The Only Thing We Have to Fear: Wildcard Macros

Whenever I talk to colleagues about macros, it is as if a funereal pall has enclosed us. My colleagues, generally, tell me that they cannot write macros, that it is much too complicated, especially wildcard macros.

If I ask if they ever use Word’s Find & Replace, they all admit that, yes, they do. “Congratulations,” I say, “because each time you use Find & Replace, you have written a macro! You just haven’t recorded it.”

The only thing we have to fear about macros is our fear of macros.

I suppose, technically, Find & Replace is not macro writing, but truly, a macro is just a way to find some sequence and do something to that sequence — be it bold the sequence, highlight it, replace it with another sequence, delete it, whatever.

Most everyone who uses Microsoft Word has recorded a keyboard macro. Word makes doing so very easy. Again, congratulations if you have written a keyboard macro, because you are on your way to macro wizardship.

There is a key to writing macros. It is a secret that macro wizards rarely share, but I’m going to share with you. The secret is wrapped up in a single magical word: analysis. Analysis of what you need a macro to do is the key to writing a macro. Sure you need to have some arcane language (what good is wizardry without arcane language all its own?) and all of the arcane language you need to write the macros can be found in Jack Lyon’s Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word and in Wildcards in MS Word Macros, which is a compilation of information on wildcards that Jack Lyon wrote for his blog years ago and which you can download for free by clicking the title-link. Alternatively, you can use the Wildcard Find & Replace Macro found in EditTools to “write” the macros for you, but analysis is the real key to writing macros.

Consider this problem: You have a list of 100 references in which the styles are all over the place. Author names are often listed like this:

Arnold, J. H., K. L. Swift, and A.J.H. Archimedes.

but you need the author names to look like this:

Arnold JH, Swift KL, Archimedes AJH:

You can fix the names manually or by using macros. Manually will take nearly forever, so the better method is to use macros. Here is where analysis matters.

When I began using macros, I saw this problem and thought, “How can I write a macro to fix these author names?” My thinking was a single macro to take care of it all. I quickly discovered that a single macro can’t do the job, but a series of macros that can be combined into a single macro could. The key was series of macros, which meant that I needed to break the problem down into solvable (or macroable) parts.

The first part is Arnold, J. H., which I need to change to Arnold JH,. What I need to find is as follows:

1. any mix of letters of varying length
2. that is followed by a comma
3. and a space
4. a single uppercase letter
5. followed by a period and a space
6. a single uppercase letter
7. followed by a period
8. and a comma and a space

I need to replace the find list with

1. the mix of letters found in 1
2. the space found in 3
3. the single uppercase letter found in 4
4. the single uppercase letter found in 6
5. and the comma and space found in 8

Note that what I no longer need is not included in the list of replace with items (i.e., find items 2, 5, and 7). Also note that, in analyzing what needs to be found, items that I no longer want are listed on their own lines in the find list.

If you are using Word’s Find & Replace dialog with Use Wildcards checked, you would manually enter the following Find string [paired parens represent the information on a single line in the find list, thus, ([A-z]@) represents line 1: any mix of letters of varying length]:

([A-z]@)(,)( )([A-Z]{1,1})(. )([A-Z]{1,1})(.)(, )

And the following Replace string (the backslash+number represents the corresponding find item, e.g., \1 represents line 1: any mix of letters of varying length and \8 represents line 8: a comma and a space):

\1\3\4\6\8

I can hear you groan. But it isn’t as difficult as it appears. All of the information to write the strings is available in the downloadable Wildcards in MS Word Macros document (just click on the link).

If you are using the EditTools’ Wildcard Find & Replace Macro, you click buttons to make your selection and the code is written for you. An added feature with the Wildcard Find & Replace Macro is that you can save this find and replace so that you can reuse it in the future; with Microsoft’s Find & Replace, the strings cannot be saved. However, what I used to do before I created the Wildcard Find & Replace Macro – and recommend that you do — was keep a special Word document with these strings in it so I could copy and paste when needed in the future. I set up the file like this:

1. Change Arnold, J. H., to Arnold JH,
Find: ([A-z]@)(,)( )([A-Z]{1,1})(. )([A-Z]{1,1})(.)(, )
Replace: \1\3\4\6\8

Once you have entered the strings in either Microsoft’s Find & Replace dialog or in the Wildcard Find & Replace Macro, click Replace All and all author names that fit this particular format will be altered. Then move to the next series to analyze, which is to change K. L. Swift, to Swift KL,. In this instance, what I need to find is as follows:

1. a single uppercase letter
2. followed by a period and a space
3. a single uppercase letter
4. followed by a period
5. and a space
6. any mix of letters of varying length
7. that is followed by a comma
8. and a space

I need to replace the find list with:

1. the mix of letters found in 6
2. the space found in 8
3. the single uppercase letter found in 1
4. the single uppercase letter found in 3
5. the comma found in 7
6. and the space found in 5

What I no longer need is not included in the list of replace with items (i.e., find items 2 and 4). Also note that, in analyzing what needs to be found, items that I no longer want are listed on their own lines in the find list.

If you are using Word’s Find & Replace dialog with Use Wildcards checked, you would manually enter the following Find string:

([A-Z]{1,1})(. )([A-Z]{1,1})(.)( )([A-z]@)(,)( )

And the following Replace string:

\6\8\1\3\7\5

I said that you can’t save the strings as a macro if you are using Word’s Find and Replace dialog. That is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go all that far. There is a way to save the strings as a true macro without using EditTools’ Wildcard Find & Replace Macro. What you do is record a simple Find and Replace macro, for example, find bush and replace it with blues, using Word’s Record Macro feature, and give it a name like WildcardAuthorCorrection1; be sure to keep a list of what that macro does (or will do once you edit it). (If you don’t know how to record a simple macro, the fastest and best way to learn is to use Jack Lyon’s Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word. Within a few minutes you will be a master at recording simple macros and even at editing them.)

Open the newly recorded macro to edit it, and replace the .Text = bush entry with .Text = [your find string] and replace the .Replacement.Text = blues with .Replacement.Text = [your replace string]. Make sure all the items labeled as True are changed to False except change .MatchWildcards = False to .MatchWildcards = True.

Once you get hooked on macros, the possibilities are endless and you’ll never let go. More importantly, you will improve your editing speed, accuracy, and efficiency, which translates into a higher effective hourly rate and a more profitable editing business.

You’ve got nothing to fear — macros are conquerable!

Business of Editing: The Logistics of Large Projects

As I wrote in my previous post, Business of Editing: Taking On Too Much, I have been hired to help edit a portion of a very large project. My portion runs to 5,000 manuscript pages, which have to be edited within 6 weeks.

After having written about the ethical issues of having undertaken a project that was bigger than the original editors could handle, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss some of the logistical problems of massive projects. Let’s begin at the beginning: This project, before editing of any chapters, ran approximately 8,000 manuscript pages. (I use approximately deliberately as this was the in-house editor’s estimate; I only know with certainty the page count for the chapters I have actually received.)

Projects of that size are the types of project that I often receive and over the years, I have developed a system for working with such massive amounts of manuscript. In fact, it was because of my receiving projects of that size that I developed EditTools. As you can imagine, with such projects consistency becomes a problem, and the stylesheet seems to grow on its own.

The first logistical problem I address is that of editors: How many editors will be needed to edit the manuscript within the time allotted by the schedule? I built my business, Freelance Editorial Services, around the idea that a team of editors can do better financially than a solo editor. Although this notion has been disputed many times over the years, I still believe it to be true, based on discussions that I have with solo colleagues. It is this team concept that enables me to undertake such large projects with confidence, knowing that I will have a sufficient number of well-qualified editors to do the work.

The second logistical problem I address is the online stylesheet and giving access to it to the editors who will be working on the project. I discussed my online stylesheet in Working Effectively Online V — Stylesheets. When several editors work collaboratively on a project, this online stylesheet enables all of the editors to see what decisions have been made, and to conform their decisions with the decisions that have been made by coeditors. Consequently, if an editor makes new editorial decision (i.e., it has not been previously decided by an editor and inserted on the stylesheet) to use distension rather than distention, or to use coworker rather than co-worker, all of the other editors can immediately see that decision — within seconds of its being entered into the stylesheet — and can conform their editing to that decision or dispute it. It also means that errors can be caught and corrected. For example, if an editor enters adriamycin, another editor can correct it to Adriamycin (it is a brand name, not a generic drug) and immediately notify all editors of the original error and correction.

In addition, my client also has access to the stylesheet. The client can view and print it, but not modify it. This serves two purposes: (a) the client can provide proofreaders with up-to-the-minute copies of the stylesheet and (b) the client can look at our editorial decisions and decide that he would prefer, for example, distention rather than distension, notify an editor of the preference, and the editor can then make the change and notify all of the coeditors, who can then make any necessary corrections in chapters not already submitted to the client.

The third logistical problem I address is the creation of a starter NSW (Never Spell Word) file for the project. The Never Spell Word module of EditTools is where known client preferences are stored. For example, if I know that the client prefers distention to distension, I enter into the NSW file the information to change instances of distension to distention. Also into this file goes editorial decisions, such as marking DNA as an acronym that does not ever need to be spelled out but that the acronym US (for ultrasound) should always be spelled out as ultrasound. The NSW file also serves to remind editors of other editorial-decision–related information. I provide each editor with a starter NSW file and each editor will add to their NSW file as they edit.

The NSW macro is run before beginning editing a chapter. Its purpose is to promote consistency across chapters and to make it easier for an editor to visually see editorial decisions that have been made. The NSW macro includes several components. For example, my basic NSW for medical editing also includes a dataset for drugs and organisms. Its use helps speed editing by providing visual clues, such as an indication that a drug name is correct even though the spell checker is flagging it as erroneous — it becomes one less thing that I need to verify.

The fourth logistical problem I tackle is references. These projects often have lots of references. One chapter of the project that I just received, for example, runs 305 manuscript pages, of which there are 61 pages of references — a total of 652 references (most of the chapters have more than 300 references). Dealing with references can be time-consuming. My approach is to separate the references from the main chapter, putting them in their own file. This serves four purposes: (a) Microsoft, in its wisdom, has determined that if spell check determines there are more than some number of errors in a document, it will display a message that there are too many errors for Word to display and turns off spell check. Although spell check is not perfect, it is a tool that I do use when editing. I would prefer it to flag a correctly spelled word as misspelled, giving me an alert, than my possibly missing something. Spell check is a tool, not a solution. (However, it does help that EditTools helps me create custom dictionaries so that correct words that are currently flagged as errors by spell check can easily be added to a custom dictionary and not flagged in the future.) By moving the references to their own file, I eliminate this problem of Word turning off spell check for too many errors.

(b) It provides me with an opportunity to run my Journals macro. Every time I come across a new variation of a spelling of a journal name, I add it to one of my journal datasets. My PubMed (medical) journals dataset currently has more 14,675 entries. With the references in a separate file, I can run that dataset against the reference list and have my macro correct those journal names that are incorrect (assuming the information is in my dataset) and mark as correct those that are correct. What this means is that rather than having to check journal names for 652 references in a chapter, I have to do so for at most a handful. It also means that I can concentrate on the other reference errors, if any, such as missing author names. Instead of spending several hours on the references alone, I can edit the references in a much shorter amount of time. (It took 26 minutes for the Journals macro to check the 652 references against the 14,675 entries in the dataset.)

(c) The third purpose is that separating the references from the main text lets me run the Page Number Format macro. In less than a minute, I had changed the page numbers in the 652 references from 1607-10 to 1607-1610 format. How long would it take to do this manually? Having the references in their own file means I do not have to worry about the macro making unwanted changes in the main text, especially as this macro runs without tracking.

(d) The fourth purpose separating the references from the main body of the chapter serves is that it lets me run my Wildcard Find & Replace macro just on the references. There is no chance that I will use the macro and make unwanted changes to the main text. WFR is efficient because it lets me create a macro that works, such as one to closeup the year-volume-pages cite, and save it for future reuse. WFR even lets me combine several of the macros into a single script (that also can be saved for repeat use) so that the macros run sequentially in my designated order. As an example: I have created macros to change author names from the format Author, F. H., to Author FH,. If you have to do this manually for several thousand author names, you begin to appreciate the power and usefulness of WFR and how much time it can save. (I also will use WFR on the main text when appropriate. What I avoid by separating out the references is the possibility of something happening to either the main text or the references that shouldn’t.)

The above steps are among those I take that make handling of large projects easier and more profitable. There are additional things that I do for each chapter, but the point is that by dealing with manuscript in a logical way, projects become manageable. In addition, by using the right tools, editing is more accurate, consistent, and faster, which leads to a happy client, more work, and increased profitability.

Do you have any thoughts on how to handle large amounts of manuscript? Do you take any special steps for preparing a manuscript for editing or while editing?

Editing Tools: MultiFile F&R and Search, Count, Replace

As regular readers of this blog know, I occasionally discuss macros that are included in the EditTools package. I created EditTools to enhance my editing skills, and to increase my productivity and efficiency, and thus increase my effective hourly rate.

In past articles, I have discussed the Author Query (The Business of Editing: Author Queries), Never Spell Word and Toggle (The Business of Editing: Consistency), and Journals (The Professional Editor: Working Effectively Online IV — Mastering Macros) macros. In this article, I tackle two more of the macros in EditTools: MultiFile Find & Replace and Enhanced Search, Count, & Replace.

MultiFile Find & Replace

On occasion, while editing a chapter, I discover that I made an error in previous chapters or that a style decision I made in earlier chapters has met its nemesis in the current chapter and needs to be changed. In the olden days, this meant that I had to reopen each chapter I had previously edited and do a find-and-replace. This was time-consuming, and because I work on a per-page basis, potentially costly. Thus was born MultiFile Find & Replace (MFR).

When I have finished editing a chapter (document), I place it in a different directory than the directory that contains chapters yet to be edited and the chapter I am currently editing. Edited chapters that I have not yet sent to the client are placed in an MFR directory; once they are sent to the client and thus no longer subject to my revision, they are moved to the Done directory.

(My directory structure for a project is as follows: The parent directory is the name of the client [e.g., XYZ Publishers] and each project from this client has its own subdirectory, which is the name of the project or its author(s). The subdirectories within the project directory are Original, CE, Figures, Count, MFR, and Done. Original contains all of the files I receive from the client for the project. This assures me that I always have access to the base files. The files in Original are then sorted, with figure files copied [not moved] to the Figures directory and the text files to be edited copied to the Count directory. I next count the manuscript pages contained in the files in the Count directory. [I often do not receive all of the files for a project at the same time, which is why there is a Count directory.] Once a file has been counted, it is moved [not copied] to the CE directory for editing. After editing, the edited file is moved to the MFR directory, where it remains until it is added to a batch of files for shipping to the client. When sent to the client, the file is moved to the Done directory.)

MFR works just like the normal find-and-replace except that it works on every file in a directory and it automatically tracks changes. The same caution that you would exercise with Word’s find-and-replace, you need to exercise with MFR. MFR opens a file, does a search, replaces where appropriate, and then saves the newly revised file.

Before I created EditTools, I used MFR in a prospective fashion. I used it to make changes to files that are waiting to be edited. However, I rarely do this anymore, preferring to make use of EditTool’s Never Spell Word macro for prospective changes.

Enhanced Search, Count, & Replace

Enhanced Search, Count, & Replace (ESCR) is a workhorse macro for me. It is one of my most often used macros; perhaps the only macro I use more frequently is the Toggle macro.

As I have said in prior blog posts, I work on a lot of professional books. The one commonality to every professional book — regardless of subject matter — is that acronyms are used extensively. Acronyms are the shorthand language to which “insiders” of a profession are generally privy. Yet not all acronyms are commonly understood even by “insiders.” I daresay that most people know what is meant by AIDS, even if they cannot give the definition of the acronym, but do not know either the meaning or definition of CREST as used in CREST syndrome (for the curious, CREST means “calcinosis cutis, Raynaud phenomenon, esophageal motility disorder, sclerodactyly, and telangiectasis”).

Consequently, my clients generally have a rule that they want applied: Every acronym — except the most commonly understood acronyms – has to be spelled out at first use in a chapter (sometimes a book); to be kept as an acronym, it must be used at least three times in the chapter (otherwise spell it out); and subsequent spell outs of the acronym need to be changed to the acronym for consistency.

In olden days, this was a problem. It was a nightmare when editing was done on paper; it downgraded to a headache (albeit a severe one) with the advent of computers and increasingly sophisticated word-processing search functions. Yet even today this is a major headache in the absence of ESCR.

ESCR is not perfect by any means, but it is a significant improvement over other methods of searching for an acronym and its spelled out version, counting the number of times each appears, and replacing the miscreant versions. With ESCR, my process is greatly simplified and the time it takes to search, count, and replace is reduced to seconds.

By the way, although I am always talking about using ESCR for acronyms, the macro is not limited to acronyms. That is just how I primarily use it. ESCR will work on any word or phrase that you can select, so if you want to know whether the author excessively uses the phrase in order to, ESCR will do the job — and it will let you change the phrase to something else.

At the first appearance of an acronym, I ascertain whether it is spelled out; for example, does it appear as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or just AIDS? If it doesn’t appear both spelled out and in acronym form, I add the spelled out version so that both appear. I then select both the spelled out phrase and the acronym, including the parens or brackets, and run ESCR. (How do I know that it hasn’t been spelled out previously? Because if it had been, it would have been highlighted, which is the signal to tell me that I already have checked this acronym and it has already been verified and spelled out.)

ESCR generates a report that tells me how many times, for example, each of AIDS, AIDs, Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome appears in the remainder of the open document. It excludes from the count the selected text; it only counts subsequent instances. I then have, for each item it reports, the option to have ESCR replace the existing text with different text or to highlight the existing text. So, if ESCR reports the following (the number following the text indicating the number of times the text appears subsequently in the document):

1. AIDS     15
2. AIDs     2
3. Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome      5
4. acquired immunodeficiency syndrome     10
5. Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome     1

I can tell ESCR to highlight every instance of items 1 and 5, indicating they are OK as they are, and to change the text of items 2, 3, and 4 from what they currently are to AIDS. ESCR will then go through the document — and with track changes on — will highlight every instance of AIDS and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, but will change every instance of AIDs, Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome to AIDS. (The highlighting serves two purposes: [a] as already noted, it tells me that the acronym was spelled out earlier in the document, and [b] that the highlighted material is correct.)

What could be easier or more efficient? ESCR and MFR make my editing more productive, more efficient, and more accurate.

The Business of Editing: Author Queries

What is the role of an editor? Aside from the usual things like correcting grammar and misspellings and making sure that sentences have ending punctuation, it is to query the author about unclear sentences, text that doesn’t flow, missing material, and myriad other nitpicky things that can change a so-so manuscript into next year’s Pulitzer Prize winner.

I’ve been editing professionally for 29 years. What I have noticed over those years is that certain author queries repeat themselves ad nauseum. I bet I’ve written “AQ: Please provide complete cite. Need to add/provide …,” a gazillion times over those years and I expect to continue writing that query in the years to come.

I have also found that clients want queries done differently. Most want them inserted as Word comments, but some want them placed inline (i.e., in the text) and in bold. What I want is to do what the client wants but as quickly and painlessly as possible. After all, the longer it takes me to write and place a query, the less money I make. Thus I use EditTools’ Insert Query macro.

I don’t often use the inline method of querying but when I do, the Insert Query macro makes it look like this:

…and according to Jones and Smith (1999), {[AQ: Reference not in reference list. Please add this reference to the list or delete it here.]} the experiment

As I noted earlier, I find that there are a lot of queries that get repeated; they are not project specific. For example, I find that I need to use this query often:

AQ: Recur/recurrence mean to happen again repeatedly; reoccur/reoccurrence mean to happen again but only once. Which do you mean here?

I also often need to use this one:

AQ: Do you mean e.g. rather than i.e.? When the items are only examples and the list is not all inclusive, e.g. is used. If the listed items are all the possibilities, then i.e. is used. If i.e. is correct, consider removing material from parens and making it a proper part of the sentence.

Imagine having to write these queries each time you want to ask the author about usage. It will take time plus you may have correct a typing error. It is much easier to have a query saved as a standard query and to call it up when needed.

My queries dataset currently has 84 “standard” queries. I don’t use all of them in every project, but these are queries that I have found that I use repeatedly over the course of time.

Authors often will write something like “Within the past decade….” I usually question such statements because most of the books I work on have a long shelf-life and the chapters themselves were written months before I see them. Thus the timeframe is uncertain. So I ask:

AQ: Using this type of time reference allows the time to shift. The shift occurs because the reference was made when you were writing the text but doesn’t allow for either editing and production time until publication or for the book’s expected several-year shelf-life. It would be better to write, for example, “since 2000″ (substitute the appropriate year), so that the time reference always remains static.

As you can see, it would cost me a lot of time, and thus money, to write these types of queries with any frequency. Besides, isn’t it better to do it once? Don’t we prefer to copy and paste than to constantly rewrite?

With the Insert Query macro, I not only have the query in my dataset, but before inserting it into the document, I can modify it specifically for the matter at hand. I can either save the modified version to my dataset for future use or just use it the one time without losing the premodified version.

I’m sure you are wondering how I can quickly sort through 84 queries to find the one I want for the particular project. It isn’t as difficult as you think. First, the queries are spread over five tabs in the macro. So if I need a query that relates to a reference, I go to the Reference tab. Second, I can reorder the queries in a tab so the ones I make most use of in a particular project are always at or near the top. Third, if I do not need to modify a query all I need to do is click on it and then click Insert – a fairly fast method for inserting a query. I do not need to first open a comment dialog box; the macro does it for me when it inserts the query into the document.

Everything has to be weighed in terms of time and keystrokes. The more time and keystrokes that are involved in querying an author, the less money I make. Also important is that if I have to manually write a query like one of those above just three or four times in a manuscript, I will become frustrated. They are long, they are detailed, and they are prone to mistyping. By “standardizing” them with the Insert Query macro, I get it right every time I use the query. And it takes me no longer to create the original query than if I were opening a comment dialog box in Word and entering it there. All of the time and effort savings occur with subsequent use.

Here are a few more of my standardized author (and compositor) queries:

AQ: This is a single-author chapter. Please identify to whom “our” refers.

AQ: Please identify where by section title if within the chapter, by chapter if in another chapter.

AQ: Acronyms that are deleted from the text are either used fewer than 3 times in the text and are now spelled out in the text or do not appear in the text.

AQ: This is chapter _____. If you are referring the reader to a specific section in this chapter, please identify where by section title and whether above or below, and delete the chapter number. If you intend a different chapter, please correct the chapter number.

COMP: Please make the letter J in J-shaped sans serif.

In today’s competitive editing world, it is important to find ways to increase efficiency and productivity. Tools like the Insert Query macro are an important part of the process to increase efficiency and productivity. EditTools is designed to increase my speed, efficiency, and accuracy, thereby increasing my effective hourly rate for editing.

The Business of Editing: Wildcard Macros and Money

I thought the mention of money might catch your interest . But macros, especially wildcard macros, and money do go hand in hand. Consider the following two scenarios I recently experienced in the references of a project (same project, different chapters).

In the first scenario, there were, over two chapters, nearly 500 references that the authors had formatted like this:

Agarwal, S., Loh, Y. H., Mcloughlin, E. M., Huang, J., Park, I. H., Miller, J. D., Huo, H., Okuka, M., Dos Reis, R. M., Loewer, S., Ng, H. H., Keefe, D. L., Goldman, F. D., Klingelhutz, A. J., Liu, L. & Daley, G. Q. (2011) Telomere elongation in induced pluripotent stem cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients. Nature, 464, 292-6.

In the second scenario, the references were formatted like this:

Adhami F, G Liao, YM Morozov, et al: “Cerebral ischemia-hypoxia induces intravascular coagulation and autophagy.” Am J Pathol 2006;  169(2): 566-583.

What they need to look like is this:

Airley R, Loncaster J, Davidson S, et al. Glucose transporter glut-1 expression correlates with tumor hypoxia and predicts metastasis-free survival in advanced carcinoma of the cervix. Clin Cancer Res 2001;7(4):928-934.

The money question is how to I get the references from where they are to where they need to be quickly and efficiently so that I make money and not lose money? The answer lies in wildcard macros.

For most editors this is a daunting task that needs to be tackled manually. In the first scenario, the editor will manually remove each extraneous period, manually move the year to precede the volume number, and manually correct the punctuation problems in the citation. In other words, most editors will spend a good two or three minutes — if not longer – correcting each reference entry. I, on the other hand, spent less than 30 minutes cleaning up these references and verifying the journal names.

It is not that I am a brilliant macro writer — I am not. A skilled macro writer is someone like Jack Lyon, the creator of the Editorium macros that so many of us use. Instead, what I am is a smart user of the tools that will help me accomplish what needs to be done. In this case, I am a smart user of EditTools’ Wildcard Find & Replace (WFR) macro tool.

WFR has been designed to make creating and using wildcard macros easy. You do not need to know how to write the macros, the tool will do it for you; instead, you need to know how to tackle a problem, how to break it down into its component parts.

The first step is to find a pattern. Remember that macros are dumb and work on patterns. I began by analyzing the patterns in the author names: Agarwal, S., Loh, Y. H., Mcloughlin, E. M. I realized that, for example, each of the first names was represented by an initial followed by a period and a space except that the final initial was followed by both a period and a comma (e.g., Y. H.,). Thus each group was separated by a period-comma combination. I also noticed that some authors had a single initial and some had two initials (and I recalled from other reference lists that some authors had three initials).

Beginning with the single initial name, I used WFR to create the first macro. WFR lets me select from menus what I want (e.g., the Character menu gives me several options, including Exact Characters, Exclude Characters, lower case, UPPER CASE, Mixed Case) and based on my selection, WFR creates the entry for me (e.g., choosing UPPER CASE in the first field inserts an unlimited [A-Z]@ into the field, which WFR turns into ([A-Z]@), the correct form for a wildcard). I do not need to know how to write the entry, I need only give the correct instruction. Thus, the first thing I wanted the macro to find was the surname, which is mixed case. So from the menu of options, I chose Mixed Case and unlimited (unlimited because some surnames are short and others are long and I need to cover all of them) and WFR created ([A-Za-z]@) for me.

I continued to make my selections by filling in the fields in the WFR form so that in the end the fields were filled in for me like this (the @ indicates any number of the find criterion; the {1,1} indicates a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 1 of the find criterion; and in #3 and #7, preceding the { is a space):

Field #    Find                Replace
1              [A-Za-z]@       \1
2              ,                         \3
3               {1,1}                 \4
4             [A-Z]{1,1}          \6
5             .                           \7
6             ,
7               {1,1}

The Replace fields are where I tell the macro what to replace the find with. Again, this can be achieved by making selections from a menu. The \4, for example, indicates that what I want is found in field #4. So the Replace information tells the macro that I want the found criteria replaced with Surname (#1), a space (#3), the initial (#4), a comma (#6), and a space (#7). WFR creates a wildcard find string that looks like this:

([A-Za-z]@)(,)( {1,1})([A-Z]{1,1})(.)(,)( {1,1})

and a replace string that looks like this:

\1\3\4\6\7

and when the macro is run, every author name that looks like

Agarwal, S.,

becomes

Agarwal S,

Clearly, this one macro is not enough to clean up all the variations. In fact, for the first scenario it took 11 macros just for the name cleanup. But this is another feature of WFR. After I create a macro, I can save it, with a lengthy description, in a file with similar macros so I can use the macro again without having to create it again. But to have to run 11 macros individually is time-consuming, so WFR will let me create a script that will run all 11 macros in whatever order I want them to run.

A script is easy to create — you just double-click on the macros you want to add to a script and then save them. The script can be added to or subtracted from at any time.

Ultimately, I created another set of four macros to deal with the author names in the second scenario. All of these macros — those for scenario 1 and those for scenario 2 — can be modified to deal with different patterns as the need arises. I will not have to keep reinventing the macros.

Another feature of WFR is that the macros are editable. If you discover that you should have included or omitted something, you do not need to recreate the entire macro; just choose to edit it.

And WFR lets you test the macro to make sure it works as you expect. (One note of caution when working with wildcard macros: It is best to turn tracking off. With tracking on, wildcard macros often produce bizarre results. Run the same macro with tracking off and everything works fine.)

It took me about 30 minutes to write all of the macros for both scenarios. Once I wrote them, however, when I came to the next chapter that needed the cleanup, the cleanup was done in less than a minute. Compare a less-than-a-minute cleanup time to the time it would take to do the cleanup manually. The wildcard macros make me money by making my work easy, quick, and efficient.

The beauty of EditTools’ Wildcard Find & Replace macro is that you do not need to be a macro guru to create these macros. You simply need to break the tasks down into steps and use WFR to create the macros for you. One important point that is worth repeating: Macros are dumb. They will do what you tell them to do even if they shouldn’t. It is still your responsibility as an editor to check the items. Macros do make mistakes.

If you haven’t tried WFR, you should. It is an easy way to delve into the world of wildcard macros. And unlike using the wildcard feature of Word’s Find & Replace, WFR lets you save the macros for future use and gives you a way to run several wildcard macros sequentially without having to create them.

The Business of Editing: Beware Office for Windows RT

Coming soon to virtually everywhere is the release of the new version of Windows — Windows 8. It will be released in basically two forms: RT for tablets and other devices using the ARM processor and a PC version for devices that use non-ARM processors. So far, so good.

The problem is not with Windows 8 per se. The problem is with Microsoft Office 2013, which is scheduled to be released shortly after the release of the Windows operating system. Office for devices that will run Windows RT will be crippled from an editor’s perspective. As the Office Next blog says,

Office Home & Student 2013 RT is Office running on the ARM-processor based Windows RT OS. It is full Office built from the same code base as the other versions of Office, with small changes that were required as a result of differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT.

But those changes aren’t necessarily small, at least not for the productive editor. According to Microsoft, the following are the primary differences between Office for Windows RT and Office for the PC; that is, Office RT lacks these capabilities:

• Macros, add-ins, and features that rely on ActiveX controls or 3^rd party code such as the PowerPoint Slide Library ActiveX control and Flash Video Playback
• Certain legacy features such as playing older media formats in PowerPoint (upgrade to modern formats and they will play) and editing equations written in Equation Editor 3.0, which was used in older versions of Office (viewing works fine)
• Certain email sending features, since Windows RT does not support Outlook or other desktop mail applications (opening a mail app, such as the mail app that comes with Windows RT devices, and inserting your Office content works fine)
• Creating a Data Model in Excel 2013 RT (PivotTables, QueryTables, Pivot Charts work fine)
• Recording narrations in PowerPoint 2013 RT
• Searching embedded audio/video files, recording audio/video notes, and importing from an attached scanner with OneNote 2013 RT (inserting audio/video notes or scanned images from another program works fine)

The key difference for an editor, I think, is the inability to use macros. The lack of macro support is an absolute deal breaker for me, and means I will not even consider buying an ARM-based device, which leaves out the Microsoft Surface RT tablet (the higher end Surface Pro will be using an Intel processor and so will use Office Pro, which is the standard desktop version of Office; see this comparison of iPad with Surface RT and Surface Pro by Laptop Magazine).

I have spoken with several editors who are either currently using tablets or are thinking of buying a tablet in the near future. I have to admit that the idea of the tablet intrigues me as a tool for editing, although I suspect I would quickly miss my three 24-inch monitors. I suspect that the tablet would end up like my laptop — brought out only a couple of times a year when I’m traveling and never really doing any real work on it.

(My laptop is at least 6 years old and is still in excellent shape. It runs Windows 7 and Office 2010 without a problem, albeit more slowly than a newer laptop would. But what I found with my laptop is that I wasn’t very productive when it came to editing because of its format and because I couldn’t hook up my three large monitors; the laptop has the ability to use the built-in 17-inch monitor plus one additional monitor. I’ve become spoiled by my three 24-inch pivoting monitors.)

Right now, I can’t see justifying the expense of buying the Surface Pro or a similar tablet and I wouldn’t consider an ARM-based tablet now that I know macros Office would be crippled in the RT version, which would set my productivity back to the stone age of editing.

But I am planning on buying Windows 8 and Office 2013. Microsoft plans to offer a great upgrade deal for users of Windows 7 wanting to migrate to Windows 8 — $49 for the software. Even if I don’t install it right away, I’m going to buy it at that price. One of the reasons I am interested in Windows 8 is because Microsoft has finally developed what looks like a great cross-platform operating system (OS). I have been holding off upgrading my 8-year-old cell phones because I would like to get a Windows 8-based cell phone, too. I’m one of those people who likes to make life simple and easy, and using the same OS on my desktop, my laptop/tablet, and my cell phone strikes me as being the easy path to take. I may be wrong, but that’s the plan.

In any event, those of us who are dependant on Microsoft Office for our editing need to be cautious about deciding which tablet, if any, to buy, if the tablet is going to be used regularly in our business as a laptop and/or desktop replacement. It appears that Office 2013 will not be available for the iPad; instead iPad users will have to use Office for the Web, which raises other worries for me (see The Business of Editing: What Happens When the Cloud Isn’t Available?).

If all I want is a tablet that will give me e-mail and Internet access, I have one already: my Nook Tablet. If I want a professional’s tablet, that is one that gives me access to all the tools I use as a professional editor, I will have to look at the Surface Pro or an equivalent from other makers. If I simply want to get my work done in the most efficient manner I can, I’ll save my money, stick with my desktop and its three monitors, and go the cheap route, buying the Windows 8 OS and Office 2013 Pro upgrades. Right now, it’s looking like a safe bet that I will choose the latter path.

What plans do you have?

The Business of Editing: Macros for Editors and Authors

Times are getting tougher for the editing community. As has been discussed in earlier articles, pressure is being exerted by the publishing community to lower fees and what should be a natural market for editors — the indie author market in this age of ebooks — has not really developed as expected. Too many indie authors are unable or unwilling to spend the money for a professional editor, and too many of those who are willing to spend the money, don’t know enough about finding and evaluating an editor, and so are dissatisfied with multiple aspects of the author-editor relationship and help fuel the do-it-yourself school.

In light of these tougher times, the professional editor has to look at what investments he or she can make that will ultimately generate profitability, even if fees are lowered or remain stagnant. As I have mentioned in past articles, a major contributor to profitability is the purchase and use of software like EditTools, Editor’s Toolkit Plus, and PerfectIt. (For general overviews of these programs and their respective roles in the editing process, see The 3 Stages of Copyediting: I — The Processing Stage, The 3 Stages of Copyediting: II — The Copyediting Stage, and The 3 Stages of Copyediting: III — The Proofing Stage. In The Professional Editor: Working Effectively Online II — The Macros, I discussed macros more specifically.) Yet in recent months, I have received inquiries from fellow editors asking about increasing productivity using macros in a more detailed manner. So, perhaps the time is ripe to address some of the EditTools macros in detail.

When I edit, always in the forefront of my thinking is this question: What can I do to further automate and streamline the editing process? What I want to do is spend less time addressing routine editing issues and more time addressing those issues that require the exercise of editorial judgement and discretion. I want to undertake the routine endeavors as efficiently and profitably as I can; I do not, however, want to sacrifice editorial quality for editorial speed. (Because I often work on a per-page basis, speed is a key factor in determining profitability. However, even when working on an hourly basis, speed is important; because few clients have unlimited budgets for editing, it is important to maintain a steady rate of pages per hour.)

The editing process is additionally hampered by the growth of the style guides. With each new edition, the manuals get larger, not more compact, and there are numerous additional variations that have to be learned and considered. (How helpful and/or useful these guides are is a discussion for a later day.) I have discovered that no matter how well I have mastered a particular style guide, the inhouse editor knows the one rule that has slipped by me and wants to question why I am not following it, no matter how arcane, nonsensical, or irrelevant the rule is.

It is because of the increasing difficulty in adhering to all the rules of a particular style guide — especially when the style guide is supplemented with a lengthy house style manual that has hundreds of exceptions to the style guide’s rules, as well as hundreds of errata released by the style guide publisher, which are not readily accessible – that I increasingly rely on macros to apply preferred choices.

A key to using macros, however, is that they are used with tracking on, but only when appropriate (an example of inappropriate is changing a page range such as 767-69 to 767-769 in a reference cite or changing two spaces to one space between words; an example of appropriate is changing 130 cc to 130 mL or changing which to that). Tracking acts as a signal to me that I have made a change and lets me rethink and undo a change. Consequently, most macros in EditTools, by default, work with tracking on.

(One caution when using tracking and macros: Some macros do not work correctly when tracking is on. That is because the “deleted” or original is not really deleted as far as the computer is concerned in many page views. Basic Find & Replace works well with tracking on, but the more sophisticated the Find & Replace algorithm and the more that a macro is asked to do, the less well tracking works. Consequently, I make it a habit, particularly when using wildcard find and replace macros, to run the macros with tracking off.)

I know that I am focusing on increasing an editor’s profitability, but many of the macros in EditTools are usable by authors who are reviewing their manuscript before sending it to a professional editor for editing. What helps make a good editing job also can help make a good writing job! The two processes, although different, are not so distinct that they diverge like a fork in the road. Being sure that “Gwun” is always “Gwun” and not sometimes “Gwin” is important to both the author and the editor.

Unfortunately, both authors and editors tend to think in a singular way; that is, if they are uncomfortable writing and creating macros, they simply forget about them. Authors and editors seek their comfort zone when it comes to production methods because they do not see the production methods as enhancing their ultimate output. This is wrong thinking.

Let’s assume that an author has decided to name a character Gwynthum. The way I work is to enter the name Gwynthum in my Never Spell Word macro’s database for this book (along with other entries such as [perhaps] changing towards to toward, foreword to forward, fourth to forth, other character names, place names, and the like) and I then run the macro before I begin editing. An author would make these entries before doing the first review of the manuscript. Running the macro before I begin alerts me to some problems and fixes others.

Every time the macro comes across Gwynthum in the manuscript, it highlights it in green. Should I then, as I am editing, come across Gwythum or Gwynthim or some other variation, it would stand out because it is not highlighted in green. Similarly, the macro would change every instance of fourth to forth, but do so with tracking on and by highlighting the change with a different highlight color. This would bring the change to my attention and let me undo the change if appropriate.

(In the case of homonyms like fourth and forth, foreword and forward, and their and there, I make use of EditTools’ Homonym macro and database and do not include the words in the Never Spell Word macro. Rather than changing fourth to forth, the macro highlights the word in red, which tells me that I need to check that the word is correct in context. The homonym macro is a separate macro and has its own database, one that you create. So if you know that you have problems with where and were but not with their and there, you can put the former in your database and omit the latter.)

As noted earlier, the same tools that benefit editors can benefit authors who are preparing their manuscripts for submission to an editor, or even thinking about self-editing their manuscript. Thinking a little outside one’s comfort zone and making the best use of editing and writing tools can improve a manuscript tremendously, and for authors, can help reduce the cost of professional editing.

In later articles in this series, I will go into detail about how to use some of the macros that make up the EditTools collection. However, it must be remembered that macros are mechanical, unthinking tools. No editor or writer should think of macros as a substitute for using independent judgement; rather, macros should be looked on as being an aid to creating a more perfect manuscript.

Worth Noting: PerfectIt Version 2 Released

In prior posts, I have discussed and extolled the virtues of PerfectIt during the final editing stage (see, e.g., The 3 Stages of Copyediting: III — The Proofing Stage). Now version 2 of PerfectIt has been released.

The major enhancements found in PerfectIt 2 include the following:

• Quickly scan through errors with a new slider
• Return to past issues with the new Back button
• Clearer view of the working document with PerfectIt running to one side
• Compatibility with 64-bit versions of MS Office
• Quickly assess a document with consistency reports
• List revisions with reports on changes made
• Limit checking to sections of your document
• Significantly faster document checking

The following video demonstrates some of the enhancements found in PerfectIt 2:

PerfectIt 2: What’s New

PerfectIt 2 is available as an upgrade for current owners of PerfectIt. For more information, please visit Intelligent Editing at

www.intelligentediting.com

The Business of Editing: Being Cheap Isn’t Always the Best Choice

A recent story on Ars Technica, which was picked up by many blogs, demonstrates that cutting corners isn’t always the smartest move. The story, “Nook version of War and Peace turns the word ‘kindled’ into ‘Nookd’,” is an editorial classic.

If you recall, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about consistency (see The Business of Editing: Consistency) and the Never Spell Word macro. What I didn’t do in the article was discuss the problems of indiscriminate Find & Replace, under the assumption that professional editors, authors, and publishers innately understood that indiscriminate use of Find & Replace can lead to all kinds of disasters. The Nookd article indicates that perhaps I was wrong.

Our reliance on computers and macros makes us vulnerable to silly mistakes. Computers and macros have greatly reduced the number of errors, and the costs associated with them, that occur in printed materials — when properly applied by professional editors. Unfortunately, the bean-counter quest to squeeze as much savings as possible out of the editorial budget because what editors do is largely invisible to both the bean counter and the reader, can easily lead to the kind of disaster the befell War and Peace.

Unfortunately, the Nooking of War and Peace is representative of what happens when self-publishing authors forego hiring professional editors. Perhaps it isn’t the obvious disaster of changing of Kindle to Nook, but it is the using of you’re for your, which indicates a lack of quality and professionalism. I suppose one could argue that there is a difference in that “It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern” is nonsensical and the vast majority of readers would stumble on Nookd, wondering what is meant, whereas substituting your for you’re is likely to be missed or glossed over by a majority of readers (who probably would make the same mistake themselves). How many readers understand the difference between which and that, wood and would, its and it’s? How many make the same mistake themself and are unaware that it is a mistake?

It is one thing to compose Jabberwocky, another to assume that jabberwockian grammar and language is the standard against which all writing is to be judged. And this is the result of the demise in our education system of the teaching of such fundamental things as spelling and grammar. Because spelling is no longer part of the testing that determines a school’s and a teacher’s passing or failing, it is bypassed to emphasize those things that are tested. The result is that we graduate students who lack these skills and who become teachers of the next generation. It is difficult, if not impossible, to teach what one neither knows nor understands.

Yet this is a free-market problem as well, if not primarily. In the rush to increase quarterly profits, rather than think long-term strategy, publishers are deemphasizing the skills that separate a poorly prepared book from a professionally prepared book. Professional editors are skilled in spelling and grammar and know the limitations of automation. It is not yet possible to automate detection of the misuse of your and you’re; human intervention is required and human decision making is required.

The pressure to reduce costs and pricing of a book exacts a penalty. If there is not enough margin, services have to be skipped. The services that are skipped tend to be those that are invisible, and editing is invisible until it glares, as in the Nooking of War and Peace. As this demonstrates, being cheap isn’t always the wisest course to follow.

Unfortunately, this error will become a hall of shame error that readers, editors, publishers, and authors will all point to, but which will not result in the alteration of current practices. Each publisher and author will take the stance that it can’t/won’t happen to their books, only to someone else’s books. The ultimate losers are readers and society. Readers because they are taught by example that what is wrong is acceptable so that no effort needs be made to do things correctly, and society because imprecision becomes acceptable and skills are downplayed and lost.

Additionally, as professional editors are financially squeezed, they, too, will make choices about what services they can provide for the reduced fee they are offered. Conversations with colleagues indicate that reduced fees have resulted in a reduction in what they can and will do as part of the editing process. Combined with tighter schedules, it appears that the high standards of editing of previous decades may not be standard in coming decades. The consequences of making cost the determining factor are only now beginning to be seen in the marketplace, but I think we will all rue the day costs became king. We are likely to see more Nookd books than fewer.

The Business of Editing: Consistency

One of the directives I regularly get from clients is that they want consistency. For example, they do not want a word spelled out sometimes and an acronym used in place of the word at other times. In books, they want consistency across chapters whenever possible.

Years ago, when I edited journal articles, each journal had a style to be applied consistently across articles, regardless of whether I edited one article or 100 articles.

This drive for consistency is likely to have been the mother of the editor’s stylesheet. The stylesheet serves multiple purposes, two being to let the editor check treatment of a term in hopes that treatment is consistent across a manuscript and for a proofreader to see what decisions the editor made (e.g., is it non-negotiable or nonnegotiable; distention or distension?) and apply those decisions where the editor may have been inconsistent.

We know as readers that consistency is important, even in fiction. I find it distracting and annoying when the heroine is “nearly six-foot tall with strawberry-blond hair and jade-colored eyes” in chapter 1 but has become “five-and-a-half feet tall with dirty-blond hair and hazel eyes that change color” in chapter 3. Going from Amazonian to ordinary in three chapters can alter a plotline significantly.

Knowing that consistency is important, what steps do editors take to ensure it? In my olden days of editing, I relied on the stylesheet; I had no other tool in my arsenal that was as facile for the purpose, especially not with the size of projects on which I generally work. The stylesheet worked well when it was small (relatively speaking), but as it grew in length, it became a cumbersome tool for ensuring consistency. It became cumbersome because of the need to check it so often, and because, in the early days, the stylesheet was handwritten, which meant not alphabetized, making finding things difficult.

So I began experimenting and found ways to automate the stylesheet using programs like Macro Express, a program I still use (but not for my stylesheet). Ultimately, I designed an online stylesheet (see Working Effectively Online V — Stylesheets for a discussion of my stylesheet), which remains open in my web browser and gives me quick and easy access. Yet, I discovered that, as much of an improvement as the online stylesheet is, it was not enough. Consequently, I created two of the macros that appear in EditTools: Never Spell Word and Toggle. Using these two macros means there are fewer inconsistencies across long manuscripts.

When I get a project from client Y, I usually know that the client wants certain things to appear in its publications, or, if not across its publications, within the particular project I am working on. For example, the client may tell me that every time I see the head REFER, it should be changed to REFERRAL, or that a common acronym such as WHO never needs to be spelled out. (Usually the directive is that “common acronyms need not be spelled out at first use” without providing a list of those common acronyms; it is part of my job as an experienced editor to recognize which acronyms will be readily understood by readers of the book.)

Never Spell Word (NSW) lets me add words and phrases to a project-specific list and apply a specific color highlight to those words and phrases so I can be consistent across chapters. For example, if I enter WHO and assign it the highlight color magenta, and run NSW on the manuscript, I know each time that I see WHO in magenta that it does not need to be spelled out. If I come across “World Health Organization (WHO)” in the text, I’ll see WHO in magenta and I’ll know to delete “World Health Organization” and the parens around WHO.

Similarly, I can enter into the list to change World Health Organization to WHO. When I run the NSW macro, not only will the change be made (with tracking on), but WHO will be highlighted to indicate to me visually that this is correct.

The advantages of NSW over similar macros are basically twofold: (a) the highlighting, which gives a visual clue; and (b) the ease with which new items can be added to the list while editing. This second point is important; it means that the list is not static and it can grow as I find things to add to it.

NSW is only a part of the consistency equation, however. Toggle is another important tool. NSW is run on a file after basic file cleanup but before editing. It is run only once on a file, although I may add to its list as I edit a file. Toggle, in contrast, is not run on a file. Instead, it is used to change a word or phrase while editing. My current Toggle list has more than 1,500 entries in it. These are the things that I do not want to change universally (i.e., correct using the NSW macro); instead, I want to decide whether to make a change as I come to the item.

Using the WHO example, again, if I need to spell out WHO the first time it is used in a chapter but not on subsequent uses, then I want the information in my Toggle macro, not in my NSW macro because NSW will change it every time and I’ll have to undo some instances, whereas Toggle will make the change only when I tell it to do so. Like NSW, Toggle can have and access multiple lists. There is a primary (or universal) main list and then there are supplemental project-specific lists that can be accessed simultaneously with the primary list.

In a Toggle list, I would enter “WHO” and ask that it be changed to “World Health Organization (WHO)”; it would appear in the Toggle list like this:

WHO | World Health Organization (WHO)

Now, when I come to WHO in the manuscript, if I want to spell it out, I place my cursor in WHO and run Toggle; it deletes WHO and enters World Health Organization (WHO). This is done with Track Changes on.

I’ve used a simple example, but Toggle can be used for both complex and simple changes. For example, an entry in my primary Toggle list is as follows:

1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine | methylphenyltetrahydropyridine (MPTP)

Toggle promotes consistency in two ways: (a) it reduces spelling errors that occur when typing a replacement and (b) it is easy to use and fast.

If you know that a client wants to avoid “due to,” it is difficult to create a universally applicable substitute. Toggle gives you as many options as you create. If a client always wants World Health Organization referred to as WHO, NSW can make that happen. It is easy to remember what a client wants when there are only a few things, but the more things a client wants and the more inconsistent an author is, the less valuable the stylesheet is to an editor and the more valuable macros like NSW and Toggle are — they increase consistency and reduce the time required to be consistent.

Postscript (added after article was published): Last night I finished a novel published by a major publisher in which, within three lines, a character’s name appeared three times and each appearance was a different spelling. If the editor had used used Never Spell Word, this would not have occurred. The editor would have entered the character’s name at its first appearance into the NSW list (or, better yet in the case of fiction, the author should have supplied a list of characters with correct name spellings and ll the names would be entered into the list before any editing began) and then as the editor ran NSW on each chapter, if the character’s name was not highlighted in green, the editor would know immediately that the name’s spelling needed to be checked. Granted that the errors occurring in such close proximity should have been caught regardless of the use of NSW, but it does point out how such things can slip by and how the proper tools can help improve consistency.