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 CMOSContinue reading “PerfectIt teams with CMOS”
Tag Archives: editing
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! I gave an informal talk today to science editors about using macros, but it was my very first tipContinue reading “Add a custom tab to your Word ribbon”
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
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’llContinue reading “Use Word Styles for navigating around and restructuring your document”
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
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 haveContinue reading “Microsoft Word skills for editors: basic to advanced”
Tips and tricks: 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 windowContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Using your screen’s hot spots”
Tips and tricks: Opening your Word document in multiple windows
It can be really useful to look at your Word document in two separate, independent windows. And it’s very simple, but unless you’ve played around with the menu options you may not be aware of it. To see how it works, first open up a Word document. On my PC, I then go to theContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Opening your Word document in multiple windows”
Tips and tricks: Transcribing interviews
The time-consuming task of transcribing can be speeded up with technology or by outsourcing – as long as, in both cases, the quality is good. Rachel Smith (of jobs list service Rachel’s List), shared her interviewing and transcribing process in a blog post in 2017. She explains the services she uses for recording interviews andContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Transcribing interviews”
Tips and tricks: Making a PDF more readable with bookmarks
Let’s say you’ve created or edited a report – it’s all nicely laid out and you will be saving it as a PDF file. Before you do, take some time to think about PDF bookmarks. With a bit of forethought, you can make the document much more user-friendly than a long, unstructured PDF. For oneContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Making a PDF more readable with bookmarks”
Book review: Make grammar great again
What do you do when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States? Stop watching the news? Book a flight into space? Hope the next four years will pass really quickly? Melbourne copyeditor Meredith Forrester took a more proactive approach. Irritated by the President’s language-mangling tweets, she took it upon herself to respond with corrections.
Tips and tricks: Showing off your mark-up in PDFs
This tip was written for the May 2018 Editors Victoria newsletter. One of the funny things about working as a freelance editor is that often you are not sure how familiar your author or client is with some of the software and techniques we tend to take for granted. Even editors vary in how familiarContinue reading “Tips and tricks: Showing off your mark-up in PDFs”
Editing Indigenous content and other tips
I include a regular ‘Tips and tricks’ column in the Editors Victoria newsletter, linking to many online resources and tools. This month I wrote about editing Indigenous content [IPEd archive, members only] – highlighting a discussion and resources presented at the national editors’ conference in Brisbane last year.
Event: Finding work
The 22 February Finding work panel discussion (see previous post) was written up by Danielle Vecchio for the Editors Victoria March newsletter. You can read the summary of tips and ideas here.
