People in the writing world–writers, editors, and publishers–are all obsessed with word count, and for good reason. It allows us to compare and to plan ahead.
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Category Archives: For Work
On Word Count: e-Reading Ivanhoe
Sunday, July 11, 2010
I sat down to read the last little bit of Ivanhoe as an e-Book, and was surprised to learn later that the “last little bit” was over a hundred pages long.
On Microsoft Word Styles: How to Generate a Table of Contents
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Tweet This week we’ve been talking about styles in Microsoft Word, and I’ve been promising for two days that setting up your styles would pay off when you got to make a Table of Contents. I won’t make you wait any longer. That wouldn’t be fair. Also…well, this is going to be a little involved, […]
On Microsoft Word Styles: Using and Customizing Paragraph Styles
Monday, July 5, 2010
Tweet Yesterday I told the story of a time I demonstrated the raw, unrestrained power of paragraph styles in Microsoft Word. In case you don’t want to go back and read that, it amounted to a gasp and what was probably a sarcastic comment. Even so, paragraph styles are quite cool. Before you can see […]
On Microsoft Word Styles: “You Cheated!”
Sunday, July 4, 2010
It can take some effort to get your styles set up right, but as my Tech Writing students learned last fall, once that’s done, you can do magic in MS Word.
On HTML Heading Styles: How to Export Your Google Docs Beautifully
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
When you use standard HTML styles in Google Docs properly, it’s incredibly easy to change your document’s format to match a publisher’s submission guidelines.
On HTML Heading Styles: How to Customize Paragraph Styles in Google Docs
Monday, June 28, 2010
Tweet Yesterday I told you about BookMaker and the publishing model I built on Google Docs heading styles. Maybe my account made it all feel a little grandiose (and I haven’t even gotten started telling you about my long-term plans), but really what I described is the whole point of templates and standard styles: generalization. […]
On HTML Heading Styles: A BookMaker Story
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Tweet Once or twice now I’ve mentioned the program I wrote to grab my Google Docs novels and cram them into Word templates so I could pretty them up for submission. That was a fairly humble little Python script that I ran on my laptop maybe five or ten times. When Courtney asked me to […]
On Markup Languages: How to Use Heading Styles
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Tweet This week I’m talking about document formatting through markup, and specifically the difference between applying labeled styles to your document and just using formatting effects. When you do it right, a little bit of work beforehand can make all your writing easier. If you’ve set up a WordPress blog, you’ve probably seen this in […]
On Markup Languages: Labels vs. Effects
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tweet Yesterday I talked about my social anxiety and how it broke me. And I promised that it had applications to tech writing. The problem I ran into was that I could clearly, directly see the effects in my life without so much as a clue what the causes were. That’s pretty typical of anxiety. […]
