word processing

Oh, Shift!

/ Diane Henders / 12 Comments

A few years ago, Dave (one of my trainers) was writing a workbook.  He proof-read it and passed it over to me.  I proof-read it.  Then I got thirty copies printed up and delivered them to him the night before the class.

He met me at the door, looking slightly nervous.  “Uh, there’s a typo in the workbook,” he began.

I shrugged.  “Whatever.  We’ll fix it in the next batch.”

“Um, okay, but…”

He was relatively new to my company, and we were still in the getting-to-know-you stage.  He looked me square in the eye.  “If you were typing the word ‘shift’, which letter would you absolutely not want to leave out?”

Sure enough, we were instructing our students to shit-click.  I laughed all the way home, then decided that perhaps not everyone would share my puerile sense of humour.  I called Dave back and got him to hand-print a little bitty ‘f’ in each workbook.

My brother’s keyboard actually looks like this.  It’s something about the way he types.  The wear pattern on my keyboard is different, but I’d love to be able to really, truly, shit-click.  And it seems to me that if you use a computer for any amount of time at all, a “Shit” key is not only appropriate, but practically necessary.

Some of my best memories involve typos.  Back in the dark days of my interior design career, I spent a lot of time writing technical specifications, and I also checked specs that other people had written.  I caught lots of typos, but my favourite was the spec that demanded a “certified horney man”.

Hell, I thought they all came that way.  There’s actually a certification for that?  Who does the testing?

Needless to say, the spec was duly modified to read “journeyman”, as it was intended.  But I still think it would’ve been fun to send it out and see what we got.

I also had an unfortunate tendency to discuss “tenant turkey packages”.  These were actually “turnkey” packages (for tenants moving into a new commercial space), but it got to the point where I couldn’t tell if I was seeing “turnkey” and reading “turkey” or vice versa.  And the accompanying mental picture was truly disturbing.

And while we’re in that, er, area…  Try sending out a proposal to redesign your client’s pubic areas.  See how fast you get a response.  I’m not even going to get into all the double-entendres associated with that.  It really is too bad that “public” is so easy to mistype, but it certainly makes for some interesting conversations.

Speaking of mistyping, my blasphemous fingers also insist on addressing my friend Chris as “Christ”.

What’s your favourite typo story?

Tip: Using Highlights For Editing

/ Diane Henders / 2 Comments

Since I make my living as a geek, I’ll occasionally share techie tricks that I use to make my life easier as a writer.

Drop me a comment below or contact me if there’s something specific you want to know.  I’ll help if I can.

Here’s my tip of the day:

Using Highlights for Editing

When I’m writing in MS Word, I use highlights to mark places where my document needs work.  I use a blue highlight to indicate “unfinished”, a green highlight to indicate “needs research”, and a yellow highlight to indicate “needs to be fixed”.  That way, if I’m on a roll, I can just keep writing and come back to the problem area later.

In a 400-page document, it can get difficult to find all the highlighted areas.  That’s a lot of scrolling. 

Fortunately, you can search your document for highlights and jump to them automatically. 

How To Do It:  Highlighting

Step 1:  Find the Highlight button
It looks like this:  

In Word 2003 and earlier, go to the Formatting toolbar.  If you don’t have that toolbar turned on, you can enable it by clicking on the View menu, choosing Toolbars, and then clicking Formatting; or
In Word 2007 and 2010, it’s on the Home tab.

Step 2:  Choose your colour
Click on the little arrowhead to the right of the button, and choose a colour from the dropdown box.

Step 3:  Highlight
Click and drag your mouse over the text to apply the highlight.

Step 4:  Stop highlighting
When you’re done, click on the Highlight button again to disable highlighting.

Note:  Removing highlights
To remove highlights, click and drag to select the highlighted text in your document, then click the arrowhead on the Highlight button and choose “No colour” from below the coloured boxes.

How To Do It:  Searching for Highlighting

Step 1:  Set up the search

In Word 2003 and earlier, click on the Edit menu and choose Find; or
In Word 2007 and 2010, click on the Find button on the Home tab.

If the dialog box shows a More button at the bottom, click on it to expand the dialog box.  If you see a Less button, you can skip this step (it means the dialog box is already expanded).

Click on the Format button at the bottom of the dialog box, and choose Highlight.  You’ll notice that your search box now includes the words “Format:  Highlight” right under the “Find What” box at the top.

Step 2:  Search for highlights

Make sure there’s no text in the “Find What” box (unless you want to search for a specific word or phrase that’s highlighted).  As long as the “Find What” box is blank, the search will find all highlighted text.

Click on the Find Next button.  Keep doing this until you find the highlighted section you’re looking for.

Step 3:  Remove Highlight from the search criteria**

In the search box, click on the Format button again, and select Highlight.  You’ll notice that now your search says “Format:  Not Highlight” under the “Find what” box.  Repeat the process, and the “Format:” line will disappear.

Type a word, any word, in the “Find what” box, and click the Find Next button once.  This saves the settings so that you won’t be searching for highlights the next time you use the search box.

Close the search box.

**This isn’t essential to the process, but it saves you some frustration the next time you want to look for words alone instead of highlighted words.

Tip: Readability Statistics

/ Diane Henders / 6 Comments


Since I make my living as a geek, I’ll occasionally share techie tricks that I use to make my life easier as a writer. 

Drop me a comment if there’s something specific you’re wondering about.  I’ll help if I can.

Here’s my tip of the day:

Get Readability Statistics For Your Document

Microsoft Word calculates readability statistics based on the length and complexity of the sentences and words you use in your document.  It doesn’t tell you anything about whether your writing is “good” or “bad”, but it can give you a hint if you’re making your readers work too hard.

The Counts are self-explanatory (and you can find them more easily than by using this method).  I’m assuming you know how to find your word count; if not, drop me a comment and I’ll do a post on it.

The Averages are used in the formulas that calculate the three things that concern me most as a writer:  reading ease, grade level, and passive sentences.

The frequency of passive sentences is an interesting stat for fiction writers.  All the “how-to” books warn against passive voice, and this is a handy-dandy way to see at a glance if you’re overdoing it.

Reading Ease is based on a 100-point scale.  The higher the score, the easier the document is to read.

Grade Level is based on average reading levels in the U.S. school system.

The readability score at the right is for my flash fiction piece “Freedom” (about 1000 words).  It’s told from Dave the trucker’s point of view, and you’ll notice that sentences are short, readability is a whopping 93.5, and it’s written at a Grade 1.7 level.  Dave is not a complicated guy.

“Freedom, Too”, the companion piece told from Beth’s point of view, comes in at Grade 4.6. 

Another day, another 1000 words.  Just for contrast, here’s the score for a technical piece that one of my clients requested, describing the ramifications of the Privacy Act here in Alberta.  Trust me, you don’t want to have to wade through this puppy. 

(Disclaimer here:  As a technical writer, I usually write as simply as possible, but this one was full of polysyllabic legalese.  Kinda like those last two words.)

Conventional wisdom states that for most writing, you should aim for minimum readability of 60 to 70, at a Grade 7 to 8 level.  And yes, that includes non-fiction writers.  Despite the complexity of his concepts, Albert Einstein’s papers still clocked in at about a Grade 8 reading level.

How To Do It
Here’s how to get these little gems of wisdom in Microsoft Word (sorry, Mac users, Apple doesn’t consider this a priority.  Readability stats don’t exist in iWork at the moment.)

First, you have to set Word to show the readability stats (this is a one-time thing).

Step 1:
In Word 2003 and earlier, go to the Tools menu and choose Options; or 
In Word 2007, click on the round Office Button in the top left corner, and choose Word Options (lower right corner of box.); or
In Word 2010, click on the File tab and choose Options.

Step 2:
Click Proofing (this will be a tab in 2003 and earlier, or a menu selection in the left pane for 2007 and 2010).

Step 3:
Select the “Check grammar with spelling” checkbox.

Step 4:
Select the “Show readability statistics” checkbox.

After you have this set up, get your readability statistics by running your spell-checker through the entire document.  (I’m assuming everybody knows how to do this, if not, drop me a comment and I’ll do a post on it.)

Unfortunately, you do have to spell/grammar check the entire document before you get the stats.  When the check is complete, the readability window pops up automatically.