Vertical lists are a useful structure in plain language principles for document architecture, because they aid reading. But they also provide visual prominence to the content, and sometimes that’s not warranted or desired. So, when should you use a vertical list and when should you not? Even within the guidelines we find below, there is room for personal preference, house style, and conventions of the medium. For example, recipes will always place ingredients in a vertical list.
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Extracting Comments and Markup from a Word Manuscript
Word lets you extract a summary of comments and markup in the Print dialog. You can either create a PDF or a paper copy.
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Q&A: Where Is the Mid-Document Word Count?
QWord used to show me what word I was on out of the total word count. Where has that gone?
AThat feature is no more, but here’s a workaround because it was uesful to track our progress and as place markers or reference points within the document that weren’t affected by font and spacing choices.
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Counting Words in Word
Word counts are used to plan layout (and marketing), to schedule the time it will take for various phases of development, editing and production, to estimate costs, and track our progress. They can also be used as place markers or reference points that aren’t affected by font and spacing choices.
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When to Make Silent Changes
When routine changes like turning two spaces into one are tracked, it creates a sea of markup that obscures the changes that 1) actually are negotiable and 2) really matter. It can lead to absolute overwhelm, resulting in a client who just “accepts all” without a meaningful review; or who literally wears out their mouse clicking “accept” on a myriad of non-negotiable changes to house style.
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Q&A: Why are there weird boxes around tracked changes?
QWhat are these weird boxes around some text?
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Q&A: Tracked changes balloons are showing only what’s left!
QSuddenly Word is showing all changes clumped into a single marginal balloon, not as separate entries. And what’s showing in the balloon is what’s left, not what was deleted!
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Try This! Track Changes in Word
Track Changes is a feature of Word that lets each person on the team show their suggested revisions and leave comments “attached” to content without becoming part of the content itself (and thus avoiding the disastrous embarassement of comments making it into the final product).
Download this 132 kb file, then try the steps below. Check your work against the answer figure shown at the end.
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Reduce Picture Bloat in Word Files
You already know how to remove all pictures from a file in a single click, but what if you need to keep those images in place? Checking visual content is a key editorial task, after all. Or what if the Word file is producing the output so the pictures are required? Many reports and ebooks are designed in Word!
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Q&A: How can I paste without formatting?
QI copied text with formatting I don’t want to keep. How can I paste it without that formatting?
AEasy! There’s both a built-in keyboard shortcut and a button:
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