Saturday, May 15, 2010

An Example of an MS-Word Document Edited Using the "Track Changes" Feature

I've always enjoyed doing editing on hardcopy documents--particularly if they are on 8-1/2" X 11" paper, double-line spaced, in 12-point Courier (or other monospace) font, with 1" margins (and with page numbers and author's name/manuscript title in the headers/footers).

However, lately, with the availability of email and the Internet, it's a lot easier and faster (and sometimes more effective and time-efficient) to do my editing online on electronic documents--preferably in MS-Word format. I use MS-Word's "Track Changes" feature and also the "insert comments" feature to mark up a document. The author always has the last say with any of my editing decisions--if they want to keep what they have rather than accept my suggestion, they are perfectly welcome to take it or leave it. All they have to do is right-click over my edit, then click on "accept change" or "reject change".... the software does the rest. When they are done reviewing and accepting/rejecting my edits, they have a new copy that they can print-out.