Technical Tips Thread

We've had some useful tips posted here on how to get the most out of your word-processor, but I thought it might be handy to have a single thread for them. Share your tricks here!

Mine are all for MS Word, but tips for other processors are also welcome, including tools like Google Docs.

Compare documents

(recycled from LC's commas thread)

If you're editing a document, especially for somebody else, Track Changes is a great way to see what's been changed. But sometimes you need to compare two versions of a document and you don't have the changes marked. Here is how you can compare and merge versions in Word.

HTML tagging via search-and-replace

I draft my stories in Word, using Ctrl-I for italics. If I want to post them here through the text submission window (as opposed to attaching a .docx file) I need to add HTML tags for those italics: italic text becomes <i>italic text</i>.

Instead of going through the document and doing this by hand, one passage at a time, you can do this automatically with search-and-replace:

HandsInTheDark said:

You don't have to retype the text in italics. In my version of Word, and I think this is standard...:

control-H to bring up the Replace dialog box. Click on More>> to get the rest of the options visible.

Click in Find What, but don't type anything. Then click on Format (at the bottom) and Font...
Then click on Italic so it's highlighted. Leave the rest alone and click OK. The Find What: box will get annotated to show it's going to select italic text.

Click in Replace with: and insert this text:
<i>^&</i>

Then click Replace All. The ^& gets replaced with whatever the search found, each time, so the right thing happens. If you don't want to remember ^&, you can get the same effect by clicking on Special and choosing "Find What text".

Unfortunately this keeps the text italic in Word. Keeping it italic isn't a problem unless you want to do this Replace All again after adding more text. The <i>'s start to stack up. So after you do the replace you want to remove Word's memory of italics. The simplest way I know around that is to select the whole document, select Font and take off the Italic attribute.

The same trick works for bold and <b>. People with real copies of Word can make these macros.

Other text editors will have similar tricks.

Edit: Oh, and replace paragraph breaks with two manual hard returns. ^p and ^|^| are the symbols for those.

Click to expand...

Using styles to keep format flexible

Say you're working on a document but you haven't nailed down exactly how you want to format it. (Less relevant to Lit, which imposes its own standard formatting, but useful for publication elsewhere.) You might even be planning to publish it in multiple places with different formatting rules.

If you select each of your chapter headings individually and set them to 12-point Times New Roman, and then later decide that you want 48-point Wingdings, you're going to have to find and change each of those headings individually (or use fancy search-and-replace as discussed above). A better way to do this is to format with Styles, as discussed here.

If you've marked all your chapter headings as "Heading 1", then when you decide to change chapter heading style you just have to edit the definition for Heading 1 style, and all your chapters will change to match, keeping things consistent.

Changing spelling and grammar rules

Sometimes I write documents that might have a mix of languages or language variants - for instance, I might be writing in Australian English, but quoting passages written in US English or German. To change the spelling/grammar rules for a given passage I select the text, then click Tools > Language, and choose the one that applies.

Anybody else have tips?

And very handy all that is, too.
Thank you

Microsoft products - the Format Painter

Look closely, there's a little paintbrush on one of your toolbars.

1. Setup/Copy
   1. Highlight something
   2. Click the paintbrush, ONE TIME if you'll paste just one time, or DOUBLE CLICK for multiple pastes.
2. Paint/Paste
   1. Click somewhere else. The formatting of the area you highlighted will be copied to the area you click on now.
   2. And if you double clicked, it'll continue, until you hit escape.

jsmiam said:

Look closely, there's a little paintbrush on one of your toolbars.

1. Setup/Copy
   1. Highlight something
   2. Click the paintbrush, ONE TIME if you'll paste just one time, or DOUBLE CLICK for multiple pastes.
2. Paint/Paste
   1. Click somewhere else. The formatting of the area you highlighted will be copied to the area you click on now.
   2. And if you double clicked, it'll continue, until you hit escape.

Click to expand...

I need to remember this one. I've encountered it before but then I forget it when I need it.

Not so much technical advice as a recommendation for a tool.

If you'd like to try a different editor to write in, try SublimeText. I initially started off using it to write code, but the features and customization possibilities soon made me realize I could use this to write prose too.

Granted, it has a bit of a learning curve for new users. You will probably spend the first week crying in frustration while you set up your dictionaries, font families, preferences, custom specs... but I promise you the end result will be a massive boost to your productivity. And that is before you are pleasantly surprised at the minimaps and panes.

All those irritating and tedious things you have to do in MS Word or Open Office can realistically be automated and/or reduced to single click if you know the bare minimum of Python (which again is ideally suited for newbies).

https://hugogiraudel.com/2015/05/18/writing-in-sublime-text/

https://dzone.com/articles/customizing-sublime-text-for-writers

If you're brave enough to try, download it here.

My number one tip for anyone who does a lot of writing-related stuff: learn the difference between a Word Doc and plain text. You'll look about ten times more professional if you can transfer things from your computer to an email or a webpage without them getting goofed up.

The short version is: copy your work to Notepad before copying it again and posting, or pasting into an email. This strips out the formatting and gives you a clean copy. You'll have to reinstate italics, etc, but at least your work won't be all over the shop.

I think moving content from one platform to another for any purpose is inviting corruption. Write it and send it in Word, the industry standard, and you should be fine. And do put a lot of bells and whistle macros and formatting in it. You aren't the designer of wherever it's going to be published.

KeithD said:

I think moving content from one platform to another for any purpose is inviting corruption. Write it and send it in Word, the industry standard, and you should be fine. And do put a lot of bells and whistle macros and formatting in it. You aren't the designer of wherever it's going to be published.

Click to expand...

I compose documents in Word and convert them to rich text format ( .rtf) before uploading them onto the new story page. I've never had problems with this. But that might not be what you mean by one platform to another because they're both MS. Plus, I tend to go pretty light on special formatting so it's almost never an issue anyway.

I've cut and pasted into the submissions box directly from Word over 1,200 stories to Literotica without any formatting problems. Keeping it simple has worked for me.

KeithD said:

I've cut and pasted into the submissions box directly from Word over 1,200 stories to Literotica without any formatting problems. Keeping it simple has worked for me.

Click to expand...

That's good to know.

KeithD said:

I've cut and pasted into the submissions box directly from Word over 1,200 stories to Literotica without any formatting problems. Keeping it simple has worked for me.

Click to expand...

That's how I do mine, too.

Lascivity said:

My number one tip for anyone who does a lot of writing-related stuff: learn the difference between a Word Doc and plain text. You'll look about ten times more professional if you can transfer things from your computer to an email or a webpage without them getting goofed up.

The short version is: copy your work to Notepad before copying it again and posting, or pasting into an email. This strips out the formatting and gives you a clean copy. You'll have to reinstate italics, etc, but at least your work won't be all over the shop.

Click to expand...

Or save as a plain text file in word before placing in an email.

KeithD said:

I've cut and pasted into the submissions box directly from Word over 1,200 stories to Literotica without any formatting problems. Keeping it simple has worked for me.

Click to expand...

_Lynn_ said:

That's how I do mine, too.

Click to expand...

Me too. Just have to have the tool setup correctly. Ctrl a, Ctrl c, then Ctrl v into the submission box, presto, fini.

KeithD said:

I think moving content from one platform to another for any purpose is inviting corruption. Write it and send it in Word, the industry standard, and you should be fine. And do put a lot of bells and whistle macros and formatting in it. You aren't the designer of wherever it's going to be published.

Click to expand...

The major problem I've seen from moving text between platforms comes from the font. Windows provides some fonts -- Caibri most notably, since it's the default font -- that may not exist on any other platform (OS X, iOS, Android, Redhat, Ubuntu, and on and on). Other systems may replace proprietary fonts with something that may or may not be completely compatible.

The font might not be such huge problem with Lit, since everything is converted to pretty plain text and presented in a font selected by the browser (I think it's Verdana in most cases), but if you want to transfer a document that contains embedded tables or figures, then small differences in the font can cause painful scew-ups in the results.

There's no reason for an author to screw around with fonts. If you're submitting to a publisher (and Literotica is the publisher here), they most likely want it in New Times Roman unless they specify something different. If you're putting it on a Web site you control, you can decide that for yourself. But even then, you're basically talking about Ariel or NTR. If you're self-publishing for print, there are a limited number you should be working in, as well--most often Garamond.

For Literotica or any other publishing platform, just do it in NTR, the usual standard, or Arial for ebook publishing. The publisher will tell you what they want. If not, default to NTR. Literotica is going to put it in Literotica's font anyway (Verdana, point 9). This isn't something the author should be messing with. Put your effort to the story content.

KeithD said:

There's no reason for an author to screw around with fonts. If you're submitting to a publisher (and Literotica is the publisher here), they most likely want it in New Times Roman unless they specify something different. If you're putting it on a Web site you control, you can decide that for yourself. But even then, you're basically talking about Ariel or NTR. If you're self-publishing for print, there are a limited number you should be working in, as well--most often Garamond.

For Literotica or any other publishing platform, just do it in NTR, the usual standard, or Arial for ebook publishing. The publisher will tell you what they want. If not, default to NTR. Literotica is going to put it in Literotica's font anyway (Verdana, point 9). This isn't something the author should be messing with. Put your effort to the story content.

Click to expand...

The font is insignificant for Lit. The site uses the character codes and presents everything in a font selected by your browser, within limits. The old user control panel wanted you to specify the character set. The new user control panel seems to detect it.

For most purposes, Times New Roman (for a serif font) and Verdana (for a non-serif font) are compatible choices. If you're on a non-Windows system, are presented with a document that was originally written in the default font (Calibri), and the format is important then the best drop-in replacement is probably Carlito (from Google) which was designed for metric compatibility with Calibri.

NotWise said:

The old user control panel wanted you to specify the character set.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I have never been asked to "specify the character set" when I've submitted a story to Lit.

KeithD said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I have never been asked to "specify the character set" when I've submitted a story to Lit.

Click to expand...

I haven't used the old CP since the new one was available. As I recall, the old CP contained a drop-down box where you could pick the character set you were using. It defaulted to the Windows character set, so if you use Windows you probably never needed to think about it. I don't use Windows, so I always had to worry about it.

NotWise said:

I haven't used the old CP since the new one was available. As I recall, the old CP contained a drop-down box where you could pick the character set you were using. It defaulted to the Windows character set, so if you use Windows you probably never needed to think about it. I don't use Windows, so I always had to worry about it.

Click to expand...

Nope, have never encountered that with the old submissions page.

NotWise said:

I haven't used the old CP since the new one was available. As I recall, the old CP contained a drop-down box where you could pick the character set you were using. It defaulted to the Windows character set, so if you use Windows you probably never needed to think about it. I don't use Windows, so I always had to worry about it.

Click to expand...

I remember that one. It wasn't prominent in the interface and I never had to mess with it, even when submitting from a Mac, so after the first couple of submissions I tuned that out and never had to think about it again.

From "the Register":-
Google has form as a censor of bad language: the Chocolate Factory's speech-to-text translation engine refuses to print swear words without asterisks. Microsoft, too, decided to take a line on this with some of its platforms.

So what's a habitual curser to do? Well, one solution could be to turn back to the roots of English to potentially escape obscenity filtering.

Want an alternative to the f-word? Try swive or sard, just like our ancestors did. If you want to insult your boss, try fopdoodle, zounderkite, jobbernowl, or queynte. Habitual swearers can be referred to as muckspouts, and male members may be deterred by a proverbial knee to the tallywags or rantallions.