Now that you've provided some additional details of the issues you are
trying to deal with, specific examples always help!), we have more
information to go on. :-) There are other methods you could use to
accomplish the tasks you face, and perhaps accomplish them faster than you
were doing before.
Regardless of the program you are using, it sounds like you must "eyeball"
every comma in some fashion, whether it's using reveal codes in WP or not.
Now, if I were you, I'd utilize Find for these tasks and make Word be my
"eyeballs".;-) For example, you can use Find to locate every comma with the
italic format. If you use Word 2007 you can use the new Reading Highlight
feature in Find which will highlight every comma that has the italic format
(or whatever your search string might be). If you don't have Word 2007, you
can still highlight those areas that need to be checked using Find/Replace -
you just need to specify you want to replace the found text with
highlighting.
To take it one step further, if every comma should not be italicized then
I'd use Find/Replace and find every comma with the italic format and replace
them with one that isn't italicized. That way the document could be cleaned
up in a few clicks.
Even better, if you have several "typical" scenarios that you look for, as
you noted two spaces instead of one, then you can automate these tasks,
simply by using the Macro Recorder - no programming knowledge necessary, and
reduce the work done to a few clicks of the mouse.
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP
Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/boo...x#AboutTheBook
Word FAQ:
http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine:
http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site:
http://mvps.org/
"ALeiS" wrote in message
news
Taz, et al.:
Selecting the phrase and looking at the "button" . . . that's exactly the
problem. It takes a lot longer to click on each word or each comma one at
a
time to check the formatting. I am in one of many professions where it is
necessary to check these things. It is common to judge someone's academic
or
legal abilities by something as anal as whether the person used the
correct
citation format. In legal (and academic) citations a document name is
often
italicized, but the comma at the end of the document name is NOT
italicized.
I did not create this system ("Bluebook"); Harvard professors did.
Unfortunately, I am stuck using Bluebook just like I am stuck using Word
for
some things. Learnining to use "styles" will not make checking formats
any
easier because you'd have to have a different "style" for every piece of
the
citation. The italicized document or case name would have one style, but
the
document's location (including the comma attached to the last word of the
case name) would have a different style, which may have a different format
from the case or publilcation date. Citation is all about italicizing and
unitalicizing and applying smallcapps every couple characters. Because
you
can't see a list of all the text with applicable "styles" all at the same
time, you would have to scroll through a letter at a time to check
everything. Also, Word tends to apply the same formatting to an entire
word,
so I doubt the "style" feature is even compatible for my purposes-the
reason
I don't plan to spend much time learning to use it.
Responding to another comment: YES, there are a lot of people who CAN
tell
whether a comma is italicized just by looking at it. It is these people
who
decide or at least influence whether an article gets published or whether
a
court accepts an appeal-something that can affect a client's money,
custody
of their children, whether or for how long they go to prison, and, in rare
cases, whether they live or die. I don't expect you to understand, but
trust
me, the citations have to be perfect because even a few mistakes damage
the
writer's credibility--and damaged credibility means diminished persuasive
effect. The way the Word program is written makes checking these things a
lot more difficult than it needs to be.
Regarding my "sarcastic tone," I was responding in kind to the tone of the
"Life after Reveal Codes" article. Have you read it? It isn't exactly
written in a diplomatic tone. In addition to its condescending tone, the
content of the article shows that the author has absolutely no
understanding
of the concerns faced by people who are looking for the nonexisent Word
equivalent of 'reveal codes.'
Some other silly anal things article editors and judicial clerks care
about
are whether a line break inappropriately splits up citations containing
hyphens and section symbols, and whether a writer uses the correct number
of
spaces between words and sentences. (The ability to spot extra or missing
spaces seems to be even more prevelant than the ability to spot
inappropriately italicized commas.) "Life after Reveal Codes" doesn't
even
suggest the partial fix of clicking on the 'paragraph' symbol (shortcut
Ctrl*
a/k/a Ctrl+Shift+8) to toggle "reveal non-printing characters," which
displays a little "dot" for every space so you can easily spot extra or
omitted spaces. A Word user who doesn't know about "reveal non-printing
characters" must arrow through a character at a time to check for the
correct
number of spaces. As for keeping characters together, "reveal
non-printing
characters" helpfully displays symbols for non-breaking spaces and hyphens
(a/k/a "hard space" and "hyphen character" to WP users-Microsoft does get
points for picking the more intuitive name). Before I found out about
"reveal..." I actually checked this by inserting dummy text to force a
citation to the end of a line to see if the statute number stayed together
despite the hyphen or space after the section symbol. The only other
alternative was to manually fix inappropriately "split" text during the
final
proofread-when I needed to be concentrating on other issues.
Thanks to all for confirming my suspicions that it just can't be done in
Word. And I do appreciate everyone trying to help. Unfortunately, no one
seems to fully appreciate the real issue; as a result these postings are
all
just regurgitations of what others have already posted.
Thanks anyway.
"CyberTaz" wrote:
Double-click the comma in question & look at the Italics button on the
formatting toolbar. If the button is pressed in, the comma is
italicized -
If the button is popped out the comma *isn't* italicized... But as Graham
suggested if the document is properly formatted it shouldn't be necessary
to
check every comma in the document. If styles are used single characters
simply don't get left out of the process.
If a certain phrase is suspect, select the phrase and look at the button.
If
*any* of the phrase isn't italicized the button will be popped out and
clicking it twice or - better yet - reapplying the appropriate style will
reformat the selected content completely.
I understand where you're coming from & have had to deal with many people
in
a similar situation. You've learned to use WP effectively & have been
forced
to use a different program against your will. The natural tendency is to
fight it every step of the way rather than learning to use the new tool,
but
it isn't a matter of "better or worse" it's simply a matter of
*different*
On another level, I sincerely hope that
Ok genious,
wasn't written with the venomous sarcastic tone the phrase evokes. The
people here aren't responsible for you situation and are volunteering
there
time & knowledge to help you make the transition as smooth as possible.
Don't take your anger & resentment out on them.
Regards |:)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac
On 8/18/07 5:00 AM, in article
, "ALeiS"
wrote:
Ok genious, how do you see ALL the text formatting at the same time?
For
example, in the world of legal writing, it is important that text and
citations
use several different text attributes (italics, smallcaps, underline,
bold),
and
there are people who get upset if a comma isn't italicized. It's a
real
pain to
have to arrow through the text a letter at a time to check on the font
attributes, and it's too easy to miss things like that just by glancing
over
the text and trying to guess based on visual impression. I am not one
of
those individuals gifted with the ability to discern whether or not a
comma
is italicized. So is there or is there not a way to see all the
attibutes or
formatting or codes or whatever you want to call them--all at the same
time
and not in some box floating at the right of the page that only shows
the
attributes of a little piece at a time?
"Dian D. Chapman, MVP" wrote:
You might want to read this article...
Is there life after "Reveal Codes"?
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/RevealCodes.htm
And you might also want to learn how Word works. Realize it is NOT WP
and works differently.
Dian D. Chapman, Technical Consultant
Microsoft MVP, MOS Certified
Editor/TechTrax Ezine
Free MS Tutorials: http://www.mousetrax.com/techtrax
Free Word eBook: http://www.mousetrax.com/books.html
Optimize your business docs: http://www.mousetrax.com/consulting
Learn VBA the easy way: http://www.mousetrax.com/techcourses.html
On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 09:23:02 -0700, "Rachel King" Rachel
wrote:
Help. Please urge Microsoft to give us "REVEAL CODES" like the reveal
codes
in Corel's WORD PERFECT not the "reveal codes" in Microsoft Word.
Microsoft
words' reveal codes is worthless -- it only shows some codes, That's
why I
still love Corel's Word Perfect because when we have a problem with
formatting or anything we can turn on "reveal codes" and we can see
every
single code and we can try to delete various codes to ascertain what
is
causing the problem. I still don't know how or why some key strokes
cause
different effects and if we had "reveal codes" which would reveal ALL
codes,
we could figure out what causes problems on our own. We need to be
able to
troubleshoot ourselves and we cannot so long as we do not have reveal
codes!