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Editing for Psychoanalysis Eve Golden, M.D. |
MS
WORD for the Wise
I was not a happy camper when I had to abandon WordStar 3.1 for MS Word. Everything I know about computers I learned in the early eighties by taking WS apart and putting it back together again, and I clung fiercely to DOS and my darling until the need for e-mail drove me to (ugh) Windows. But as irritating as Microsoft is, Word turned out not to be so bad. You can take it apart and put it back together, too. (Clearly this is my top priority in a word processor; I wonder what my analyst would have thought about that?) And even if you aren't into deconstructing software, it can do lots of things that make the writing process very much easier. But most analysts don't seem to know about them.
Every time I did a JAPA, for example, I was deluged with inquiries from authors who want to know what amazing program I used to show proposed changes in red on their manuscripts. When I told them that it was good ol' Word they'd say, "My Word doesn't do that!" I'd say, "Oh yes it does," and we'd go around like that until they psyched themselves up to go and look. Once they were convinced, they'd shower me with thanks. I love being showered with thanks, but I'll forgo this pleasure in the interest of making such nice Word tricks better known amongst my colleagues. Here are brief runs-through of Word's change-tracking and outlining features. The directions include screen shots that take a long time to load, so please be patient.
A Note to WordPerfect Users: WP has these capacities too. I can't tell you how to make them happen, but your trusty WP book surely can, now that you know to look. If I ever have a free moment and a running copy of WP at the same time, I'll work out the WP instructions and post them here, but for good or ill my lot is cast with Word, and free moments are awfully scarce....
