(public speaker) Word Processor Tricks Posted By : Jan Michaels

If you needed an adjective or adverb to modify another word, perhaps you didn't chose the right word to begin with. I could search for each occurrence and review it in context, but I prefer instead to do a global search for those punctuation marks, replacing them with a highlighted version (depending on your word processor and display, you could replace them with italicized versions that show up as inverse video, or boldface versions that show up in a different intensity, or, if you work in a graphics-mode program, select a different color before each one, and then return to black afterwards). The standard at most publications is to use "printers' rule," which counts every 65-stroke manuscript line as ten words, regardless of whether the line happens to be full (after all, the word count is supposed to give the production editor an idea of how much space the piece will take up in the publication). The best way to make it as a writer is to set yourself a daily target figure and not stop working until you've reached it (my own is 2,000 words; for most full-time writers, the target is between 1,000 and 2,500). Every few minutes, I do a word count to see how much more work I have to do until I can knock off for the day — which, having now reached that figure, is precisely what I'm going to do right now.

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