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Errata in the March 2010 release of the 2nd 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!

This page contains the following topics:

Miscellaneous points
Chapter 4: Personalizing your software
Chapter 5: Moving around the document and selecting text
Chapter 6: Using revision tracking
Chapter 8: Using the search tools
Chapter 10: Spelling and grammar checkers
Chapter 11: Automating your edits
Chapter 14: Internet resources
Appendix II: Protecting yourself while using the computer
Appendix III: Troubleshooting Microsoft Word
Bibliography
Software

Miscellaneous points

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.

Chapter 4: Personalizing your software

Assigning keyboard shortcuts: If you use Word 2003 or 2007 (and other Windows versions) should generally avoid using the Alt key as part of a keyboard shortcut unless you also add the Shift or Control keys (or both) to the shortcut. The problem? Word uses the Alt key plus a letter to open its menus. You can use the Alt key plus a letter to define a shortcut so long as the letter isn't one for a menu that you want to access from the keyboard.
Customizing contextual menus: Contextual menus are the little lists of options that appear when you right-click with the mouse. Word 2003 and 2008 let you modify the options available in these toolbars. To do so, open the Customize dialog box in the usual way, and in the section for Toolbars, select the checkbox for "Shortcut Menus". You can now modify the items in this toolbar (which provides a list of menus and their choices) following the same procedures I described for modifying any other toolbar or menu.

Chapter 5: Moving around the document and selecting text

Navigating directories in the Windows file dialog box: You can move around the file dialog box easily enough using the Tab key (and Shift+Tab to move in the opposite direction), but if you visit certain directories frequently (e.g., while you're working on a specific project), the WordTips newsletter offers a useful tip on navigating to these directories quickly.

Chapter 6: Using revision tracking

Collaborative editing: An error introduced during final revision slipped into the first release of the eBook (and will be corrected in the printed version): the text should say that you can accomplish this online document review using only tools you already have (i.e., that you won't have to purchase any additional software to do this). Oops!
Editor name changes to "Author": If you've set the User Information settings to use your name, but your edits are labeled as having been made by "Author", the problem lies in Word's privacy settings:
- Word 2003: In the Options dialog box, select the Security tab, and under "Privacy options", deselect the "Remove personal information from file properties on save" checkbox.
- Word 2007: In the Word Options dialog box, select the Trust Center tab, click the "Trust Center settings" button, select the Privacy Options tab, then deselect the "Remove personal information from file properties on save" checkbox.
- Word 2008: In the Preferences dialog box, select Security, and under "Privacy Options", deselect the "Remove personal information from this file on save " checkbox.
Track changes in InDesign: Adobe's upcoming update of InDesign (CS5) will offer a track changes feature.
Changing the creator's name for comments: What if you've edited an entire document and realize you need to remove your name from it so that your comments are anonymous? Current versions of Word let you do this in the Security tab of the Options or Preferences dialog box: simply select the checkbox for "Remove personal information from this file on save". But if you want to change one or more names, Alan Wyatt's article "Changing the user name in existing comments" provides a useful macro that will accomplish this.
Problems editing material at the end of a file: Recently, while editing the bibliography at the end of a manuscript, I found that I couldn't move references into correct alphabetical order or insert comments asking for clarification of bibliographic details. No problems anywhere else in the manuscript, so the problem was baffling—until I noticed that all the literature citations earlier in the manuscrip (done in the author/date format) had footnote numbers following the year. The problem was that the author had inserted the citations using Word's endnote feature, and automatically generated the bibliography from the compiled footnotes. Copying and pasting the references into a new file (thereby converting them into plain text) and then back into the manuscript solved the problem.

Chapter 8: Using the search tools

Finding text that isn't formatted with a specific style: Word can't apply the "not" operator—[!] using wildcards—in front of a paragraph style. But if you want to find any text that isn't formatted using a certain style, you can do it in two steps: First, do a global find and replace so that all text formatted using that style is highlighted (in the "Find what" field, select the style name; in the "Replace with" field, select highlighting). Second, search for all text that is not highlighted (in the "Find what" field, select "Highlight" twice to change the pattern to "not highlighted". You can now use the find function to find all text that is not highlighted (i.e., text that is not formatted using the style to which you previously applied formatting).

Chapter 10: Spelling and grammar checkers

Word 2008 spellcheck bug: In older versions of Word for the Macintosh, the default button in the spellchecker is "Ignore once"; this means that when you encounter a word that is correctly spelled, but not in Word's spelling dictionary, and you don't want to add it to your custom dictionary, pressing Enter or Return will skip that word and move on without taking any action. Often, that's exactly what you want to do. Unfortunately, Word 2008 changes this behavior such that whatever button you last clicked becomes the new default. This can lead to inadvertent replacements of correct words, adding many incorrect words to your custom dictionary, and other undesirable consequences. The only solution I'm aware of is to click with your mouse on the "Ignore Once" button, whether for all correct words or as the first step after you have clicked any other button, thereby resetting the default behavior.

Chapter 11: Automating your edits

AutoCorrect stops working for some words: If the AutoCorrect feature stops working, this may result from a hidden feature of Word operating without your knowledge: the exclusion list. In the AutoCorrect dialog box (Word 2003 and 2008) and the AutoCorrect Options dialog box (Word 2007), click the "Exceptions..." button. To stop Word from creating its own list of exclusions without your permission, deselect the checkbox for "Automatically Add Words to List". Remove any exceptions that Word has already added from the relevant tabs in this dialog box by selecting the exception and clicking the "Remove" button. Note that there's also an "Add" button here that lets you add exceptions that you don't want Word to automatically correct.
Eliminating text boxes: Text boxes are annoying for many reasons, including their invisibility in certain view modes and inability to hold comments inserted using Word's commenting features. Alan Wyatt provides some useful macros for deleting text boxes and copying their text into the main document in his article "Removing all text boxes in a document".

Chapter 14: Internet resources

Verb conjugation: Conjugation.com offers conjugations of many verbs, including some problematic irregular verbs. It's probably less useful to editors than to our authors, but if you work with many authors for whom English is a second language, this may be a useful link to send them.
Business and other dictionaries: BusinessDictionary.com offers access to a series of dictionaries on business and several other seemingly unrelated subject areas, with a claimed repertoire of more than 20 000 words and a great many links between them.

Appendix II: Protecting yourself while using the computer

Parklane Mattress (of all places) offers a great collection of general ergonomics links in their article "Ergonomics at work or school".

Appendix III: Troubleshooting Microsoft Word

Word's automatic numbering: Shauna Kelly, a well-known Word expert, provides some additional advice on how to successfully number headings in Word. Her Web site contains a wealth of other useful advice on how to deal with Microsoft Word.
Master documents: The good folks at Office Watch believe that this feature is now safely debugged. Visit the Office Watch site to learn more about "Master Documents without pain".

Bibliography

Janet McKenzie's book The Editor's Companion (Cambridge University Press) is worth a look as a companion to Effective Onscreen Editing: the author is currently working to produce the revised 2nd edition.
The American University's Center for Social Media has provided a useful guide entitled "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication".

Software

The Gnu open-source software group offers their free accounting software GnuCash for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. Not quite as refined as Quicken et al., but free and worth a try.