Successful freelance editor Hilary Powers explains how to get the most out of Microsoft Word when editing manuscripts on screen. Powers has been a freelancer since 1994, and utilizes her expertise as well as her experience in holding forth on Word. Among the subjects she covers are personalizing the program and the screen to meet your own needs and taste, deploying Word's custom features, domesticating Track Changes, creating and using macros and templates, coping with the snares and pitfalls Word users often encounter, and finding useful resources and program add-ins. With her guidance, editors can not only feel more comfortable using Word, but increase their page-per-hour output as well as their income.
This book is excellent! It is full of practical advice that I have followed, but now I know there is more to the book than meets the eye. I was new to templates, working on a job in isolation as freelancers do, and needed to learn ASAP how to work with my template. The book directed me to an online archive of zipped files containing a “guided practice session” on templates, where I found just the help I needed. Thanks, Hilary.
"Making Word Work for You" The message from Making Word Work for You that I've found most useful is the idea that if you find yourself doing something over and over, there is probably a way that the task can be made more efficient. Even if a reader's specific challenge is not covered in this book, the author has provided enough information (including a number of additional reference sources) to get the reader well on the way to a solution tailored to his or her own needs. Some of the specific tips in this book have already saved me considerable time and frustration (more than enough to make the purchase worthwhile). Other tips have explained problems I've had in the past and should help keep me out of trouble in the future. I highly recommend this book for anyone who does editing in Word and has that nagging feeling that "there must be a better way to do this"! Reviewer: Ginger Peschke, Oakside Editorial Services
"Must add to the praise" The glowing (and growing!) buzz about Hilary's book that I kept encountering in my online discussion groups turned out to be absolutely true: Hilary's book is perfect--slim, to the point, full of helpful examples. I was especially thrilled to find "Walking Through a Job" (Chapter 9), which is an outline of how Hilary tackles an edit in Word (I've earmarked it). Elizabeth Degenhard Freelance copyeditor and proofreader
"Making Word Work for You" Hilary Powers has managed to make the ordinarily dull computer manual into one that is not only useful, but also entertaining. Novice and experienced editors will enjoy reading this book and following Hilary's suggestions. I especially appreciated the spiral binding that enables the user to lay the book flat and have it stay open at the desired page. Carol Stone The Stone Cottage Science Writing and Editing
"The book to turn to in emergencies" I'm a member of two different on-line lists that I turn to when something in Word goes wrong. On the advice of one member, I bought this book . . . and then forgot about it. A few days ago, I was trying to move a large section of text that had been marked with Track Changes -- the text moved, but the changes stayed where they were. In a deadline panic I started an e-mail to both lists . . . and then remembered this book. There was the solution on page 39, easy as pie. Within 30 seconds I was up and running again. This book is a great resource for those moments when you encounter some obscure but dire problem that no one -- except, apparently, Hilary Powers -- has ever run into. Edward Batchelder Freelance writer and editor
