As you know, my mantra is that every second counts and the more seconds I can save by increasing efficiency, the more profitable my editing will be. One drag on time is typing — the more typing I do, the more time is spent doing it and correcting it.
Toggle Word vs. Click List
One way I have decreased the amount of time required to edit was to devise and make extensive use of the Toggle Word macro. Toggle Word lets me replace, for example, an acronym with its full name with a single click. (Time yourself: How long does it take you to change T2D-GENES to Type 2 Diabetes Genetic Exploration by Next-generation sequencing in Ethnic Samples (T2D-GENES)? It takes me the time to select T2D-GENES and mouse click on Toggle Word — about 2 seconds.)
But Toggle Word only changes exact existing text; I can’t put my cursor in a blank space and have Toggle Word insert the correct text nor can I use Toggle Word to change a word or phrase that doesn’t exactly match what is in its dataset (e.g., if the dataset includes “about” but not “About,” Toggle will only change “about”). To remedy this omission, Click List was created. Click List is a complement to Toggle Word: Toggle Word replaces text, Click List inserts text or replaces selected text (see “An Example From a Recent Project” below).
Click List & Click List Manager
Click List and its Manager are found on the EditTools tab (A). Like other, macros in EditTools, it can be assigned to a Hotkey combination either from the EditTools ribbon (B) or by Clicking Setup Hotkey… on the Click List Manager (see #1 in the Overview below).
Click List on the Ribbon
Overviews of Click List (#10) and its Manager (#1) are shown in the below image:
The Click List overview
Like many of the macros in EditTools, Click List can be a general list that you use all of the time or it can be a specialty list, for example, one for a specific project. You either open an existing Click List file or create a new one (#2), just as with Never Spell Word, Toggle, and other EditTools macros. In fact, the Click List Manager works much the same way as the other Managers do, with a few exceptions.
Text is entered in the Text field (#3). However, in addition to the usual text insertions, you can choose to bold or color the text (#4) (for an example of text that is bold and colored, see #7 and #11). (The bolding and coloring are only for display in Click List so that there is a way to make certain items quicker to spot in a long list; the text is not inserted in your document with the formatting.) Your text and your format choices are shown in preview (#5). When you are ready, click Add or Update (#6) to add the text to Click List (#7). Be sure to Save or Save & Close. (Clicking Save saves the file but does not close the Manager.)
When you Save (or Save & Close), Click List (#10) is updated and your addition appears in the display area (#11). Click List remains open by default until you click Cancel (#12). However, you can have it automatically close after each use by dechecking the Keep open checkbox (#12).
Click List enables you to insert items into your document with a single click. It can be a word, a short phrase, or even a paragraph of text. Click List is intended to make editing a document quicker, easier, and more accurate.
You enter the text you want added to Click List in the Text box in the Click List Manager. In the example below, a sentence is being added (#13). When the text is ready to be added to Click List, click Add (#14).
Adding text to Click List via the Manager
The text appears in the Manager’s display field as shown below. Here a sentence was added, “You can write whole sentences and have them be part of a click list” (#15). However, to add the sentence to the Click List so that it can be inserted into your document, you need to click either Save or Save & Close (#16). Clicking Save saves the Click List file and makes the new text available in the Click List but also keeps the Manager open so you can add additional text later; clicking Close & Save does the same but closes the Manager. In addition, you can move text up or down the list using the Move buttons (#17); the Manager also tells you how many items there are in your Click List (#18).
Saving text
As this image shows, the sentence has been added to our Click List (blue arrow) and is ready for use in our documents:
Adding a sentence to Click List
Using Click List While Editing
To see how Click List works, we begin with the below image which shows a portion of a manuscript. Note the location of the cursor.
Note the cursor location
A single mouse click on the sentence we added to Click List (#19) inserts the sentence text into our document at the location of the cursor (#20).
Single-click insertion of sentence
As indicated earlier, you can move text up and down the list in Click List by making use of the Move option in the Manager. You may wish to move text so that it is easier to locate or because it is more frequently used, the same reasons why you might use bold or color. The image below shows the movement process. To move our example sentence (#1) up or down, click on the appropriate arrowhead in Move (#2). When the sentence is relocated where you want, click Save or Save & Close (#3) so that the movement is saved to the Click List. Once Save is clicked, the relocation will be shown in the Click List (see #1 in both the Click List and the Manager).
Reordering entries in Click List
As we have discussed many times here on AAE, the faster and more accurately we can edit, the more profitable editing can be for us. The more we have to compete for business, the more important speed becomes. The same is true as schedules become increasingly tighter. The key is to be more productive, which means more efficient, which means less typing. The more typing we do, the more errors we can introduce into a document. Consequently, the more automated we can make editing, the more accurate it will be and the greater the profit.
An Example From a Recent Project
A recent project had many peculiarities. But one thing I discovered early in the project is that the author used certain phrases and references repeatedly. (The reference style was “relatively” consistent throughout the text and although it didn’t conform to any established style, because of schedule constraints, the client decided to “follow the author’s reference style but make it consistent.”)
The problem was that the phrases and the references were not Toggle Word candidates because there was almost always an inconsistency or two from a previous use. The image below are samples I extracted from one chapter.
Samples form a Recent Project
Correcting these would be time-consuming if not for Click List. What I did was add the correct wording to Click List, as shown here:
Click List with Book References
Now to correct the incorrect, all I needed to do was select the incorrect phrasing and click on the correct phrasing in Click List, as shown here:
The Changes
By using Click List, I was able to save a significant amount of typing time (and thus increase profitability), but, more importantly, because of the unique styling used, I was able to ensure that each instance of the book and phrase was identical to every other instance. Speed and accuracy are two components of profitability and Click List improves both.
Click List on My Desktop
Click List is one of the three macros I keep open on my desktop as I edit, the other two being Bookmarks and Reference # Order Check.
Click List can save time and can increase accuracy — it is another important tool in the editor’s armory.
Richard Adin, An American Editor
Related An American Editor essays are:
- The Business of Editing: Correcting “Errors”
- The Business of Editing: Journals, References, & Dollars
- The Business of Editing: Making Search & Replace Efficient & Profitable
- The Business of Editing: Coding for Profit
- The Business of Editing: Using & Managing Bookmarks
- The Business of Editing: Managing Comments with Comment Editor
- The Business of Editing: Keeping Reference Callouts in Number Order
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An American Editor 
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