04.17.2006

Simplification

Essential Word Tips

As much as I loathe Word, I can't avoid getting/exchanging Word docs from clients. I find that the docs I receive are often riddled with telltale signs of their lack of knowledge of Word's features. So I'm naturally grateful to happen upon this handy guide which includes a couple of my pet peeves on handling style sheets and auto formatting: Ten things every Microsoft Word user should know.

A few more tips I'd like to throw in:

Word HTML Cleaner. For those who use Word in the default auto-format mode to write their blog entries, you can use wordcleaner to strip your text files of the non-HTML cruft introduced by Word.

Double-spaced periods. Periods that mark the end of a sentence should only have one space after it. Double-spacing harkens back to typewriter days when characters were monospaced and you needed an additional space to make it easier to visually scan the end of a sentence.

Comprehensibility. How easy is your writing to understand? Believe it or not, Word actually has a bult-in tool that analyzes how understandable your content is based on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. Here's the tip from Communication Nation

• In the tools menu, go to options
• Click the "Spelling and Grammar" tab
• Select "Show readability statistics".

Learn to Edit Collaboratively with Comments. I never did quite understand why I often find clients take the time to cut and paste Word content into emails, write comments and then encourage back and forth exchanges on within email instead of on the document itself. While not perfect, Word's comments feature allows several collaborators/decision-makers to annotate/suggest/edit the content directly within the document itself.

Finally, if you think your clients are ready for it, you may want to wean them from Word altogether and try Writely instead which is better-suited for collaborations.

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