Editing with Word

 

At a recent chat, some of my fellow authors asked about editing with Word. There were enough questions that I thought I’d put down some common fixes for everyone.

Setting up your document. Different publishing houses have a wide variety of styles required for their final documents. It’s a great idea to start your doc in that required format. It saves work later. Most like a double-spaced, size 12, Times New Roman font. .5 indent. 

Basics

If you’ve already written anything, SAVE YOUR WORK—either Ctrl and S or the little disc at the top of the page. Save your work often.

Word now has ribbons across the top of the page rather than drop-down menus. Click on the words Home, Insert, or Layout to change ribbons.

To select your entire document, either press Ctrl and A or use the Home ribbon, click on the down arrow next to Select, and choose Select All. Everything you’ve written will be highlighted and can be erased with a simple keystroke. If this happens, either press Ctrl and Z or go to the Home ribbon and select Undo (a curly arrow going left). Undo is your friend. Keep him close.

Spacing

With your doc highlighted, choose the Home ribbon again and Paragraph. Click on the small arrow at the bottom of the Paragraph section. This will open the detailed paragraphing menu. At the bottom of the pop-out menu, click on Line spacing. Choose Single, 1.5, Double, and so on. Most editors like double.

Tabs

Editors do not like us to use the tab button and dislike five spaces even worse. This menu is where you can set your paragraph indents automatically. In the center of the menu, click on the down arrow to Indent. Choose .3 or .5 for most professional documents. Press Done when finished. This will indent all your paragraphs automatically. 

Using ***

Another problem writers frequently find is Word placing a line across the page when they try to create a section break. That line Word creates is actually a border. Autocorrect changes your **** into a line automatically. Use Undo to fix this if you can. If you find it later, you can edit it by highlighting the line, and going to the Home ribbon on the Paragraph section. Use the small grid with a line at the bottom. Remove the border by deselecting the spot where Word created the border. Now you can reenter your scene break, and watch carefully that Word doesn’t put that line back in. 

Curly Quotation Marks

Word sometimes puts one in going the wrong direction. Highlight the incorrect mark and go to the Insert ribbon Click on Symbol. Click More Symbols. This pop-up will show various symbols for the font you are using. Choose the correct curly quote and close the menu.

This is also the place to enter an em dash —. Click in the spot where you want to insert the symbol. Again, click on Insert, Symbol, More Symbols. Click on the Special Characters tab. Click on the symbol you want (em dash or whatever) and press Insert. The menu does not close. You can click in other spots if you need a symbol. Click Close when finished.

Section breaks

Click where you want a Section break. Many publishers do not wish you to use Page break. Click on the Layout ribbon and click on the down arrow next to Breaks. Choose from Next Page, Continuous, Even, and Odd. Next page sends the section to a new page. Continuous keeps the two sections on the same page. This one differs from a page break.

Invisibles

Invisibles are symbols that represent formatting marks such as spaces, enter marks, etc. On the Home ribbon, click on the paragraph symbol ¶. New characters will appear in your document. FYI These symbols do not show up in printed material. With the Invisibles on, you can see many formatting problems, such as double carriage returns, two spaces between characters, and more. Many formatting issues can be solved by just viewing these marks. Click the Paragraph symbol again to turn off Invisibles.

Find/Replace

Find is on the Home Ribbon in the Editing section. Using this tool, you can search your entire document for overused words, numbers that should be spelled out, etc.. Find/Replace is great for looking for formatting issues such as two spaces after a period or fixing a character name. Note, try NOT to use Replace All. This can lead to some funky errors, such as replacing the name Ann with Sandy. You might get words like Sandyotated (annotated) or Sandyoed (annoyed). Funny but annoying to fix. Pun intended.

Most fixes for Word can be solved with Undo. You can click the down arrow next to Undo on the Home ribbon to see a list of things Word can undo. Autoformat is usually the culprit of many issues as well. You can go back to an auto-formatted text and click on the blue undo arrow on that one instance of the fix. Sometimes Word likes to think for you, but you’re the better writer.

Hope this helps!