Month: March 2018

Word Tip of the Week: Removing Mysterious, Unwanted Formatting

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Recently, we had a long document that had several dotted lines running across the page.

We had no idea how they got there.

Several writers tried to remove them, but it wasn’t until months later that one of them succeeded.

 

 

It turns out that fixing this issue is pretty simple. Just follow these steps below:

1. Copy the area surrounding the line, including a good chunk of text above and below it.

2. Paste it underneath the original.

3. Use the Paste drop-down arrow that appears right after you paste in the text. Select Keep Text Only.

4. The line will be gone in this new content area! Delete the original to have that annoying line gone forever.

(Do you know what causes those random dotted lines? Let us know in the comments.)

 

Try this technique on any strange formatting that crops up in your Word document.

And if it doesn’t work, check out our other Word tips for more options.

 

 

Word Tip of the Week: Use ‘Read Aloud’ for Proofreading

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

If you’re an audio learner, you’ve probably wished that you could listen to a Word document instead of reading it.

Good news: there’s a Word feature that allows you to do just that. Activating the Read Aloud feature is also a great proofreading tool to use after Spell Check.

To activate Read Aloud:

  1. Select the text that you want Word to read.
  2. Go to Review -> Read Aloud.
  3. A control panel will appear. Press the play button.

 

 

For more helpful tips, check out our other “Word Tips of the Week.”

 

 

Word Tip of the Week: Using the Readability Feature

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Writing something for the general public?

Then you’ll want to aim for about a 5th grade reading level.

If you’re writing for an academic journal, on the other hand, you’ll probably want to aim for college level.

How do you know if you’re close?

There’s a handy feature tucked inside Word that will let you know if you’re in the right ballpark for your audience’s reading level.

To check readability:

1. Go to File -> Options.

2. Select Proofing in the left-hand menu.

3. Check the box next to Show readability statistics.

4. Click OK.

 

 

5. Run your spell checker by going to Review -> Spelling & Grammar.

6. A dialogue box will appear. Check the Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level.

 

 

As you can see, this blog post is between 5th and 6th grade reading levels.

For tips to help you create the perfect Word document, check out our other “Word Tips of the Week!”

 

 

 

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