3 Universal Rules of Good Writing

There are so many different types of writing that it’s futile trying to list them all.

Yet, there are some principles that hold true in almost every writing situation. I’m tempted to call them “Universal Rules” of good writing, in ANY language.

Here are three such rules:

Brevity. If you can express an idea in one word, do NOT use two words. Shorter is always better unless you’re writing a poem or involved in some aesthetic experiment.

For example, “I did go there” is always better than “as a matter of fact, I did go there”. Eliminate the deadwood and allow your text to breathe comfortably.

Modularity. Break down long procedural descriptions into easily digestible short steps.

Chop your long paragraphs into shorter ones.

If writing for the web, don’t be timid to post each sentence on its own line, with white space in between individual sentences.

Headers. Break up your text with bold headers and sub-headers since most people will only skim through the headers.

Headers that contain the gist of the paragraph below increase comprehension and retention.

For example, here is a good one: “How G-30 suntan lotion reduces skin cancer rate”.

And here is a not-so-good header preceding the same hypothetical paragraph: “Suntan Lotion, Sun, and Your Life”.

MS Word - Assigning Autotext to a Hotkey and a Toolbar

Imagine you have a piece of text that you’d like to quickly add to your documents no matter which document you are in, and regardless of what’s saved in your clipboard.

One solution is to assign that text to a new toolbar button as Autotext.

Here is how to do it:

1) Select Tools > Autocorrect Options from the main menu to display the Autocorrect dialog box.

2) Click and select the Autotext tab.

3) Paste (or type in) your text in the Enter Auto Text Entries Here field.

4) Click Add to have your text listed in the list box below.

5) Close the Autocorrect dialog box.

6) Select Tools > Customize to launch the Customize dialog box.

7) In the Commands tab, select Autotext from the Categories.

8) Find your text in the Commands pane.

9) Click Keyboard button to launch the Customize Keyboard dialog box.

10) Again select Autotext from the Categories and find your text in the Commands pane.

11) In the Press New Shortcut Key enter a new shortcut for this autotext.

Try not to use those shortcuts already in use. For example if you assign Ctrl+V, you’ll be reassigning a very well know shortcut for pasting the content of the clipboard to pasting your custom text. That could lead to confusion.

12) Let’s assume you physically press Control key and then the K key. The shortcut “Ctrl+K” is automatically added as your new shortcut.

13) Click the Assign button and close all windows.
Now, whenever you click Ctrl+A, Word will enter your advisory test at the cursor. You don’t have to type it anymore.

Another method to retrieve your Autotext is to place it in the Toolbar:

In the Customize dialog box:

1) Click and DRAG your autotext to any TOOLBAR you wish.

The text will be inserted as a rectangle. Anytime you click on this rectangle, the associated autotext will be automatically inserted into your text.

However, you can replace this text-button with an icon as well.

2) Select the text-button and click the down-arrow at the end of its toolbar to display the pop-up menu.

3) Select Customize to display the Customize dialog box.

4) Select Autotext from the Categories and find your text in the Commands pane.

5) With the Customize dialog box still open, click the text-button on the toolbar to enable the Modify Selection button.

6) Click Modify Selection button and from the pop-up menu select Change Button Image to display the available icon images.

7) Select an image and then select Default Style option. Your text-button will be replaced by the icon you have chosen. Now every time you click that icon on the toolbar, your autotext will be inserted at where your cursor is.

8) To delete the icon from your toolbar, select Tools > Customize.

9) Click on the icon button and drag it out of the toolbar. This does not delete the autotext from the Customize screen but it’ll delete it from the toolbar.

Freelance vs. Corporate Employment for Writers

Which way should you go as a writer? Should you try to swing it out on your own or become an employee for a company?

Here are the pros and cons for each option:

Freelancing

PROS:

Freedom. You are your own person. You don’t need to listen to any boss figure. You “eat what you kill” and some people just love that kind of life.

Variety. Freelancers work on a variety of assignments, depending on client needs. Less chance for boredom.

Money. Successful freelancers earn more than their employee counterparts.

CONS:

Need to sell yourself. You need great social skills. You have to be an outgoing warm personality to win hearts and contracts.

Need to network constantly. You need to have a deep rolodex to keep in touch with decision makers and also with your colleagues for valuable references.

No benefits. You pay everything yourself and usually at a higher rate. Freelancers, for example, pay a lot more for medical benefits since they do cannot get group rates.

Corporate Employment

PROS:

High job security. If you do your job well, you don’t need to worry where your next paycheck is coming from.

Good benefits. Corporations lavish a number of benefits on their employees including medical coverage, paid holidays, and paid training opportunities.

No marketing. Once you find a full-time job, you do not need to market yourself day and night. Your job is there waiting for you every morning.

CONS:

Lower Income. Corporate writers, even if they are at a senior level, make less than experienced freelancers.

Lack of Variety. Some writing positions can become boring in the long run. Try writing assembly instructions for wooden garden furniture day in day out for 5 years.

Lack of independence. Your fate is tied to that of your company. When the company ship goes down, you’re out there without a job.

MS Word 2003 - How to Create Customized Letters with Mail Merge

You can easily create dozens and hundreds of letters each addressed to a different person and each including customized references.

For example, you can generate a series of letters that look like these:

LETTER 1:

“B. Smith, 123 Road, Boston, MA Zip1

Dear Bob, It was great meeting you on July 23, 2005 in Cincinnati. I’d love to do business with your company Iron Works General, Inc. …”

LETTER 2:

“Coreen Brandonty, 73 Office Tower, Los Angeles, CA Zip2

Dear Coreen, It was great meeting you on February 3, 2006 in Paris. I’d love to do business with your company Tantastic Lotions, Inc. …”

Etc.

This is how you do it:

1) Fire up your Excel, create an excel spreadsheet and save it. Each variable should be a column. Read across, each RECORD will represent all the variables that you need to customize in a letter.

For example, for the above sample letters, the columns may read Name, Last Name, Street Address, City, State, Zip, Date Last met, City Last Met, Company Name, etc.

2) Switch to MS Word 2003. Create a new blank document.

3) From the main menu, select Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge to display the Mail Merge SIDEBAR on the right side of your screen. Word will automatically display the Mail Merge TOOLBAR on top of your screen.

4) Click Next to go to the next sidebar screen to start your letter.

5) Select the “Use Current Document” radio button.

6) Click Next to go to the next sidebar screen and select your “recipient database.”

7) Click BROWSE in the sidebar to find the Excel sheet.

8) Click Open. Click through the prompt windows to select the appropriate table(s) and variables. Your spreadsheet should now be listed in the sidebar under the “Use an existing list” section.

9) Click on “Edit Recipient List” and then click OK in the “Merge Mail Recipients” dialog box.

10) Click Next to go to the next sidebar screen to start WRITING your letter.

11) Start typing your letter on the blank page. When you come to a VARIABLE that should change from one recipient to another, click More Items in the sidebar to display the Insert Merge Field dialog box.

12) Select the variable that you’d like to insert into your letter and it will appear as a place holder in between a pair of double-chevrons, depending on the way you have named your columns in the Excel spreadsheet.

13) Repeat Step 13 as many times as necessary as you type your letter.

14) When you finish, click Next to preview your letters.

15) You can now preview your letters one at a time by clicking the Front and Back arrows in the sidebar.

16) Click Next to complete the merge and print the merged letters. At this stage you can also edit the individual letters to add your own customized flourishes and notes.

And you are done! Congrats. Now it’s time to mail them.

You can create individual labels, envelopes, directories and even e-mails following the same steps and selecting options appropriate for the kind of mail-merge you have in mind.

This is one well-tested and bug-free MS Word feature that in my judgment beats OpenOffice’s mailmerge functionality which crashes often.

MS Word - The "Da Gates Code" of Hidden Paragraph Markers

Have you ever wondered why you cannot edit just the way you want to edit a selected numbered list item in MS Word?

Were you ever frustrated by your inability to change the step numbers from, let's say, plain-black to bold-red and then to italic-green (without changing the body text) no matter what you tried?

All that maddening difficulty is due to a "secret style principle" built into the very code of MS Word. If you do not know this secret (and it really is no exaggeration to call it a "secret") no matter what you do to the text of a numbered list item, you will not be able to change the styling of its number. Or conversely, sometimes you'll see "weird" changes that you do not want and can't get rid of!

Here is the secret that will save you untold hours of frustration in the future:

In MS Word, the paragraph style information is embedded not in the paragraph itself but in the PARAGRAPH MARKER! How's that for a surprise?

Therefore, unless you select the paragraph mark that FOLLOWS a listed step, you will not be able to change properties of the list number easily, in a controlled manner.

What is a paragraph mark? It is the character that looks like the Greek letter "Pi." Also know as the "hard return" marker, it is created automatically every time you hit the Return (Enter) key on your key board. If you are using the Word without turning on your text markers you won't see the paragraph markers and you will not know what to select to change the styling of your list numbers.

Thus it is good practice to always have your paragraph markers turned on when you are working with Word.

By only selecting the paragraph marker that follows a numbered step you can assign a different font color from the font color drop-down list and thus have each step start with a differently-colored number while the body text remains the same. How cool is that to impress your friends and clients?

MS Word -- Slick Word Link in a Blink

You can insert HTML links to your MS Word documents in a split second.

1) Select the target word.

2) Press CTRL and K keys to launch the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

3) You can link the word selected to an existing file or web page, a bookmark within the same document, an e-mail address, or to a new document. Click the appropriate button in the LINK TO navigation bar.

To link the word selected to a web page or online document, click the Existing FIle or Web Page button in the navigation bar. Then, enter the URL of the page (either somewhere on your server or out there on the Internet) in the ADDRESS field. For example, you can link any word you like to www.cnn.com so that when you click that word you'll be able to read the latest news.

Note: for external web sites do not forget to start the URL with "http://"

To link the word selected to a bookmark, click the Place in This Document button and then select a bookmark from the list of bookmarks displayed on the right.

To link the word selected to a new document, click the Create New Document button and follow the directions.

To link the word selected to an e-mail address, click the E-mail Address button and fill in the associated fields.

4) Click OK and you're done. Now when you click on your word, things will happen, depending on the way you set up your link.

5) To remove the link, select the word and press CTRL and K keys to display the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. Click the Remove Link button and it's gone.

Congrats!

MS Word 2003 - How to Use the "Paste All" Function?

MS Word 2003 can store 24 items in its Clipboard and then paste all of them in the same order that you saved them (the last one saved pasted the last).

Why is this such a great function? Because it allows you to gather study and research materials from all kinds of different sources and then compile them within the same Word document for your easy reference and/or re-writing.

1) First of all, make sure your Task Pane is displaying by clicking Ctrl+F1

2) Then click the downward pointing little black triangle on the upper right of the Task Pane and select Clipboard to display the contents of your Clipboard.

3) Now go to any web site you want and select a certain text that interests you. Then copy it by pressing Ctrl+C

4) Next, open an Excel sheet and select any table you like. Then copy it by pressing Ctrl+C

5) Open any Word document you like and select any text of interest. Then copy it by pressing Ctrl+C

You can repeat this up to 24 clipboard items.

All these three items of interest from three different sources/application will be displayed in your Clipboard list.

6) Now, click the Paste All button on the Task Pane to have all of them pasted one after another in your Word document.

This powerful function to gather information from dissimilar sources and then display them all within the same Word document will open new research and writing possibilities for you. Y

You can use MS Word 2003's 24-item clipboard to gather all your notes neatly into the same Word document thanks to the "Paste All" command.

Enjoy!

MS Word - How to Change the Image of Toolbar Button and How to Record a Macro?

If you do not like the way a MS Word toolbar button looks, you can change its image very easily.

1) Select Tools > Customize from the main menu to display the Customize dialog box.

2) Select the button (the image of which you would like to change) by clicking on it directly on the toolbar. A black rectangle will display around the selected button.

3) Click the Modify Selection button in the Customize dialog box to display the drop-down menu.

4) Select Change Button Image option to display all the wonderful icons available to you. Select one and presto! Your toolbar button now has a new spiffy look!

5) If you would like to edit an image by hand to anything you like, you can do that as well by selecting the Edit Button Image option.

************ How to Record a Word Macro?

Recording and running macros in MS Word will save you from re-performing repetitive tasks.

Imagine for example that you would like to transform certain words in a document by changing the font family to Brittanic Bold and increasing the font size to 24 points.

If in a 10,000 word document you have 100 such words to change, wouldn’t it be much better to do it by just clicking a button on your toolbar rather than changing the font family and size 100 times in a row?

This is how you can record and use a Word macro:

1) Select Tools > Macro > Record New Macro from the Word menu to display the Record Macro dialog box.

2) Type in a Name for your macro in the “Macro name” field.

3) Click the Toolbars button to display the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box.

4) Click and hold your cursor on the macro listed in the Commands list-box of the tab. The cursor tip should change into a “+” sign. Drag and drop the macro in anywhere you like on your toolbar. When the cursor changes into a vertical “I beam” it means it is ready to drop your newly created macro button at the selected spot on your toolbar.

5) Then go ahead and change the font family to Brittanic Bold and font size to 24 (through Format > Font dialog box).

6) When you are done, click the STOP button on the mini “Macro tool bar” displaying over your document and you are done.

Now every time you select a word or a paragraph and then click the macro button on your toolbar, your selection will automatically be changed to the new font, size 24. Isn’t that great?

MS Word – Create a Colorful Venn Diagram Easily

I love Venn Diagrams because nothing comes to close to expressing the logical relationships between different sets of elements that well.

With Microsoft Word 2003 you can create fantastic looking and colorful Venn Diagrams on the fly, with as many elements and colors as you need.

It helps to launch your DRAW toolbar first before you do anything else.

Then follow these steps:

1) Click the 3-balls icon (the tooltip text should read “Insert Diagram or Organization Chart”) to display the Diagram Gallery dialog box.

2) Click and select the Venn Diagram icon on the lower-center to insert a default Venn diagram and also to display the Diagram mini tool-bar.

3) To add a new set of elements (represented by each CIRCLE in the diagram), click the Insert Shape button on the mini tool-bar.

4) To move the circle shapes around, click the clockwise or counterclockwise buttons until you get the desired positioning.

5) Click the “Click to Add text” text to enter any text you want to identify the individual elements.

6) Click the Text Wrap button to apply text wrapping, if there is any need.

7) Click Autoformatting button on the mini tool-bar to select a pre-saved format template for the whole diagram.

8) You can change the formatting of any individual slice by selecting it and then clicking the appropriate formatting buttons on the DRAW toolbar.

MS Word - How to Create and Use a Customized Dictionary?

Microsoft Word comes with a powerful dictionary and spell checker. It is very easy to add new words to MS’s default customary dictionary (file name: CUSTOM.DIC) as well.

When MS comes across a word that is not in this default dictionary, the right-click pop-up menu asks whether you’d like to “Add to Dictionary”. Click that option and you are done. The new word is added to CUSTOM.DIC. Next time, MS will know how to correct the misspelling of that particular word.

But sometimes, when you are writing about a very esoteric subject, or perhaps when you are using many foreign words or jargon, or working on a temporary project, you may want to keep the default custom dictionary as is and create your own project-specific customized dictionary. When the project is done, you may want to remove it from your computer altogether.

***** How to create your own customized dictionary?

1. Launch your Note pad, or non-MS Word writing program. (MS Word unfortunately inserts a lot of invisible code to the text which might affect your dictionary list in unpredictable ways.)

2. Enter all your special words, one word per line. Make sure to enter multi-word phrases one word per line. After you type in each word, press Enter and go to the next line.

3. Give your special dictionary a name that ends with “.dic” (For example, “SoccerDictionary.dic”) and save it to C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\MicrosoftProof

***** How to launch and use your customized dictionary?

1. Open the text that you would like to spell check by using your customized dictionary.

2. Select Tools > Options.

3. Select the Spelling & Grammar tab.

4. Click Custom Dictionaries button to display the Custom Dictionaries dialog box. You will see your newly created dictionary is listed in there, right next to the CUSTOM.DIC.

5. Check the check-box of your customized dictionary (if you like, IN ADDITION to the CUSTOM.DIC. It would not hurt.) Do NOT remove “CUSTOM.DIC” since that would impact all the other MS documents that have already used it.

6. While you are here, you can also modify the content of any listed dictionary by selecting it and clicking the Modify button. You can easily add new words in this fashion.

7. Click OK and return to your main document.

Now when you do a spell check (F7), Word will suggest alternatives not only from its default dictionary but from the custom dictionary that you have created as well.

Alternatively, when you right click your mouse over a word that has a red underline, Word will suggest alternatives not only from its default dictionary but from your customized dictionary as well.

You can create and use as many similar customized dictionaries as you like. And when you are done with that special project, you can just simply turn them off at Tools > Options > Spelling & Grammar > Custom Dictionaries.

If you think you’ll never again use that special set of terminology, you can also delete a customized dictionary altogether from the C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\MicrosoftProof

MS Word - How To Make Global Changes To Your Text Document Based On Paragraph Styles?

Imagine you have a long MS Word document containing all kinds of paragraph styles. What are you going to do if you'd like to indent all section headers SIMULTANEOUSLY by one tab to the right and then change their color to red?

Obviously the Find-and-Replace functionality is of no help here. Yes, you can search for the paragraphs by their style but you need to type in a search word or phrase. And after finding the headers with that specific style and search words, you cannot select them all simultaneously for a global edit.

Tracking such headers from the TOC (Table of Contents) would also be very cumbersome and again impossible to select simultaneously.

There is a very easy method to accomplish that in a hurry.

First display the Styles and Formatting pane of your document by selecting Format > Styles and Formatting from your main menu.

Select a paragraph style in the list. It will be framed with a dark blue box.

Bring your cursor on top of the style name to display the drop-down menu arrow.

Click the arrow to display the following options:

Select All X Instance(s)
Modify...
Delete...
Update to match the Selection

Select the "Select All X Instance(s)" option to highlight every piece of text in your document which has that paragraph style.

Then click the right-indent button on your tool-bar. All the headers will be shifted towards right by one tab space.

Then click the Font Color button on your tool-bar and select Red. All your headers will be converted to red.

And you are done! Congratulations.

You can do a much more thorough edit by again selecting all instances of a paragraph style.

But instead of changing the style through the tool-bar buttons, you can display the Modify Style dialog box by selecting "Modify" from the drop-down list of the paragraph style listed in the Styles and Formatting pane.

Every change you make in that dialog box will be reflected instantly in every instance of that paragraph style.

CAUTION: If you select the "Add to template" check box and then click OK, you'll make the changes a permanent part of your style sheet.

Web Sites with Pure CSS and Zero Tables

A great majority of web sites out there are still using TABLES to present content, even if the content has nothing to do with tabulated data.

Yet there are also a growing number of great web sites that contain zero tables. They are built by pure CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Here are three of them: Blogger, Microsoft, and CNN.

The screen shots below display the DIV tags used by these sites. As you can see, there's no end to the complex layouts you can achieve with CSS:

(Click the images to enjoy a larger view.)

Firefox 3.0 Lets You View and Remove Cookies

Do you know what kind of cookies the web site you're visiting is placing on your machine?

Now you can easily see and (if you wish) remove those cookies thanks to Firefox 3.0's great cookie editor.

1) When you visit a web site, click on the favicon displayed to the left of the URL:



2) Firefox will display the following dialog box:



3) Click the More Information button to display the following information dialog box:



4) Click the View Cookies button to see the cookies placed on your computer by this web site:



5) Select and click Remove Cookie to delete any cookie you like.

MS Word - How To Import Text And Images From Another Document Or Web Site Without Copy And Paste?

MS Word has a very powerful functionality hidden under its hood.

You can import text and images from any other document or web site into your current document without copying and pasting anything.

You can import external content into the body section of your document, as well as into your headers and footers.

NOTE: Whatever you import into headers and footers will be repeated automatically on every page.

WARNING 1: if you are importing from the Internet, make sure you are not trying to import the whole content of a mega web site like Amazon.com since that will certainly crash your system. Do not type the URL of the Index page of big web site since MS Word will attempt to download everything on that site! You have to be careful not to bite too much.

WARNING 2: you should also not import any copyrighted materials from the Internet unless you have the written permission of the site owner, or the material is clearly marked as "Public Domain" content, like the images you can find on Wikipedia. Downloading copyrighted materials for your own use is a violation of the copyright law.

A good practice is to import a single image that sits on its own page and can be reached through a specific URL.

This is how you do it:

1) Place your cursor where you want the new text or image to appear.

2) Then select Insert > Field from your main menu.

3) Select "Include Image" or "Include Text" field from the list-box.

4) In the "Filename or URL" field, type in the address of the file on your hard drive, or the web site URL.

If the text document you want to import is in the same local folder as your current document, then all you need to type in is the full name of that file.

For example, if you are trying to import the content of a local file named "File1.doc", then all you need to do is type "File1.doc" into the "Filename or URL" field.

Let's say, however, that your current document is saved in the My Documents folder but you are trying to import content from a file named "sample.doc" saved on the C drive, then this is what you would type:

C:\sample.doc

5) Click OK and the content you want will appear in your document.

MS Word Bookmarks for Global Corrections and "Running Headers or Footers"

Imagine you have a 200 page MS Word document with repeating text elements like an address, a name, or a date which repeated over and over throughout the document.

And imagine, after finishing the document, or when it's time to update it, your boss tells you to change the name from "John" to "Bob."

One way to do it of course is to use a global Find and Replace.

But what if you'd like to replace only some of the "John"s to "Bob"? Are you going to check them one by one? Or what if you want to do it automatically without the need to remember to do a Find and Replace?

It's easy. You first mark the source text with a bookmark.

1) Select the text.

2) Select Insert > Bookmark from the main menu.

3) Enter a Bookmark Name (no spaces) and click Add. To see your bookmark on the screen, select Tools > Options > View Tab. Check the "Show Bookmarks" check-box.

The next step -- for all the other instances of this text, enter a REF (Reference) FIELD that points to the BOOKMARK of your reference TEXT.

1) Place your cursor where you want the next instance of the source text to appear.

2) Select Insert > Field from the main menu to display the Field dialog box.

3) Find the REF field in the "Field Names" scroll-down list box.

4) Select REF and then select your BOOKMARK in the "Bookmark Name" list box in the middle.

5) Click OK and your text will be inserted with a gray background screen (which will not be printed), denoting that this is not normal text but a variable field.

Now, every time you make a change to your original text, all other instances will also be changed automatically AFTER you do the following:

1) Select the whole document by selecting Edit > Select All from the main menu, or pressing Ctrl + A.

2) Press the F9 key and BINGO! You've got all instances of your text updated automatically.

P.S. Be careful not to delete the bookmark markers when you are editing your original text. That's why it is important to work by displaying your bookmark markers.

Creating RUNNING HEADERS and FOOTERS

Another great use of Bookmarkers and the REF field variable is in the Headers and Footers.

Imagine you'd like to include the Document Title (not the File Name but the actual name of the document printed on the front cover of the document) or a section title either in the header or the footer. This is also called a "running" header or footer since the header/footer on a page changes depending on selected section headings or titles like the way, for example, you'd see on any phone directory or dictionary page.

Adobe FrameMaker takes care of this much more elegantly by allowing you to assign one or more variables to your header or footer, variables that are fully customizable and indexed to your paragraph tags, so that you can actually have multiple levels of running headers and footers displaying on your pages.

Although MS Word does not provide the same easy functionality to key the headers/footers to paragraph styles, it still can be done by inserting bookmarks and REF variables.

This is how you do it:

Assign a bookmark to the title (or any other source text of your choice) and then insert its corresponding REF field variable into the header or the footer. After updating the text, go back to your header or the footer editing mode (View > Header and Footer) and press F9. All your headers or footers (within that given section) will be updated as well.

NOTE: There is a formatting problem with updating the headers and footers this way since MS Word has the tendency to insert the source text with its original formatting.

If, for example, you are referencing a 24 point document title in your header, your headers will look huge. You can of course select the header text manually and re-format it to a smaller size.

If the next time you update the source text, the length of the updated text is equal to or smaller than the original text, then the header/footer preserves its latest formatting properties.

If, however, your new updated text is LONGER than the previous one, then for only that part of the text which is longer, MS Word switches the formatting back to the original source text format.

For example, if your original document title is composed of two words, "Word Tricks," and your updated document title is either "Word Techniques" or just "Word," then the headers and footers are updated (after going into the header/footer editing mode) nicely by preserving your latest formatting corrections.

However, if your new title is "Word Tricks Explained," then the last extra word "Explained" is displayed in the headers/footers with the original formatting of your document title, creating a lop-sided and aesthetically unpleasant header/footer. In those cases you need to go back to your header/footer and reformat the extra new word(s) as well to match the rest of your header/footer. This is a bug that I hope Microsoft will take care of in the future.

MS Word - How To Remove Hidden Personal Information From Your Text Documents

Did you know that MS Word records a lot of information about you, and even about your computer and the network you're working on, and then saves them with the text document you are creating?

If you are using MS Word as your main word processor, you may be providing a lot more personal information to your readers than you intended to.

Some of the information you inadvertently provide can be not only just "unfortunate" or "undesirable" but it could have legal consequences as well if it's a Word document, let's say, provided to the opposing counsel in a court setting.

It is strongly advisable to clean your MS Word documents from all such personal information, unless you really want to include them for one specific reason or another.

CAUTION: According to Microsoft, MS Word stores a wide variety of personal information with a document including the following:

• Your name

• Your initials

• Your company or organization name

• The name of your computer

• The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document

• Other file properties and summary information

• Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects

• Document revisions

• Document versions

• Template information

• Hidden text

• Comments

And there is no method to remove all such information in a single move. Moreover, different versions of MS Word have slightly different ways of removal.

However, here is a basic way to make sure your personal information will not be saved with the File Properties fields of your document:

Select Tools > Options from your main menu.

Select the Security tab.

Select "Remove personal information from file properties on save" check box and click OK.

FrameMaker versus Word

By Shweta Katdare

Introduction

The most important skills for a technical writer are writing, editing, and design. However, these skills are not enough to make you a successful technical writer. You also need to learn how to use authoring tools.

The most widely used publishing tools are:

• FrameMaker
• Microsoft Word

FrameMaker

FrameMaker is a desktop publishing and a help authoring application created by Adobe Systems. It is used by technical writers as a publication tool for creating large documents. Its latest version is 7.2.

Advantages of FrameMaker:

• Useful for writing large and complex documents.
• Creating a PDF is easy and the user can create bookmarks, links, and other PDF features.
• Easier to change the layout of a document using Master pages. A master page is created whenever the user creates a new document. It is used to decide the layout of the document.
• Text in tables can be rotated.
• Can print a rotated page with normal headers and footers, which means that the text can be in Landscape mode whereas the headers and footers are in Portrait mode.
• Has good color options. They include CMYK and Pantone.
• It can handle a lot of graphics.
• Has a number of cross-book features. One of them is to search and spell-check the whole book. This feature is useful for dealing with large books.
• Has good flexibility in numbering options. It has built-in variables for chapter and volume numbering. It can also handle long numbered lists without any errors.
• Allows you to set up numbering for steps or procedures.
• Cross-referencing can be added easily. You can also define formats for your cross-references.
• Can customize and save table formats.
• Character and paragraph formats selection lists are displayed as windows. They can be moved on the screen as convenient.
• FrameMaker supports conditional text.
• Easier to create single source documentation set in FrameMaker. Single sourcing allows you to use the same content in many documents. For example, if your user guide and admin guide have some common topics, it is easier to share them rather than maintaining separate copies.
• Has Webworks Publisher, which is a powerful tool used to produce HTML, XML, or RTF output.

Disadvantages of FrameMaker:

• Has a steep learning curve for Word users.
• FrameMaker for Windows does not have macros.
• Undo is limited to one action.
• Cannot right-click and paste selected text. You have to use the keyboard commands or use the Edit menu for it.
• Has an unpredictable spell-checker.
• Drag-and-drop feature is not present in FrameMaker.
• Does not have grammar checker.
• Inserting graphics is a very awkward. You first need to create an anchored frame, insert the graphic, and then manually resize it.
• Find command does not stop when it reaches the end of the document. It keeps on continuing.
• Have to manually format table columns.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is word processing software used to create documents. It is a powerful tool to create professional looking documents.

Advantages of Microsoft Word:

• Many help authoring tools are available such as RoboHelp. Help authoring tools (HAT) are used to create online help manuals and are used by technical writers. They get the source text from programs like HTML and Word and generate output in formats like Microsoft WinHelp or Adobe PDF.
• Has a good spell-checker features like on-the-fly spell checking, removing the spell-check dialog box out of the way when it selects text, and informing the user when it reaches the end of the document.
• Can use track changes to review documents.
• Has a good grammar checker.
• Has the ability to "undo" many times.
• Has macros, which can automate repetitive actions.
• Can open two parts of a document in one window using Word.

Disadvantages of Microsoft Word:

• Not stable for large documents. It gets slow while handling large volumes.
• Difficult to have a single-source documentation set.
• Does not run on Unix.
• Does not handle multi-document features like headers, footers, indexes, table of contents, cross-references, etc very well.

Conclusion

FrameMaker is best suited for large documents or documents with a lot of files, such as books and user manuals. Word is better for smaller documents like reports, newsletters, writing letters, and memos. However, Word is much easier to use and has many advanced features.

Most of the features of FrameMaker can be implemented in Word, but FrameMaker manages large documents better and also has good cross-referencing and multiple file support.

Both Adobe FrameMaker and Microsoft Word are powerful, professional authoring tools. Both have strengths and weaknesses. To decide which is best for you, look closely at the type of document you need to write.

Shweta Katdare is a writer with 24 by 5 Tech Comm, a technical writing company that specializes in fast, high-quality writing and editing. For more articles on writing, technology and business, sign up for the 24 by 5 Tech Comm Newsletter at www.24by5.com.

How to Attach Graphics to the Headers of a FrameMaker Document?

Imagine you’d like to have the sweet image of a finch accompanying every section header in your FrameMaker document that has something to do with “Birds.”

For example, let's say you want the readers to see the image of a finch right before every header that reads something like “Birds of North America,” “Migration Routes of Birds,” etc.

First of all, create the image and save it on your computer.

Then do the following in your FrameMaker document:

Select View > Reference Pages to display your reference page. The chances are you are looking at the default images of Footnote, TableFootnote, Single Line and Double Line. This is where we will add our image.

Select Graphics > Tools and display your tool bar.

Click and select the “Place a Graphic Frame” tool in the middle. Your cursor will transform into a Plus Sign.

On the Reference Page, drag and draw a graphic frame appropriate for the size of your graphic file. FrameMaker automatically displays the Frame Name dialog box.

Enter a short but distinct frame name. If you enter names that are similar to each other this will create a problem later on when it is time to select that graphic and to attach it to your header paragraph style.

Select File > Import > File to import your previously saved icon/image.

Browse and find the image file. Click the “Import by Reference” radio-button if the image size is too large and at the end you’ll save the whole document as PDF before distributing it. Otherwise you will need to distribute the image together with your FrameMaker file. If the image is small, you can select the “Copy into Document” radio-button as well.

Click the Import button to import the image into the graphic frame. And you are half done.

Save and go back to your main document by selecting View > Body Pages.

Now, open your Paragraph Designer (Ctrl+M). Find the Header Style to which you want to attach the image.

Select the Advanced Tab. You’ll see that, at the bottom, there are two drop-down menus: “Frame Above Pgf:” and “Below Pgf:” Select the former if you’d like your image to appear ABOVE the header paragraph, and the latter for BELOW.

If you click and view the drop-down list for either option you’ll see the name of the image you’ve saved in the Reference Page listed there.

Click and select the name of the image and you’re done! Save the paragraph style.

Now the image will be placed either above or below your header (depending on your previous choice), and it will always be so every time you use that paragraph style, giving you a very consistent looking document.

TIP: if the alignment of your image is not perfect, then go back to your Reference Page and play around with the dimensions of the graphic frame of the image, and the image’s alignment WITHIN the frame itself (click and select the image and then move it around inside the frame by clicking one of the four positioning buttons on the main toolbar, on top of the FrameMaker screen).

I find that most of the time perfect positioning of most FrameMaker images require some minor visual trial and error until they look right.

How to Set Up a FrameMaker Template?

A FrameMaker template consists of a set of Master Pages.

Select File > New > Document from the top menu.

Select Portrait and create a new document.

Select View > Master Pages to switch to the master page editing screen.

The default FrameMaker document comes with a single master page named RIGHT (check the status bar at the bottom of your screen), complete with a default HEADER and a default FOOTER. In between is the default TEXT FRAME.

To modify the dimensions of the text frame, select Graphics > Tools to reveal the TOOLBOX. Select the arrow on the TOP RIGHT square, the SELECT OBJECT tool.

Click on and select the text frame. Six handles will appear on the dotted-line borders of the text frame.

Select Graphics > Object Properties.

In the dialog box, enter the WIDTH and HEIGHT of the text frame, its distance from TOP and LEFT of the page, the NUMBER OF COLUMNS you need on the page, and whether you need a ROOM FOR SIDE HEAD for your sidebar (check the check-box and then enter the WIDTH of the sidebar and the SIDE it should be on).

You are basically done. If you need a certain text to appear on the HEADER or FOOTER of every page, enter those as well.

To enter a page number, place your cursor where you want the page number to appear and then select Format > Headers & Footers > Insert Page #.

If you want a “Page X of Y” type of page number designation, do the above, enter a single space, and then select Format > Headers & Footers > Insert Page Count.

To clone a LEFT master page from your RIGHT page, select Format > Page Layout > New Master Page.

In the dialog box, give it the name LEFT, and leave the radio-button “Create from Master Page Right” as is, selected.

Click Add and voila! You have a new LEFT master page looking just like your RIGHT page.

So what’s the point?

Now you can change the positioning of the HEADER and FOOTER elements, for example, so that page numbers and Chapter headings can appear away from the “gutter” and towards the open ends of the pages.

I usually also clone one more master page from the RIGHT -- the FIRST page since the first pages of all chapters always look a little different.

Once you have your three basic master pages, your rudimentary chapter template is done.

Save and return to your body pages by selecting View > Body Pages.

How to Use the "Pending" Marker in FrameMaker?

FrameMaker (FM) is such a wonderful software to write long and complicated books and documents. In my 20-plus years of experience as a writer, nothing comes close.

FM has a very powerful built-in marker functionality with which you can mark not only your index words and cross-references, but your “pending stuff” as well.

Let’s say you have these paragraphs in your document that you do not quite know how to edit because certain information is missing. So you would like to mark those section as “pending” and come back and revisit them later on when the missing information is supplied.

If your document is only 10 pages long, obviously it would not be much of a hassle to remember which sections are “pending.”

But how are you going to keep track of the missing items if you have 100 or 200 “pending items” in a 1,000 page user’s guide?

With FM it is very easy. Just simply select the pending sections or click your cursor where you want to enter the marker.

Then, select Special > Marker from the main menu to display the Marker dialog box.

Select the Pending option from the Marker Type drop-down menu.

Type in anything you like for the “Marker Text” as a reminder. Or, if you've selected the whole pending section previously, the selected text will automatically populate the Marker Text field.

Click the New Marker button, and you are done.

To see all your pending markers in a neat list, select Special > List of > Markers from the main menu to display the standalone list warning message. Click Yes to display the Set Up List of Markers dialog box.

Select Pending from the “Don’t Include” list on the RIGHT and click the left arrow to transfer it to the “Include Markets of Type” list on the LEFT.

Click the Set button to create a standalone list and all your pending markers will be listed for you.

To jump directly to a certain marker’s location. Press Alt + Ctrl. Your cursor will transform into a pointing finger. Click and FM will automatically take you to the exact location of the marker.

Once you edit the pending item, you can delete the pending marker.