Styles and Word Processing

A Manual Word Processor (A typewriter)

Manual Word Processor

At the January 2010 Broward Personal Computer Association, Inc. (BPCA) general meeting Q&A session the subject of using styles in word processing came up.

The actual question was: In Microsoft Word, how do I stop it from capitalizing the beginning of each line?

In answer to the question, it was suggested that the reason for capitalization of the first letter of the new line is that she is using the Enter key as a carriage return, just like she would if using a typewriter. Upon opening a session of Microsoft Word on one laptop, and one of OpenOffice.org on another laptop, a few lines were typed in each using the Enter key as a carriage return, and another few paragraphs only pressing the Enter key as a carriage return at the end of the paragraph. Sure enough, once we turned on Show/Hide Paragraph Marks it showed that was exactly what was happening.

Now the thing is how to get her to stop using her word processor (it doesn’t really matter which one, as long as it supports styles) like a typewriter, and use it as it is intended, a way to process words.

Suggestion

Here is a suggestion, as well as some links to information regarding using styles.

Instead of worrying about what the document looks like, try using a plain text editor, such as Notepad, to just put down all your thoughts. Just write until you have everything out of your head and into the document. Once you have all this, I call it my very rough draft, copy and paste it into your word processor, and now apply your formatting (bold, italic, etc.), rearrange and edit your sentences and paragraphs, and apply your styles to make it look pretty.

Links

Some Links to check out regarding styles (mostly for Microsoft Word, but with minor adjustments should work with any word processor or desktop publisher that supports styles):

delicious.com search for microsoft word styles result:
Delicious has been shut down, as of June 15, 2017.

Results for style search at Tips.net:
http://www.tips.net/results.html?cx=003792548944738135704%3Am_k9gka3qx0&cof=FORID%3A11&q=styles&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=Search&siteurl=www.tips.net%2F#722

**********

Photo courtesy of: http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b12objects052.jpg

Virtual Box and Windows 7 RC

After reading a few posts regarding VirtualBox, I decided to give it a try, and install Windows 7 RC to try out.

The posts that piqued my interest were from:

The How-To Geek (RSS Feed)

July 1st

Try Out a New Operating System the Easy Way with VirtualBox

July 7th

Use Virtual Box to Test Linux on Your Windows PC

Windows Secrets Newssletter

July 2nd (Paid Article – Langalist Plus) Test-drive Windows 7 in a virtual machine

I have tried VMware and Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 SP1, with the Beta version of Windows 7, previously. I was able to get everything loaded, but could not get it to work with my DSL, nor my USB connection, so was limited in what I could do.

I downloaded VirtualBox v3.0.0.0 and installed it. Approx 15 minutes to install and configure. Then, I installed Windows 7 RC (build 7100) from the ISO I had downloaded. Everything works fine, in fact I wrote this post and published it using the Windows 7 RC virtual machine.

VirtualBox works well for me, so I recommend it.

My next thing, when I get the time of course, will be to try out the latest Ubuntu Linux, hopefully VirtualBox will make everything work for that also.

Microsoft Quick Reference Guides

Thanks to the TechCheatSheets RSS feed today, I found some good quick references for Microsoft software, in PDF format. They are available at CustomGuide.

The one in the feed was for Word 2007 specifically and appeared 07jul09 as

Custom Guide’s Word 2007 Quick Reference

The following is from the TechCheatSheets.com About page:

About TechCheatSheets.com

Tech Cheat Sheets is a collection of the best cheat sheets and quick reference guides on the web. Arranged by tags, you can subscribe to a feed for only the tags you want to monitor. Visitors can also give the listings 1-5 star ratings.

I also got the Quick Reference Card for Publisher 2007, which I use for my newsletters.

There are also Quick Reference guides for Mac and Adobe software available at CustomGuide.

Check out both of these resources, very helpful in my opinion.