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Description: Tips for writing and editing Difficulty level: Intermediate System version: Mac OS 8 to Mac OS 9.1 Required: Microsoft Word (98 or 2001 recommended)
Everyone knows how to type, and many typists use Microsoft Word,
since it is a standard for word processing. Word has plenty of
unused and unknown features that facilitate the writer's work.
Whether they help to improve your writing, make word processing
easy on the eye, or provide powerful editing techniques, those
features make writing easier.
Blue Background
First off, the default white background can be tough on the
eyes, especially if your vision could use a little rest. For this
reason, you should know that there is an option to make the
background blue and display text in white. Pull down the Edit menu
and select Preferences. Click on the General tab and look for
Blue background, white text.
The blue background will reduce the stress inflicted on your
eyes, and the white characters will provide the contrast you need
to see the text clearly. Try it; it will help.
Language Tools
As Word is a program with a large number of features, language
tools are abundant. There is the AutoCorrect feature, spell
checking and grammar checking while you type, the level of
language, etc.
Before you start writing, your first step should be to customize
the language preferences. Go to the Edit menu and select
Preferences. Click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. Once there,
make sure to customize the spelling and grammar options for the
writing you plan to do.
I strongly suggest that you have Check spelling as you
type and Check grammar as you type turned on. When you
write, Word will check your spelling and grammar and underline
potential mistakes. It will underline spelling errors in red and
grammar in green. Control-clicking on underlined words will allow
you to see spelling suggestions and grammar explanations as Word
tries to catch your mistakes. You can always choose Ignore to pay
no attention to a particular wording or spelling, and you can
always select Add from the contextual menu (remember,
control-click) to add words to your dictionary.
In the Spelling & Grammar preferences, you should also see
the Writing style option. This is a great tool for modifying Word
to match your writing style. You can choose between casual,
standard, formal, technical, and custom. Standard is what most
people will use, but if you want your writing to be tighter for a
letter or a report, you should choose Formal. Technical is your
choice if you write documents that contain terminology related to a
specific work field.
Click on Settings for more options to adjust a writing style.
Still in the language tools, you should consider using and
customizing the AutoCorrect features. To put it simply, AutoCorrect
scans your writing as you type it; it detects typos and corrects
them. It will also format some characters automatically for
you.
Go to the Tools menu, and select AutoCorrect.
This windows has four tabs. The AutoCorrect tab will offer you
to replace words as you type them. Common mistakes such as typing
two initials and capitalization can be corrected for you. Then
there are words and symbols that Word wants to detect for you. For
example, if you type "corection" (with one r instead of two), Word
will automatically replace it with "correction." You can easily
scroll through the list of words and add your own. You can also -
and this is the best part - delete those you do not want Word to
change. For example, Word detects smiley faces such as :-) and
formats them into graphical smileys. I deleted all the corrections
for smiley faces, since the graphical smileys from Word are not
compatible with HTML when I write for the Web.
The AutoFormat As You Type tab is great for turning off the
annoying formatting that Words tries to insert for quotes, bulleted
lists, and other things. If you want to do all this stuff manually,
or you simply want none of it, uncheck all the formats that Word
detects as you write. The AutoFormat tab offers similar
options.
Finally, the AutoText tab conceals a great tool. AutoText
detects commonly used names, words, and expressions, and offers to
insert them automatically for you if you hit the Return key.
AutoText includes all the names and groups from your address book
if you use Outlook Express or Entourage for email and personal
information management. Again, you can add and delete the names and
words that you want or do not want to include automatically.
If you write a document that has limits or minimum requirements
in terms of words, characters, lines, or pages, then you definitely
have to look at the Word Count. Go to the Tools menu and select
Word Count.
It will give you a few statistics. In addition, you should note
that Word 2001 gives you a word count in the status bar.
The word count is the last number on the right.
Before we move on to another feature, remember that you can set
the language of a document. If you are bilingual and write in
different languages, it is great to know that changing the language
of a document will prevent Word from getting in your way with
English when you write. It will even make suggestions for spelling
and grammar mistakes.
With all the components installed properly, Word will handle
languages just fine. Imagine my expression I made when I saw the
English version of Word provide grammar tips in French once I
switched to French Canadian!
Track Changes
A great editing tool, Track Changes allows you to highlight
changes as you write. This is great if several people are working
with the same file. Think of a group report at work or a project at
school. Track Changes lets you keep track of changes in the
document as it progresses and insert comments. It also lets you
know who made the changes and when. It colors the modified and
deleted text to make it stand out. To turn the feature on, go to
the Tools menu and go to the Track Changes item. In its submenu,
select Highlight Changes.
Once there, click on Track changes while editing. Click on OK.
If you wish, you can modify the feature's editing colors by
clicking on the Options button before clicking on OK.
Once Track Changes is active, you can simply accept and reject
changes by control-clicking on the colored text, or you can go back
to the Tools menu, go to Track Changes and select Accept or Reject
Changes. From there, you can peruse the document for changes or
accept and reject everything at once.
All right, folks, we are done for this week. If you have
questions, or suggestions for tutorials that iBasics should cover,
email !
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