Technical Report: Word Macros/Reviewing

Word Macros for
Use in Writing.Com Reviews

This is about using Microsoft Word to do reviews on Writing.Com.

Why use Word in the first place?

Why use Word in the first place? ▼

Why use word? For me, it's easier. The screens in Word are easier to read. It also fits better with the way I review. I try to keep my first read-through holistic, not stopping to take notes. But I see things on that first read that I know I'll comment on. I word, I can highlight these in yellow and just keep on reading. After I've finished the entire piece and throught about it, sometimes I'll want to make comments in these places, and sometimes not. In any case, using the highlight tool lets me read the author's work without being distracted by making annotations to the text.

Finally, I can use macros to insert standardized bits of WritingML into my comments. This article is mostly about using macros to insert these bits into word documents. If you're not interested in that, you can stop now.

A typical situation.
A typical Situation ▼

Suppose I'm reading this story, "In a Day or Two" , which happens to start with these two sentences.

A cloud of gluons buzzed in Martin’s sleeping brain, and he jerked awake. Urgency jittered through his belly, and a compulsion to flee animated his limbs.

At this point, I'm thinking What? Gluons? Who knows what they are? I mean, I know "gluon" is a word from quantum mechanics. After all, I wrote story, but who else knows crap like that? Since these are the first two sentences in the story, if I were reviewing it I'd probably want to make a comment in my review that looks like this:

A cloud of gluons buzzed in Martin’s sleeping brain, and he jerked awake.My Comment: Readers may not know the word gluon. Using an obscure word, especially in the first sentence, might interfere with drawing the readers into Martin’s head and hence into the fictional world.

The comment quotes the pertinent sentence in blue and surrounds it with scissors to indicate it's been cut from the story. My comment appears in green, surrounded by thumbtacks to indicate it's been tacked on. The problem is that all of that involves a lot of WritingML, and I'm sitting inside Word doing my review. I want to read the story from start to stop, to get that holistic overview I mentioned before. I don't want to fool around with WritingML or even comments on my first read. I'll just highlight this in Word and come back to it later.

Even doing such a comment later is problematic. WritingML is great, but it's pretty unforgiving. One unclosed brace or any other typo can snarl your whole document from that point forward. Mistakes like that are really hard to find and fix. Worse, I'm in Word, which won't display WritngML at all. All Word will do is show the code. To see if there are mistakes, I have to run it through the Writing.Com editor and preview it. Ugh.

The solution is to use Word macros to insert standardized WritingML into the word document, then cut and paste the result back into my review.

This article is a step-by-step guide on how to do that.

The Process

Step one ▼

Here's how it works once you've set up Word to use the macros--I'll show you how to do that later. For now, assume you've got the macros installed, Word properly configured, and you're donig a review.

I've created three Word macros, StartHighlight, StopHighlight, and Comment. I've configured Word's Quick Access Toolbar to display these Marcos. My toolbar looks like this:

The macros are circled in red. I'll show you the macros and how to set up the toolbar later. For now, let's see how it works in practice/, while doing a review.

For the first step, open the author's item on Writing.Com, highlight the text, copy it with <CNTL><C>, and paste it with <CNTL><X> into an open, empty Word document. Read the author's text in Word. Using Word tools, highlight the parts of the document you want to get back to with comments. Eventually, your copy of the author's text will look something like this.

The text is now in yellow because I highlighted it on my first read through. Now I want to insert my comment, so I'll position my cursor at the start of the text that I want to quote and the press the StartHighlight button that I've put on the Quick Start ribbon. This gives me the following:

Notice that it's inserted WritingML and highlighted it in gray.

Step Two. ▼

Step Two.
Now position the cursor at the end of the sentence that I want to include in my remark and press the StopHighlight button on the Quick Access ribbon. This gives

Notice that this closed the WritingML tags that we inserted in the prior step. The new WritingML tags are again highlighted in gray in the Word document.

Step Three ▼

Step Three.
Leaving the cursor where it's at, press the Comment button on the Quick Access ribbon. The result is this:

The cursor is positioned one space after the colon that follows "Comment:", so I'm ready to type in my comment. The inserted material is again highlighted in gray.

Step Four ▼

Step Four.
Type in the comment, which gives

Now I can copy and paste the text in the Word document into my review. When I do, this is what the published review will show:

A cloud of gluons buzzed in Martin’s sleeping brain, and he jerked awake. My Comment: Readers may not know the word gluon. Using an obscure word, especially in the first sentence, might interfere with drawing the readers into Martin’s head and hence into the fictional world

Once this is set up--which only takes a few minutes--the whole process is really easy. It especially makes it easy to comment on specific lines of text in an item that you are reviewing. I do this for things I liked as well as for things I thought the author might consider for revision.

Oh, and I ignored my own advice on the story in question. I mean, the reviewer (me) was right. That obscure word does make it harder for the reader to enter the fictional world. But I left it in this slipstream story anyway. By the end of the story, in retrospect, it reveals something about Martin. Read the story and tell me if you think I was right.

Configuring Word.
The Developer Tab ▼

In order to run macros, the ribbon at the top of your Word window has to include the "Developer Tab." By default, the ever-helpful Microsoft hides this tab, so you have to reveal it.

To do this, on the FILE tab, go to OPTIONS > Customize Ribbon
Under Customize Ribbon and under Main Tabs, select the Developer check box.

After you show the tab, it stays visible unless you clear the checkbox. Or install another Microoft Office program. Or Microsoft helpfully hides it again.

The Macros ▼

The macros are listed below, between the two delimiters
                                                 
Highlight everything between these dlimiters and press <CNTL><C> (the cotnrol key and the c key on your keyboard) simultaneously. This copies the the highlighted material to your paste buffer. Do not copy the delimiters.


                                                 

Sub StartHighlight()
'
' StartHighlight Macro
'
'
Selection.TypeText Text:="{b}{c:blue}{e:cut}"
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=18, Extend:=wdExtend
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdGray25
Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdGray25
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
End Sub

Sub StopHighlight()
'
' StopHighlight Macro
'
'
Selection.TypeText Text:="{e:cut}{/c}{/b}"
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=15, Extend:=wdExtend
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdGray25
Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdGray25
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
End Sub

Sub Comment()
'
' Comment Macro
'
'
Selection.TypeText Text:="{b}{c:green}{e:tackg}My Comment: {e:tackg}{/c}{/b}"
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=51, Extend:=wdExtend
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdGray25
Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdGray25
Selection.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseStart
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=33
End Sub

                                                 

Copy the Macros to Word ▼

Make sure that your paste buffer includes the macros, per the immediately preceding instructions.

Getting the macrros into your copy of Word is, in principle, easy since it just involves pasting the above macros into where Word stores your macros. The problem is that there are at least a dozen different versions of Word out there, all of which do this differently. More helpfulness from Microsoft.

The web page below has detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to do this for various versions of windows and Word.
http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm
We recommend following the steps on the above webpage.

Here's a quick-and-dirty version for the brave at heart. Start Word and open a new document.
On the ribbon, click the Developer tab. At left-hand side of the ribbon, click on Macros. If you need these instructions, you probably don't have any macros installed, so you should see something that looks like this.

Under the macro name, type in StartHighlight. The drop-down field under the macro box probably defaults to "All active templates and documents," which includes Normal.dot , the file which has stuff shared by your default documents. We want to update Normal.Dot, which is why we opened a blank document first. You can change the drop-down field to Normal.dot if you wish. If you try to do this and don't see Normal.dot, you may have an old or offbeat version of Word, or you somehow managed to open a document that doesn't also load Normal.dot. You can only update Normal.Dot if you're in a document that has already accessed it. So, if this happens, start over or read the detailed instructions on the above web page.

Add to or edit the default description of the macro, for example, .StartHighlight Macro You can always do this later. Click "create.":

The macro editor will open and show an empty macro. It will look something like this, depending on what, if anything, you entered in the description box.

Sub HighlightStart
'
' StartHighlight Macro
'

end Sub

Highlight everyting between Sub and end Sub, including the words Sub and End Sub. Then press <CNTL> <V> to paste the macros you copied to your paste buffter in the prior section, The Macros.

Close the window. This should save the macros to NORMAL.DOT, making them available to all future documents you open.

Copy Macros to Quick Access Toolbar ▼

In Word, click File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar.
In the Choose commands from list, click Macros.
Select a macro from the list and click Add to put it on the Quick Access Toolbar. You'll do this three times, once for each macro.
To replace the default symbol, click Modify. Under Symbol, and select a button icon for the macro. I use a green box for Starthighlight, a red box for StopHIghlight, and a yellow box for Comment.
You can choose a friendlier name in the Display Name box if you wish.
Click OK twice.

For more detailed information and screenshots, see Microsoft's support page.