Editing

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Editing' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adding a Break to Your Document
Want to modify the way your text flows between pages in a document? Word allows you to insert several types of breaks that control the flow for you.

Changing How Word Handles Ellipses
When you type three periods in a row, by default Word changes those to the ellipse character. This substitution doesn't exactly fit the technical needs of most editors when it comes to ellipses. This tip discusses what you can do to make Word's use of ellipses better.

Comparing Documents, but Not Side by Side
Word has a feature that allows you to compare two documents side-by-side. What if you actually want to compare the documents one above the other (top and bottom)? You can make this change in orientation rather easily, as described in this tip.

Controlling Smart Quotes
As a way to make your documents look more professional, Word can utilize "smart quotes" for both quote marks and apostrophes. Here's what that term actually means and how to control the capability in Word.

Creating Filler Text
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, or so the story goes. Here's how to put this type of meaningless text into a document.

Displaying Spaces in a Document
Seeing where every space is within a document can be very helpful in polishing your editing. Here's how to make those pesky spaces all appear, like magic.

Drag and Drop Editing
Many people use the keyboard to do their primary editing tasks. Word doesn't limit you to the keyboard, however. You can also use the mouse to do your editing, as described in this tip.

Easily Adding Special Spaces
Do you need to frequently add en spaces and em spaces to your documents? You can add special tools to Word that make inserting these characters a snap.

Getting Rid of Paste Options
Paste information into a document and you'll immediately see a small icon next to the pasted information. This icon allows you to access options that affect the pasting operation. Don't like the icon? Here's how to get rid of it.

How Spaces Wrap at the End of a Line
Add more than one space after the end of a sentence, and you may find that the extra spaces wrap to the start of new lines. Here's how to get Word to treat those extra spaces as you expect.

Hyphenating a Document
Hyphenating a document can make it appear more "polished." Here's how to manually hyphenate your documents using the tools that Word provides.

Inserting a Section Mark
Section marks are used regularly in the writings of some industries, such as in legal documents. If you need a way to easily add section marks to your documents, consider using the AutoCorrect feature to do the adding for you.

Inserting Text with the Insert Key
The Insert key can be used for different purposes, depending on how you configure the program. This tip explains those uses and shows how to make the configuration change.

Replacing a Limited Number of Smart Quotes
Smart quotes look great in a document, but may not be right for all instances of quote marks or apostrophes. If you need to replace some smart quotes, but not all of them, then you'll want to understand the technique described in this tip.

Selecting Words Automatically while Editing
When you are editing your document, there are many times that Word tries to guess what you are doing and then complete your task for you. This helpfulness can be aggravating at times. Once such instance is when you are trying to use the mouse to select text from the middle of one word to the middle of another.

Splitting the Document Window
Need to work on two different portions of the same document? The solution is to split Word's document window as described in this tip.

Turning Off the Paste Options Buttons
Paste something in a Word document, and you may notice a dynamic little set of options appear right next to what you pasted. If you find these "paste options" distracting, you can configure Word so that they aren't displayed.

Using Word's Smart Cut and Paste Feature
Smart Cut and Paste, a Word 2007 feature, is designed to make it easier to do your document editing. This tip describes the feature and shows how you can control it.

 

More Information

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