The Open Desk

Margie Beilharz

Freelance editor and writer in science, environment, education, health

Blog

  • PerfectIt teams with CMOS

    Many editors swear by PerfectIt as a must-have tool to help produce consistent and style-adhering texts. A new style sheet has just been released. Developed in conjunction with The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), it takes PerfectIt to a new level 一 great news for those who use CMOS and possibly also for others. If you already use PerfectIt and subscribe to CMOS…

  • Plantastic!

    Plantastic!

    I enjoyed writing the Teacher Notes for CSIRO’s new picture book, Plantastic! A to Z of Australian plants. I took the opportunity to speak to the author, Cat Clowes, and the illustrator, Rachel Gyan, about producing the book. You can read my article and check out the book on the CSIRO blog.

  • Add a custom tab to your Word ribbon

    Add a custom tab to your Word ribbon

    I gave an informal talk today to science editors about using macros, but it was my very first tip that generated the most excitement. You can add a your own customised tab to the Word ribbon! For example, I have added a tab called MB Macros to my Word ribbon as a way of easily…

  • Create a table of contents using Word Styles

    Create a table of contents using Word Styles

    Creating a table of contents (TOC) is super easy if you have applied styles to your headings. If you are new to styles, start at my introductory post What are Word Styles and how do you use them?

  • Use Word Styles for navigating around and restructuring your document

    Use Word Styles for navigating around and restructuring your document

    Word Styles offer more than simply and consistently formatting text; they give you lots of power in organising your whole document. For those new to using Styles, you might want to check out the introduction in my previous post:  What are Word Styles and how do you use them? In the next few posts I’ll…

  • What are Word Styles and how do you use them?

    What are Word Styles and how do you use them?

    You can easily format text in Microsoft Word with the options you can see in your Home ribbon. You can choose your font, font size, colour, bold and italics (character options) and also paragraph options like bullet points, alignment, indenting, spacing between lines and paragraphs, and lots more.

  • What Word style is your text is formatted in?

    Here are six ways to check what Word style your text is in (the last two are my favourites):

  • Microsoft Word skills for editors: basic to advanced

    Microsoft Word skills for editors: basic to advanced

    Many editors prefer the features and power of Microsoft Word – especially when copyediting – over Google Docs and other online and collaborative programs. So, even though the latter are increasingly being used for writing and producing documents, Word remains the standard program for editing documents. Nowadays it’s pretty much assumed that writers and editors have…

  • A better way to print out your PowerPoint presentation

    A better way to print out your PowerPoint presentation

    I recently found something better than PowerPoint’s usual ‘print Notes Pages’ format for printing out a presentation’s slides and notes together. As far as I can see, however, it seems to be only available in the PC version. I don’t use PowerPoint often, but did a couple of months ago for my presentation at the…

  • Using your screen’s hot spots

    Using your screen’s hot spots

    There are a couple of neat tricks you can use, but (naturally) they vary somewhat between PCs (I’m using Windows 10) and Macs (I’m still on OS X El Capitan – delaying my upgrade to Mojave because it will render my Word 2011 inoperable). Snap your windows in Windows To open your document or window…