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Errata in and additions to the 1st (2021) edition of Write Faster With Your Word Processor

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!

This page contains the following topics:

Miscellaneous points
Chapter 2. Personalize how your computer works
Chapter 4. Outlining
Chapter 6. Styles and templates
Chapter 10: Use the Internet to improve your writing
Appendix I. Develop a sound backup strategy
Appendix 2. Protect yourself from injury while using a computer

Miscellaneous points

Typing Unicode special characters: The easiest way to insert special characters into your manuscript is to find them in Wikipedia's Unicode character list or another listing and copy/paste them into your manuscript. Better yet, given how long these lists are, create a document that will hold all the characters you use regularly and store it somewhere safe on your computer. If you're a keyboard geek, like to memorize the unique numbers that describe each special character, and use a Mac, you can configure your keyboard to let you hold down the Option key and use Unicode hex input to type the Unicode number. But trust me: it's easier to create your own list of these characters.
Never work on the original file: One good reason for never working on the original copy of a file? If you're not using revision tracking, you may be unable to retrieve the original version. Thus, always create a copy of that original with "-original" appended to the name, or create a working version with "-edited" or "-revised" appended to the name. If anything happens to the working copy, you can still recover the original and start over. For a more complicated type of problem that may happen if you're relying on automated backup software to protect the original version, see "How You Can Lose a File Despite Three Layers of Backup (and How To Avoid It)".

Chapter 2. Personalize how your computer works

Creating keyboard shortcuts for your whole computer: Gizmodo provides instructions on how to "Create Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts to Do Anything on Windows and macOS".

Chapter 4. Outlining

The Aeon Timeline software provides a visual timeline that may be useful in displaying and revising your outline.

Chapter 6. Styles and templates

Creating a Microsoft Word template: It's easy to create a template. Simply create a new file, then open the File menu and select "Save as". Name the file, then open the File Format menu at the bottom of the dialog box and select "Word Macro-Enabled Template .dotm". Done! Now, every time you open that template file, Word will rename the file by adding .docx to the name. This creates a new file based on the characteristics of the original template.

Chapter 10: Use the Internet to improve your writing

Additional Google search tips: Google offers several new search tricks to help you refine your search. To find synonyms, add ~ as a prefix for the search term; for example, searching for ~enormous should also find "large", "very big", etc. You can also narrow your search to specific types of files; for example, adding filetype:PDF will restrict the search results to PDF files. Google provides a complete list of file types you can try. To find Web pages that link to a specific Web page or site, use link: and site:, respectively, followed by the Web address. To perform wildcard searches, type * to replace certain words in a phrase (very useful for tracking down quotations). To find pages with a range of numbers (such as dates), type two periods to indicate the range; for example, 2001..2010 will find information published between 2001 and 2010, or pages that contain any numbers within that range.

Appendix I. Develop a sound backup strategy

Never work on the original file: One good reason for never working on the original copy of a file? If you're not using revision tracking, you may be unable to retrieve the original version. Thus, always create a copy of that original with "-original" appended to the name, or create a working version with "-edited" or "-revised" appended to the name. If anything happens to the working copy, you can still recover the original and start over. For a more complicated type of problem that may happen if you're relying on automated backup software to protect the original version, see "How You Can Lose a File Despite Three Layers of Backup (and How To Avoid It)".

Appendix 2. Protect yourself from injury while using a computer

Projection keyboards: If you want to try a "virtual keyboard", in which the keyboard takes the form of a light projected onto a flat surface and a device watches to see when your fingers block the projected keys, try the Serafim keyboard.