Copywriter, technical writer, translator (FR>EN, ES>EN, IT>EN), journalist

TechnoZen

Get your numbers right

The usefulness of things like tables of contents, cross-references, index entries and so forth relies on whether they lead to the right pages. You can automate the creation of these document elements, but it’s a good idea to refresh (or update) them before you share documents.

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Annotating PDFs – for free!

People trust Adobe’s portable document format when they need to send documents to other people and need to retain the “look” of said document. Adding things to PDFs used to be an expensive prospect given you could do it only using paid applications, Adobe’s Acrobat being the

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Firewall: a quick explanation

It sounds like it ought to protect you, but you’re not entirely sure how – or even if your computer has one!

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Troubleshooting by TOC

Sometimes a table of contents (TOC) indicates problems elsewhere in a document. For instance, a heading style might be applied to body text and that text appears in the TOC. Check out this example:

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Rearranging a long document the easy way

Ever tried rearranging sections in long Microsoft Word documents? Even if you use Heading styles and can quickly find your headings, even if you created a table of contents to help you navigate the document, finding and moving stuff using the onscreen page is a cumbersome process.

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Fixing file associations

Months ago, a fellow writer downloaded an office suite that she wanted to try. After she installed it, though, the new office suite started every time she opened a document it recognized. It seemed as though the new office software she installed told her computer to open

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Don’t become a zombie!

Ever wondered how to speed up a slow computer? For starters, you can try a few tools in the operating system. You might want to: defragment your hard disk (Windows) check it for errors (Windows and Mac) repair disk permissions (Mac) If these fail, you might want

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Tabling your prose

Want to make data-dense text more understandable in your document? Consider putting the information in a table instead of straight text. And when you do so, create the table the easy way.

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Reuse your own genius

Have you completed a document using Microsoft Word (or another word processor) and made it look exactly right? Did you hone the styles so that formatting is practically automated? Congratulations! You accomplished a grand feat, one that likely took lots of learning, work and revision. Here’s the

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Tracking plagiarism on the web

Back in May, a magazine assigned me an article on electronic trials (the effective use of modern technology during trials). I mentioned an article on the same topic I recently wrote for my column in another magazine. The editor then emailed me a link to that very

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