One of my responsibilities here is cleaning up the manuscript files before they go off to production. Of this, I shall say I have mixed feelings. Part of gets some kind of sick pleasure monkeying around in files, formatting away extra spaces, tabs, or hard returns. Other times, it’s a bit like pulling teeth.
Now, I signed up for this job and I am more than happy doing it—I love opportunities to use my skills. I have been building a repertoire of shortcuts for many years now, and collecting these is a satisfying process. As is cleaning up a file, making it look as organized as possible before sending it away. I feel a sense of connection to each and every manuscript that passes through my hands.
So, in the interest of making your lives easier (and maybe my own by association), here is a sampling of neat shortcuts and workarounds for navigating MS Word and making your manuscripts neater and more presentable. For, let’s face it, neatness goes a long way.
*Disclaimers. Some of this may appear extremely straightforward, and you may want to say “but Brendan, I already know all of this.” In which case I would offer two sincere thumbs up. Conversely, you may have a more efficient way of doing something, in which case I would be all ears. Also, Word is a massive, complex beast and I just don’t have the space (or all of the knowledge) to be comprehensive. Do let me know if you have any specific questions, though. Lastly, I’m using Word 2007 right now, and so some of this may be laid out differently on your machine. The basic principles should still apply, though the appearance of things may not look the same for you.
Spaces
I recall English and typing teachers regaling us about the bygone convention of adding double spaces after full stops, harkening back to some good ol’ day of etiquette, grammar(,) and style; a more sophisticated age when everyone knew and followed the rules and nothing bad ever happened, blah blah blah… But seriously, no one does this anymore. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to remove them. Hit ctrl+f to bring up Find and Replace, search for two spaces (literally hit the spacebar two times), and Replace All with one space. Easy peasy. I usually run this until Word tells me it has “completed the search and made 0 replacements” in case there are multiples.
An obsessive thing I like to do is remove spaces at the ends of paragraphs. To do this, we need to search for a space followed by a paragraph mark. Under More in the Find and Replace menu, there is a list of special characters. Here you can select paragraph marks (the ¶ symbol, called a pilcrow) at the top. If you do so, it will enter “^p” in the Find What field. I’ll then add a space before this mark, then Replace All with just “^p”.
Tabs/Indents
“But why would there be strings of more than two spaces?” you may ask. Well, sometimes I see these instead of indents at the start of a paragraph. Like most things in Word, finding a way to do something might not be obvious at first but makes sense when you figure it out. Just select all of your text (ctrl+a), then right-click and go to Paragraph. Next, find Indentation near the middle then click the drop-down menu under Special. Here you can choose to indent the first line of every paragraph in the document. This will be literally all of them, which will then require deleting the indent from paragraphs that open chapters/sections, and also chapter headers.
You could also just hit the tab key at the start of each paragraph, but formatting in Word isn’t a perfect process and there are usually multiple different ways of achieving the same goal. Picking the one with the least amount of manual keying-in is always my goal. Also, hitting tab may create a tab character in the document. Tab characters aren’t ideal and should be removed. You can see them by turning on paragraph and formatting marks (below under Hard Returns). You can also search for them entering “^t” in find. Replacing them all with nothing, then adding your first line indent is a good way to make sure they aren’t in your copy.
Other times you may want to use tabs to indicate a block quote or a letter within your book. These are most easily achieved with the ruler and sliding arrows at the top. When the arrows are at the limit of the white space, they are flush with the margins. Moving only the top arrow will give you an indent. Moving only the bottom arrow will give you a hanging indent (e.g., for a bibliography), and moving the square at the bottom will move both arrows. For block quote make sure the two arrows are aligned, and move the square over a half inch. Here, I also moved the right hand side the same amount.
Hard Returns
Hitting enter starts a new line. We all know this. Hard returns are great for ending paragraphs, or adding a line after a chapter header, or before a block quote. The key here is consistency. Every time I look at a manuscript I turn on the paragraph marks so I can see all of the spaces, hard returns, page breaks, etc. I check to make sure that there is only one hard return between headers and body text, and no hard returns at the ends of chapters. Also, it is very important that hard returns are not inserted to move text from the same paragraph down a line, for appearance for instance. When books are styled, programs will read it as belonging to a new paragraph and style it accordingly.
The marks below are the most common ones you’ll see. The dots are spaces between words, the arrow is a tab, the bent arrow is a soft return, the paragraph mark is a hard return, and the page break is exactly what it sounds like. Soft returns (shift+enter) are an easy way to set text on the line directly below if Word is adding an extra space between your paragraphs. It’s better not to use these, though, as they can mean different things in different programs (typically a line break that is not a new paragraph). Instead, I select all of the text, go into Paragraph, and click the box that says “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style.” You may have to click on it more than once as it might be greyed out and not active even if a check appears inside.
Page breaks
These are self-explanatory, and are easy to insert by hitting ctrl+enter. This will create a new page in your document, and allow you to start a new chapter easily. I highly recommend using these instead of multiple hard returns to start a new page. It won’t just make my life easier, it will also make sure your new chapter starts on a new page if text above it is reformatted (e.g. going from single to double space, changing the font-size, etc., ) or deleted later on.
Fonts
Fonts are great things, but they can be tricky. If a reader doesn’t have the cool free font you downloaded and want to use, you run the risk of them not being able to read your work. This matters more in submission/acquisition, but it’s a good idea to stick to one common font like Times, or Calibri. Also, serif fonts (with the little points on I’s and T’s, for instance) tend to be easier to read.
Styles
This is where Word seems to get a bit high level. At the top (in 2007 and later) beside Paragraph is a section for styles. Here you can define how different elements of your page will look, and have that be consistent through a document, or even multiple documents. You can define font size, weight, style, or alignment for your chapter headers, your first paragraphs of chapters or scenes, and your main body text (or anything else you can dream up). We apply our own styles here, which then carry through into typesetting for the ebook. You don’t have to worry about this at all (and it’s probably best to leave styles out in case something doesn’t transfer well), but if you’re curious as to how they work, here are a couple of articles:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/word-help/style-basics-in-word-HA010230882.aspx
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-use-styles-in-microsoft-word-to-save-a-lot-of-work/
Shortcuts
I’ve listed a few above, and here is a summary, including others I commonly use.
To recap:
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ctrl+f
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open find/replace menu |
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ctrl+enter
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insert a page break |
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shift+enter
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insert a soft return |
These ones you probably know:
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ctrl+a
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select all text in the document |
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ctrl+c
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copy |
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ctrl+x
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cut |
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ctrl+ v
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paste |
These you may not, however.
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ctrl+left/right arrow
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navigate to the beginning/end of a word |
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ctrl+home
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navigate to the beginning of the document |
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ctrl+end
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navigate to the end of the document |
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shift+left/right arrow
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select one character at a time |
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ctrl+shift+left/right arrow
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select one word at a time |
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shift+home
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select all from the cursor to the beginning of a line |
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shift+end
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select all from the cursor to the beginning of a line |
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ctrl+shif+home
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select all from the cursor to the beginning of the document |
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ctrl+shift+end
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select all from the cursor to the end of the document |
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shift+up/down arrow
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select one line at a time |
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ctrl+up/down arrow
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navigate to the previous/next paragraph |
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ctrl+shift+up/down arrow
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select one paragraph at a time |
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ctrl+e
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center-align your text (or left align if already centered) |
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ctrl+l
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align text left |
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ctrl+r
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align text right |
And here are many, many more.
http://www.shortcutworld.com/en/win/Word_2010.html
