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!

 

Weebly for Authors

 

Weebly is easy to use once you start. I’m still having trouble getting my computer to log in properly with one click. It could be a Firefox issue or my login, but I thought I’d give you a heads-up. Also, it doesn’t let me refresh the login page on Firefox. I have to reenter the website address.

Other than that, I found creating a new site with Weebly easy. Elements were easy to add and rearrange. The color choices were lovely and current. There hasn’t been any of that silly WordPress “Update these themes” every day. The site updates immediately, and the content looks great.

Another plus for Weebly is the connection to Square. Now that Square owns the software, it’s easy to create a store for your merchandise, books, or whatever. I have my Square account set with my book bundles, autographed copies, and my cross stitch bookmarks. Weebly automatically adds a shop page for me with the items with the prices. Through the Square software, you can work out how to charge shipping, tax, and what not. You can edit the page in the Weebly app as well.

Other ideas for Weebly for authors

Note: to turn “off” a page on Weebly, go to Home page, Headings, Navigation, Navigation links, and remove the page from Navigation.

I mentioned having an Event page for any personal appearances, live or virtual. You can add vendor info, location, and items for sale. Then, after the event, you can turn that page off on your navigation menu. That way, it’s only up before an event, and you still have the information if you attend/visit/zoom another time.

Weebly lets you duplicate pages as you build the site. The duplicate page doesn’t need to be live until you’re ready. You can change content/colors/images around before putting the info out there. Have a new book? Then duplicate your book/series page with the new book and turn on the new page when it’s live. (Also, turn off the old page.) Be aware of the link addresses. You may need to change links to this page if you use the duplicate.

This turning on and off pages works great for secret content. My new book coming out in February is a closed-door romance. I write steamy. I plan to put my steamy scenes on non-public pages for readers. Once the book is out, I’ll send the address of the page directly. No one will get to the page without the address. It works great for extra content, deleted scenes, secret cover reveals, or whatever you want to place behind a closed door. If you upgrade your Weebly account, you can even have password protected pages for this content.

Weebly has much to offer with content. Design, not so much. That’s more up to you to create a vibrant page with color and images. It has the advantage of not having to play with the plugins from WordPress. Honestly, I do not know how good the software is at repelling spam attacks. But my good friend D.V. Stone has used Weebly for years, and her site is strong.

We could spend months going through the options for this app, but these posts will start you on a new author site.

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

More How To Weebly

 

Now that we have our basic homepage created, let’s add content.

At the top of the left menu, press the plus sign to add more pages/content to your website. The menu gives a few choices including shop, Instagram, blank, gift cards, gallery, and several more. If you’re just starting and don’t know what to have on your site, these suggestions are great.

For now, we’ll start with blank and build from the start

Select blank and name the page. This will be the title on the navigation menu. Once you name it, the title will appear at the top of your preview page. Be sure you love it. (You can change it later, but it’s easier to go with a good one to start.) You will find the same menu on the left as on your home page. But as this page has nothing on it, we need to add all the elements—header, footer, and body.

You can turn off the main banner from your home page to keep the pages unique, but keep the header for navigation.

Click on the Add Sections at the bottom of the menu. Again, since this is a Square product, the software prompts you to create a store page. One list of items to add focus on selling. These elements include featured items, featured categories, donations, events, memberships, etc. Choose which might work with the title you created for the page.

Below that are more sections to add. These are categorized as Organize, Inform, and Communicate. Each submenu has different choices, such as text and image, image gallery, newsletter sign-up, video, about, etc. Since I’m creating an author site, I’m going to play with text and image first.

Under text and image are several layouts to choose from. You can play with alignment, style, and number of images. Press Done when you find one you like. Then on the preview screen, click on the element to edit it. The left menu will now say Content. Click on the down arrow to upload images, edit text, and add a button. You can add or remove any of these by opening or closing the sliders. Click on each one and add, edit, and link as necessary.

When adding images, you may have to go back into it to edit for size. Open the picture again, click on Image and then Edit. Here you can zoom in and out, change the ratio and shape. Next, add a link to the image if this is an item that needs to go to another page or a product page. Add text for SEO (search engine optimization) to help people find your page. When finished, press the Done button at the top of the page.

Sections are easy to move on your page. Go back to the Page menu. Check by the content on the left menu. The page’s name should be on the top, followed by a list of all the pieces. Each element will have a trash can and six dots when you hover the mouse over it. Click on the three dots to move or duplicate. Or you can click and drag the element to the new location. The preview will show the shift.

Weebly allows you to easily edit items. You can also turn on and off features without deleting them. If you need to edit, click on the gear. This menu allows you to reset your home page to another one, delete, or duplicate pages.

Not every page needs to be on your navigation bar. When creating a new page, you can uncheck the box that says Add Page to Navigation. It won’t appear at the top of the page. To add it later, go to the Home page, then Header, then Navigation and Navigation links. Click Add Links and choose the page.

Again, there is much more to Weebly. You can add shops, payments, and stories (read that as blog). We could spend so much more time with this one but…

Next week, we will talk about ways Weebly can help authors succeed.