How to

Further thoughts on using Word for Desktop Publishing: Frames

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textbox format optionIf you have the occasional desktop publishing to do, or if you only require a sort of limited desktop publisher or simply don’t have the time to learn a whole new program, Word will do fine. But, to borrow from Clint Eastwood, a program’s got to know its limitations. In the article Using Word for desktop publishing, I noted that text boxes are good for enabling you to place text anywhere. Furthermore, you can link text boxes, so that if text outgrows its text box, you can make it flow on to another one.
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Organising yourself

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The biggest problem facing the would-be writer is getting commissions. I think we all know what it’s like to receive rejection slips. Some of us could even paper our walls with them. The second biggest problem is how to organise yourself to not miss a deadline once you do start to get commissions. The best way, I’ve found, is to use a spreadsheet.
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Mind your language! Crosswordese

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P1030269If, like me, you have a love of language, you should explore the strange world of the cryptic crossword. Unlike the plain crossword, the cryptic variety requires more than providing a synonym for a word or phrase. Rather, it involves working out what the clue is getting at.

That sounds much more difficult than the task facing you in an ordinary crossword, doesn't it? In fact, much of the time it's easier, for one simple reason.

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Combining different versions of a document

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combine_menuSuppose you’re in this position: you have created a document. You have sent it to someone else for their comments or to edit it. They have now sent it back to you, but in the meantime you have made some changes to your original. How are you going to sort out this mess?!

If you and your colleague have been using Microsoft Word, then you don’t have a problem. All you need to do is use the Combine Documents feature.

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Making use of your photographs

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flickr embedIf, like me, you enjoy taking photographs, then why not use them in your blog posts. An easy way to do so is to open a Flickr account, upload your photos to it, and then use them when you need to.

Flickr is, to be honest, looking a bit long in the tooth, although its recent innovation of  displaying very high resolution photographs by default is, shall we say, striking. But it is still a great service in my opinion, and for the writer a much better one than, say, Facebook.

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How to incorporate media into your blog or website

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embed-video2The act of incorporating actual pictures, videos or sound recordings or other media – as opposed to just links to them --  into your blog or website is known as 'embedding'.

You've almost certainly already seen examples of embedding. Go to any website where there's a video clip on the page, and you're looking at it in action. In other words, embedding is simply the act of inserting code into a web page or blog that puts the object right there on the page. This 'object' might be a video, a presentation, a document, a picture -- just about anything, in fact.

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How to remove Babylon from your Firefox browser

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Hanging Gardens of BabylonBabylon is an insidious program which, once installed, is a devil of a job to get rid of. An online translator, its website boasts “100 million downloads and counting”. I wonder how many of those were intended.

Because the problem is, as you may have had the misfortune to discover from personal experience, is that if you’re not careful you can install Babylon by accident. And once you’ve done so, it can be extremely irritating because one of the effects of having it on your system is that it makes itself the default search engine in the address bar of your browser.

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4 Ways to Write Quickly

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vis_03“Well, just bash it out. Even if you have to do it all in bullet points and stitch it up later.”

That was Elaine’s response to my comment that I had, in effect, only a few hours in which to write a comparative review of two educational technology products, obtain all the specs, and come up with ratings and an incisive conclusion, and all in 1500 words.

My cup of tea froze halfway to my lips.

“Bash it out?! Stitch it up? I’m not some hack who just churns the stuff out like a machine. I’m a craftsman. Each article is a work of art, each word carefully selected having been hand-picked from the millions of words available. The result is a thing to be admired, savoured, treasured even.”

“You mean like haute couture?”

“Indeed. Exactly so.”

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Bad headlines

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If there’s one thing that really annoys me it’s chapter headings and article headlines where you can’t tell what the subject matter is until you read it. Who needs a situation in which you don’t know if you want to read something until you have read it? The way I look at it is that if the author can’t even be bothered being clear when he’s trying to entice you to read his stuff, why should you be bothered to oblige him by reading it?

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Copyright Terry Freedman. All rights reserved.