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I submitted a manuscript after going thru RoughDraft and redoing the autformatting Word did to it for it to fit the guidelines. I submitted, checked the document after submittal and all looked well. They sent it back to me today saying that it was formatted incorrectly and needed to be fixed and resubmitted.
Granted, I saved it in RoughDraft as a Word document, I didn't expect it to reformat itself.
Everywhere I had *** as a seperation, it changed them to horrible black, immoveable lines. The font was changed from paragraph to paragraph.
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My husband would tell you to switch to Linux and use Open Office which is free, compatible with word, and much much beter than Word.
I only don't use it because, unlike him, I'm not willing to go through the hassle of being a Linux user in a world where everyone assumes you use Windows.
Meanwhile, I suggest going through Word and turning all those auto features off. *Most* of them can be. If you go to Strange Horizon's submission guidelines they have a detailed explanation of how to do so. (I guess they were sick of getting incorrectly formatted manuscripts so they went through step by step.)
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I'm confused. Are you using RoughDraft or MS Word? Well, I don't know anything about RoughDraft and how it converts, but I do know MS Word rather well enough to say that Christine's recommendation is a good one (if you're using Word): turn off the autocorrect / autoformat-as-you-type stuff you don't need (which is most-if-not-all of it).
Secondly, I might add that learning how Word uses Styles to format a document will save much grief when it comes to fonts changing willy-nilly for no apparent reason (there is a reason that happens, but it would take too long to explain to someone who hasn't learned what Styles are, although you could search this board for a lengthy post I made about Styles or find a suitable website). Manually formatting paragraph fonts is bad, bad, bad in MS Word - despite that it lets you do it. You're just asking for trouble with letting Word decide which Style to automatically apply to a paragraph, even when you didn't even know Word was automatically assigning or creating a Style for you. I cannot stress this enough for MS Word users: learn styles. Yeah, you don't need to know precisely how an engine works to drive a car, but you should at least understand that the engine is necessary if you are ever to get anywhere. Styles are like that.
Finally, always check that your manuscripts are actually formatted properly before sending it in to a publisher, even if you have to send it off to someone else first to see if it looks right on their computer.
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Sidenote: Linux computers aren't actually that different from Windows. In fact, (depending on which system you're using--I use Fedora Core 3, but only because that's the system they have on the Linux machines at CSU--I use a Mac otherwise ), Linux tends to be a mix of Windoze--I mean, Windows--XP and Apple's OS X. I know how to use both, so Linux was relatively easy to learn, but it should be pretty simple for anybody to learn no matter what kind of computer he/she usually uses.
Anyway, back on topic: I don't think I have ever had a problem with the Styles in Word. It has always formatted correctly for me. Occassionally, it will ask me if I want it formatted a certain way, but I always say, "No." This only usually happens, though, when I'm trying to write a letter or something other than an essay or story. *shrugs*
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I don't see that you can't just use Open Office for Windows with the Word Perfect packs installed.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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------- Real writers use LaTeX. -------- Latex?(Sorry, I'm a southern girl and that just filled my head with lots of different ideas and none of them to do with writing.)
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I've heard a lot of beefs about Word, Works, and Microsoft in general---but I've never had the beefs with the word processing end of it all that others have had. Sure, I've had problems---sure, it doesn't necessarily let me do everything I'd like---sure, I've had files disappear and dissolve into cyberspace. Other than a few glitches here and there, it's been relatively smooth sailing.
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One of the problems you face with MS Word happens when you change fonts, change point size, fiddle around with format, then change it back. Each time you make a change, you insert an invisible code into the document that may not be eliminated when you change it to something else. This is why you can backspace and suddenly all your formatting changes on you... think of these invisible codes that get strewn into your document as land mines... you've inadvertently backspaced and hit one of them. Sadly, MSWord does not have an adequate "reveal codes" option so you can find these land mines and eliminate them.
My suggestion: save your document to a TXT file. TXT format wipes out all the invisible codes and gives you a clean slate. Of course, it wipes out all the VISIBLE codes, too, so if you have special formatting you WANT to leave in the document, be aware you will lose that, too. You CAN opt to leave hard returns in so the document does not become a big run-on paragraph.
BEFORE OPENING A NEW DOCUMENT IN MSWORD, go in and turn OFF all the autoformat features. Turn them ALL off. Before opening any document at all, go in and set your margins, your point size, and your font. This will create an automatic default every time you start a new document. Then start a fresh MS Word document and before doing anything, double-check to make sure it is using the point size and font you want. Then, open up your TXT document, and copy/paste the text into the MS Word document. Then go through and carefully format your text. This should clean out a lot of the invisible codes that are doing bad things.
I'm with you on hating MS Word. I use it, but I don't like it.
quote:Before opening any document at all, go in and set your margins, your point size, and your font. This will create an automatic default every time you start a new document. Then start a fresh MS Word document and before doing anything, double-check to make sure it is using the point size and font you want.
This will change your "normal.dot" template, the default template for MS Word. Unfortunately, this may be undesirable for some people for lots of reasons: some of the things you'll change won't carry over to a different computer running MS Word with the normal.dot template (because, once again, MS Word uses Styles) and things might conflict (such as margins or font choices), or maybe the computer running MS Word isn't yours or it's a company machine, etc. A good idea might be to create your own custom templates for the things you want to do, such as one for manuscripts, another for work stuff, whatever, and so on. Using templates will ensure that anyone who opens up your document on a different computer will see it as you intended, since it won't be based on the normal.dot template.
As for the copying and pasting / saving to text file thing mentioned above, it's much simpler to choose the Paste Special command from the Edit menu and choose "Unformatted Text" from the Window. This will remove any formatting codes from anything. Better still, you could easily remove all formatting from a document, paragraph, sentence, or word by selecting what needs to be unformatted and pressing CTRL-spacebar. This will cause all selected text to revert to the default paragraph Style. Fun, fun, fun, I know. Are you sick of seeing the word Style yet?
Anyway, MS Word isn't perfect by any stretch, mostly because Microsoft has tried to dumb it down for users who can't be bothered or don't have time to learn how the software really works (and of course the autoformat-as-you-type stuff is truly a bad idea for many users). "All I want is to type a letter to my grandmother -- what do I care about Styles?" Fair enough. But MS Word is a good piece of software for those who do know it and use it regularly. Learning it properly will save you hours of frustration you might otherwise have, if you can be bothered.
It should also be noted that Open Office also uses Styles in precisely the same way that MS Word does.
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LaTeX, actually. http://www.latex-project.org/ . It's a "document formatting system." You can do things you can't do in Word, and it's consistent, but you have to *compile* your paper.
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The only thing I can imagine needing LaTex for is equations, but I wrote a masters thesis in Word that involved prolate spheroidal harmonics, so the math was pretty intense. The equation editor did everything I needed it to do, even if I had to trick it a few times.
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After much frustration, I learned from a tech to do a find for Normal.dot and delete it whenever Word starts acting weird. He said Normal can act sort of like a virus and mess things up. I'm guessing this ties into what you're saying about Styles, HSO.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jun 2002
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Yeah, Kolona. The normal.dot template is easily corrupted, and I'm not sure why other than to say it's typical Microsoft crap (although I would recommend NOT modifying the built-in Styles in the normal.dot template, but it should be okay to make new Styles).
As long as your normal.dot template isn't customized, then deleting it when things get dodgy is fine, for Word automatically creates a replacement based on the installation defaults. If your normal.dot template is customized (and this can be anything from settings in Options, to Toolbars and buttons, etc.), then the ideal way to deal with this is to make a backup of your normal.dot once it's perfect (ha ha!) and if it becomes corrupted, restore it with your backup. This is what I've done for all of my templates. Plus it's handy to have backup when you get a new computer and want to keep your Word templates intact without resorting to redoing everything from scratch.
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First, find your templates folder. If you aren't sure where that is, search your hard drive for ".dot". Once found, COPY the file to a new folder. Give the folder a recognizable name, such as "backup templates."
When Word is corrupted, simply copy the file back to the templates directory, overwriting the old, dodgy normal.dot template.
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Come to think of it, I do have one problem with my current Works program. When I try to print up an envelope with it, if I use or correspond to one of the standard sizes, it'll print out in eight-and-a-half by eleven, and I have to fudge the settings by a tenth of an inch to get it to print close to the size I intend. Probably I've got something set wrong to begin with, either with my program or my printer, but I lack the knowhow to correct it, I can only work around it. (This never happened with my last computer and its Works program.)
But it's also something I think it my fault, and I don't blame Microsoft for my inability to understand the psychology of their word processing programs...
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I still use WordPerfect 5.1, a DOS program. It never messes up or loses my work or otherwise screws up stuff. The only problem I have with it is when I need to upload something. It has no rtf capability. Still, for actual writing -- you know, WRITING novels -- it is wonderful.
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Windows--"It's like looking out a window, you can see all of the fun things to do but you can't do them because your stuck inside."
I'm an advocate of WordPerfect, sadly on the newer versions there are auto-junk to turn off too. What you need to do is Reveal codes and take out any junk you don't understand. (Note if you take something out and things go horribly wrong then you understand that that thing is important.)
quote:'m always afraid to ask this kind of question, but how do you back up a normal.dot template?
In a default installation, normal.dot is located in:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office
Just copy it to some other directory.
To find out where Word keeps various files, open a document in Word, then select Options from the Tools menu. In the box that appears, click on the "File Locations" tab. If you double-click any of the entries you see in the window, you'll get the full path.
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), Linux tends to be a mix of Windoze--I mean, Windows--XP and Apple's OS X. I know how to use both, so Linux was relatively easy to learn, but it should be pretty simple for anybody to learn no matter what kind of computer he/she usually uses. 
