check something before your work is done. However, because such comments are easy to miss in a heavily edited manuscript, apply a highlighting color (such as that annoying bright yellow) so that such notes stand out from the comments you do want the author to see.
- Undeleted comments: In Office 365, there appears to be a bug in which comments that you deleted in any view where comments appear in balloons remain present in the Reviewing pane. That's bad because having to remove them manually—twice!—creates additional work for the author. Also, you may not want the author to see some of your critical comments. Thus, until Microsoft fixes this problem, I recommend a quick look at the Reviewing pane after you delete a comment. If the comment is still there, right-click or control-click on the comment and select "Delete Comment" from the popup menu. Teach your authors how to do this too so that they won't be embarrasses by any ghostly comments when they send the manuscript to someone else.
Chapter 7: Using the search tools
- Scripted find and replace: Paul Beverley has designed the (free) FRedit macro that lets you enter a series of find and replace operations in a Word document then run this "script" to implement those operations in a single step. C.K. MacLeod provides an example of how to use this macro.
- Removing text boxes: Alan Wyatt's WordTips provides some good suggestions on how you can find and remove text boxes.
Chapter 8: Developing style sheets
Chapter 9: Spelling and grammar checkers
- Change the spellcheck and grammar check colors: [Windows only] If you don't like the way Word uses color to display spelling and grammar errors, Microsoft provides guidelines on how to change the colors. In summary, you must edit the Windows Registry, so if you're not comfortable doing this, ask a geeky friend to help. Caution: Always make a backup of your Registry before trying to edit it. If Murphy's law happens, you can at least restore your system to its working state before you tried the change.
Chapter 10: Automating your edits
- A note about QuickParts as Building Blocks: One advantage of creating a building block as a "QuickPart" is that it will appear at the top of the QuickParts menu. If you create many of these shortcuts, this can save time compared with having to dig through the poorly designed Building Blocks dialog box searching for your QuickParts.
- Print a list of your AutoCorrect entries? A quick way to get a listing of your Word AutoCorrect entries is to use the macro provided by WordTips. Print this list in PDF format both to save paper and make the list searchable. If you haven't followed my suggestion to store this information in a separate Word file, you can copy the PDF text into Word to create that file as a backup.
- Moving building blocks: WordTips provides instructions on how to find the templates that hold your building blocks ("Building blocks.dotx" and "Built in building blocks.dotx" are the default templates used by Word). You can't move these files to a different folder, but you can create your own template (e.g., "Geoff's blocks.dotx") to store them. You can move that template wherever you want, including into the directory or folder that holds your other templates.
Chapter 11: Special situations
Chapter 12: Coping when revision tracking isn't available
Chapter 13: Internet research
- A large source of corpuses (corpora): Brigham Young University now offers several large corpuses (corpora) for a fee. Not cheap, but if you need this kind of information, it's worth a look.
- Google search modifiers: Google seems to keep tweaking or modifying how the search modifiers work. For example, adding "–" before search terms used to reliably exclude pages that contained those terms, whereas adding "+" used to only include pages that contained those terms. (Now, – only works sometimes and + confines search to Google+. Dumbass decision, but there you have it. Nonetheless, it's worth trying the – modifier, since it still seems to work sometimes.) There are other modifiers worth trying. For example, placing double quotes (") around a search term will still generally turn up pages that have that exact spelling. Adding an asterisk (*) inside quotes tells Google to include results with any word or words between parts of a phrase; for example, "Don't * evil" should turn up pages that include "Don't be evil". (Probably none of them on Google's own site.) If you add a tilde (~) before a word, Google will also include the word's synonyms in the search, which is useful if you don't know the formally correct word for a concept but do know a synonym. You can use a double period (..) to indicate a range; for example, May 1..15 would find pages with dates from 1 to 15 May. The "site:" modifier, added before a site name such as Google.com, will restrict searches to that site—very useful for finding help topics that are stored as Web pages rather than hidden in a database. The "related:" modifier is a cousin of the "site:" modifier that looks for sites that are related in some way (e.g., linked) to the site you specify.
Chapter 14: Developing safeguards
Chapter 15: Proofreading
Appendix I: Backups
- Backing up your Word customizations: The good folks at Woody's Office Watch offer their Everday Backups Handbook, which goes much further than the brief summary in my book. Subscribe to their very useful newsletter to receive a significant discount (nearly 50%) on the book.
- Backing up your customizations:Paul Beverly, author of the wonderful free book "Macros for Editors", has also provided a free Word template that contains macros that will help you back up your own macros, both for Mac and Windows. See Paul's Youtube video channel for videos about this and other useful topics.
Appendix II: Protecting yourself from injury while using a computer
Appendix III: Troubleshooting Word
- Correct location for Macintosh autocorrect entries: Microsoft changed the location of the autocorrect files to the following: ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/.
- Rebooting in safe mode (Windows): Microsoft lets you reboot your computer in "safe mode" to load only a core set of software known to be safe and able to run without conflicts. If you've been
experiencing a problem and it goes away in safe mode, you can be confident that one of the programs that didn't load is causing the problem (usually a hardware driver or an add-in for some program, but sometimes a virus). Sam Cook of Comparitech has written "How to start Windows 7/8/10 in safe mode" to explain this process.
- Rebooting in safe mode (Mac): Apple also offers the ability to reboot your computer in "safe mode". See Apple's article "Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac" for details.
Appendix IV: Word keyboard shortcuts (plus selected operating system shortcuts)
Glossary
©2004–2024 Geoffrey Hart. All rights reserved.