Line Numbers
March 30, 2005 – 12:00 pmI recently needed to use line numbers in a Word document to be reviewed by an author so we could discuss editing changes over the phone without saying things like “Page 289, second full paragraph, fourth line down.” Using line numbers, we could say, “Page 289, line 23.” Much easier.
If you’d like to do the same, here’s how:
1. In Word, click File > Page Setup.
2. Click the Layout tab.
3. Click the Line Numbers button. Didn’t know that was there, eh?
4. Put a check in the box labeled “Add line numbering.”
5. Set “Start at” to 1, “From text” to “Auto,” and “Count by” to 1.
6. Under “Numbering” select “Restart each page.”
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK.
9. Make sure you’re looking at Print Layout (View > Print Layout).
Line numbers!
Now you and your authors can be on the same page. Er, line. Enjoy!
Next week: How to number paragraphs.
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READERS WRITE
Brad Hurley wrote:
Regarding plugins for InDesign, Adobe also offers its own InCopy plug-in, which is aimed at facilitating workflow within small teams of writers, editors, and designers. Some of the plug-ins mentioned in the March 16, 2005 Editorium, are based on InCopy. The designer exports stories to InCopy, and an editor can then edit text directly in the layout using InCopy on his or her own computer. This is great for copyfitting or when you have to make a lot of edits to text that has already been laid out in InDesign.
Two caveats:
1. The InCopy workflow does not work well for situations in which you have designers in one location and editors or writers in another. It is extremely slow over remote networks (e.g., it took InCopy seven minutes to switch from galley view to layout view over my company’s VPN, and that was just for a one-page story).
2. Adobe’s documentation for InCopy is next to useless, and there are no clear step-by-step instructions. Adobe has a couple of white papers available that are helpful, but it’s still not easy to figure out how to get everything to work.
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Thanks, Brad!
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RESOURCES
No, seriously, you should check out NoteBox Disorganizer:
http://www.geocities.com/goosnargh37/
It’s an amazingly useful program.
NoteBox Disorganizer is tailor-made for quickly jotting down notes and ideas, organizing those notes and ideas, combining selected notes into a document, and exporting that document for publication. It’s truly my favorite writing program, and I’ve tried pretty much everything out there. Here are some of the things that make NoteBox Disorganizer so outstanding:
* Notes are kept in a spreadsheet-like grid that is easy to understand and navigate. And that means all your notes are spread out in plain sight; nothing is hidden away in a database or lost in an outline “tree.”
* It’s possible to name each column, so you can easily categorize your notes under the columns where they belong. Have a note that belongs under more than one category? Clone it! Change a clone, and that change is reflected in all of the others.
* It’s also possible to name each *row,* so you can lay out a book’s structure before you even start writing. Consider:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 . . .
Title
Quotation
Story
Discussion
Point A
Point B
Point C
Summary
Conclusion
I routinely use NoteBox Disorganizer to write this newsletter:
2005/03/24 2005/03/17 2005/03/10
Masthead
Feature article
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Readers Write
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Resources
Fine print
If I wanted to export just the feature articles to create a book, I could select them (as a horizontal row), add them to the program’s “Outbox,” and export them as text or an RTF file.
* Use named columns and rows for just *thinking* about things. For example:
NoteBox MS Word Literary Machine
Easy to use? Yes No No
Bounded find? Yes No Yes
Notes in grid? Yes No Limited
Clones? Yes No No
I love the side-by-sideness of all this, which gives me a sense of overview, organization, and control that I don’t get in any other program.
* If you need finer “granularity” in categorizing notes, you can include note ~keywords in the text (and keep an alphabetical list of those ~keywords) and then do a “bounded” search for them. In Boolean terms, that’s an “And” search, which finds notes that include all of the specified ~keywords. Don’t want to fuss with ~keywords? You can still use a bounded search to find notes that contain several terms.
* NoteBox Disorganizer keeps a *running word count* of the text you type, in a single note, in all notes under a category, or in a complete NoteBox file. Fabulous!
* NoteBox Disorganizer can import existing text files, save notes as text files, and even *link to* existing text files (amazing!), so you can use it to organize all those files spread all over your hard drive. Oh, and this works with RTF files, too. That also means you can use the program with files synchronized to your Pocket PC or Palm device! If this interests you, you’ll also want to check out the program’s “NoteBox Exploded” file-saving ability.
* You can use reStructuredText markup (discussed in the previous newsletter), so after you export a document assembled from your notes, you can typeset it with LaTeX or turn it into an HTML document.
The program has much, much more–far too much to cover here–and yet it’s surprisingly easy to use. Just download it and play with it for an hour. You’ll immediately begin to see what it can do for you. I highly recommend it.
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THE FINE PRINT
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