So, you’re typing along in your manuscript and you have the following complaints:

1. Your hero’s name is Alessandro. Your heroine is Amanda. You type the names wrong so often that you’re slowly going crazy.
2. You always type the same word wrong. The Spellchecker notices every time. You have to stop and correct the word at some point.
3. You use British spelling by schooling and you have to reverse direction to change to American spelling. More crazy-making.
4. Your spelling and grammar is atrocious. If only you had a built-in grammar textbook.

Word can help you stay sane.

Customizing the AutoCorrect settings changes how Word corrects and formats text as you type.

All functions are accessible by: File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options

In the upper section of the box are helpful Autocorrects tick boxes. The most useful is Capitalize first letters of sentences. Word will correct this common typo. Tick all of these boxes to match the screen shot.

In the lower section, scroll down the impressive list and see all of the errors that Word corrects for you faster than you see them. You’ll see a few special symbols as well.

In the screen shot, you’ll see my AutoCorrect of ‘ct’ to be replaced by ‘Cathy’.

Frequently Misspelled Words

If you don’t want to stop and correct a word that you frequently misspell, you can add it the same way you add an AutoCorrect.

I’m Canadian and instinctively use British spellings. Every time, the spellchecker flashes that squiggly red line at one of those words, I put the British version in the Replace box and the American version in the With box. It saves so much time and frustration.

The same trick works for words you frequently misspell, e.g. “pensil” should be “pencil”. The spellchecker caught the error, but didn’t autocorrect.

Correctly spelled words used in the wrong context, e.g. their, there, or they’re, will be dealt with in the next session.

You could also create AutoCorrects for your name and address, e.g. “myname”, “myaddress”.

Ellipses and ereaders

Use an ellipsis (…) to indicate the fading away of a voice or internal monologue, typically to indicate a character’s uncertainty. For more information on usage, I refer you again to the experts over at Edittorrent.

www.edittorrent.blogspot.ca/search/label/ellipses

The Easy Ellipsis

Word comes installed with an Autocorrect entry that changes three consecutive periods into a single-character ellipsis (…). Though it’s hard to see, the dots are slightly smaller the periods.

The default ellipsis is treated like any other letter. You can’t break it up. Word won’t break it over the end of a line, nor will an ereader.

If the ellipsis occurs at the end of a sentence, simply add a period (….) or question mark (…?). Word and ereaders will keep them all together.

The Spaced-out Ellipsis

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) states that an ellipsis is made up of space, period, space, period, space, period, space ( . . . ). Don’t forget the finishing punctuation of period, question mark, etc.

Word will break this string over the end of a line and so will an ereader; which looks weird as shown in the photo from my Kobo. Pardon the quality.

If your editor demands the CMOS ellipsis and you want to avoid having it broken over the ends of lines, you can use an ellipsis loaded with non-breaking spaces. As the name implies, the ellipsis is treated as a single unit and isn’t broken.

To get a non-breaking space, use the keystroke combination of Ctrl+Shift+space. If you turn on the formatting marks, you’ll see there’s a different symbol (a tiny circle) to represent a non-breaking space instead of the dot to represent a regular space.

Instead of hitting all those keys every time you want a non-breaking CMOS ellipsis, you can add one to Autocorrect. You could replace the default ellipsis with a CMOS ellipsis, but what happens when you want to use it? It’s gone. Use "../" for the key combination.

Another reference for spaced-out ellipses is www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis.

To my mind, the CMOS ellipsis is clunky and takes up too much space, so I’ve used the default single-character ellipsis in my ebook and printed self-published works. I also checked with several other formatters. When permitted, they’ve been substituting the default Word ellipsis for the CMOS ellipsis. It’s much easier to deal with, ereaders like it, and most people don’t even notice.