Adrienne is an editing instructor and certified copyeditor with 20+ years experience editing technical materials that inform and educate. She created the Right Angels and Polo Bears podcast in 2013 and has published books on science, editing, and freelancing.
Each week at noon Eastern on Thursday, we’ll gather in our exclusive Slack channel to check in, problem solve, and talk about that week’s lesson. The lessons are available for you to view, review, and complete at any time.
Each lesson has a short reading, a video demo or two (for Mac and Windows, both), and an exercise. There is no grading, only learning opportunities. We concentrate on using the tools, not on the language of the materials.
There will be one wrap-up check-in after the 4th lesson, to address any lingering questions or insights.
Can’t make the time slot?
Not to worry! The course materials are always available on Archer Editorial Training and our course Slack channel will be available any time. Access never expires! The instructor will check messages and posts daily.
Adrienne Montgomerie literally wrote the book on Editing in Word and has been teaching editors to use Word since 2012. Learn more at Archer Editorial Training!
Plus, a PDF version is available from the support site for download and printing at your convenience.
What’s in the New Edition?
Now double the size, this expanded and updated edition incorporates an entire booklet on working with tables and three sections on ways to customize your workspace and combine and manipulate the features to hack the tools for maximum effect. Plus, it covers all of Word’s updates including changes to Modern Comments, Track Changes, Spellcheck, and the new Editor toolset.
Peek at the table of contents:
Click image to enlarge it
Try an Exercise
The book contains over 29 self-check exercises like this one on using styles. Click the button to try the exercise.
Now double the size, this expanded and updated edition incorporates an entire booklet on working with tables and three sections on ways to customize your workspace and combine and manipulate the features to hack the tools for maximum effect. Plus, it covers all of Word’s updates including changes to Modern Comments, Track Changes, Spellcheck, and the new Editor toolset.
Watch this space for the release!
Peek at the table of contents:
Click image to enlarge it
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
AIt’s tucked inside “Editor” now. It’s pretty much the same, except that readability statistics are found in an area of the Editor pane too, not after running Spellcheck. See the demos below.
Editor is now where spellcheck is found. There’s a button on the right end of the Home ribbon (shown above) as well as on the Review ribbon, at the far left (shown below). The video demos below show how it works on Mac and Windows (video two).
Quick-start info for running a full Spellcheck
Click the Editor button on the ribbon
Click the Spelling bar on the pane that opens on the right
The “Editing Score” is a value Word came up with based on some calculation of the number of perceived grammar and spelling errors as well as the word count.
Demos of Spellcheck in Word for Mac & Windows
🍏 Spellcheck in the “Editor” on a Mac
🖼 Spellcheck in the “Editor” on Windows
Troubleshooting
Readability statistics don’t automatically display once the spellcheck is done. Click on the Document Stats to see Word’s Flesch-Kincaid assessment.
Learn more about Spellcheck in Section 8 of the self-study book.
It’s harder to get at the customizations to import a special dictionary or exclude words. Refer to the Spellcheck section in the self-study workbook starting on page 32 for further instructions.
I’ve tried the “check for similarity to online sources” but always stalled out with no results.
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
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Learn how editors maximize Word’s features and tools through demos and exercises specifically addressing editing tasks.
Here is the handout (296 kB) with a summary of links for more about the topics covered in the session. You can search this blog using the field in the middle of this page, and submit your questions about word using this email link.
