Non-Technical Support Forum

Trish,

I do much the same thing myself, so I'll share a few techniques.

First off, separate your markups from your reviews. I send authors an email with my review. The review covers their story/item, how it made me feel, what I liked, what I felt needs improvement and so on. I title my email “Workshop notes: story name.” I copy their entire item into MS Word (actually I switched to Open Office years ago). I mark up their item and cut and paste the entire thing into the email. Be advised, more than half of the writers chafe at markups. They want a review, not an edit. More likely, they want positive reviews espousing their literary genius without any mention of their pieces faults. Personally, I appreciate edits. That's why I send them, but I don't want to clog the Public Review Page with edits. It's really there for reviews.

Second: If you're gonna markup other people's work in MS WORD (as opposed to WDC's review tool), its time you learn WML. It's a lot easier than it sounds. On the left hand menu find Writing,com tools → WritingML: Docs & Help A pop up lists all sorts of formatting options. You'll find Basic Writing Tools has all the formatting you are looking for.

I keep a file of my most common markups. The one I use the most is {b}{c:red}{x}{/x}{/c}{c:blue}{/c}{/b}.
I cut the authors original text beteen {x} and {/x} which makes it bold, red and lined through. I put my corrections directly after {/x}. Correction come out in bold, red. I put any comments between {c:blue} and {/c}. Don't worry about unused tags; they don't show up. So becomes

I advise keeping a file to the side with markup strings. If you find your self typing the same thing over and over again. Add it to your file.

Third: I hear that many people use WDC's Review Tool in much the same way I use OO offline, but it has point and click formatting which adds WML tags for you. If you are like me, you'll continue to work offline. Typing in WML tags is second nature to me now, so I believe you'll pick them up }quicklyArg! Another adverb. I'm perdition bound.