Number 50
A friend sent me an article from the October 6, 2003 New Yorker, "The End Matter, The nightmare of citation," by Louis Menand, on style manuals and the technical differences in footnoting with typewriters and computers, and related matter (remember erasable bond?). Menand mentioned a few problems in using Word that I can clear up for him, if he only knew, and for you, if you recognize and struggle with them too.
Let me start by saying, however, that in some ways Word isn't a patch on the old DOS WordPerfect, which was complicated but logical and thorough. I used to keep a little list of the things I could do easily in WordPerfect that Word doesn't seem able to do. Mostly I don't remember them anymore, because I haven't seen WordPerfect for so long. But some of you may recall that you could really see all the codes in WordPerfect if you chose to, which was very helpful when you needed to change something. In normal text, Word only lets you see tabs and spaces. WordPerfect (and how aptly named it was/is!) allowed you to cleanly select and move, copy, or delete a sentence, a paragraph, or a page with a code, without having to block and select the passage manually. WordPerfect's table function was . . . but why torture myself with memories? It's best forgotten.
Anyway, I know how to fix a few of Menand's peeves easily.
As you know, and he knows, if you type the letter "i" and then hit the space bar, it will automatically uppercase the letter to the word "I", just as the first letter of a word following a period will automatically uppercase. You can change the letter to lowercase by retyping it, by insisting through repetition that you are purposely typing a lowercase "i", or willfully not capitalizing a word following end punctuation. But you can change those default functions like this:
The letter "i": Go to Tools, then to Autocorrect. You'll see a list of spelling or capitalization errors in a table along with their corrections. You can choose the i/I pair, if it's there, and delete it. You can also add your own common errors with corrections in the blank boxes above the list.
This is also a handy tool for automatically inserting lengthy or hard to type blocks of text with a short, unusual letter pattern. For example, suppose you have to type "etoain shrdlu" frequently. You could enter "yyy" and then "etoain shrdlu" next to it, and every time you typed "yyy," "etoain shrdlu" would replace it automatically. Virtual kisses to anyone who knows where "etoain shrdlu" comes from, by the way.
First letter of sentences: Also under Autocorrect, you'll see a check box by "Capitalize first letter of sentences." You may uncheck it.
URL hyperlinks: Word also defaults to making any recognizable URL (starting with http:// or www) into an actual link (hyperlink), which can be inconvenient. Again, go to Tools, then to Autocorrect, then to AutoFormat As You Type. See "Replace as you type" and a check box under that, "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks." You may uncheck that, so when you type a path name or URL, it won't be underlined or change color, and you'll be able to change it or whatever without being forced onto the Web.
Now I have a question: Does anyone know how to keep Word from automatically saving a backup copy of every file I write or rewrite with some such name as ~WRL1805.tmp? I don't even know how to save backups automatically to another directory, but I don't want to do that anyway, although it would be an improvement, and I don't want to have to delete them manually. I want them dead.
I won't go into Menand's discussion of the new 956-page edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (with a new section on citing Web material), though it's worth reading, at least worth it to (a) publishing professionals and (b) anal retentive types with too much time on their hands. I'd just like to quote his concluding paragraph:
Some people will complain that the new "Chicago Manual" is too long. These people do not understand the nature of style. There is, if not a right way, a best way to do every single thing, down to the proverbial dotting of the "i." Relativism is fine for the big moral questions, where we can never know for sure; but in arbitrary realms like form and usage even small doses of relativism are lethal. The "Manual" is not too long. It is not long enough. It will never be long enough. The perfect manual of style would be like the perfect map of the world: exactly coterminous with its subject, containing a rule for every word of every sentence. We would need an extra universe to accommodate it. It would be worth it.
In response to PO 48, wherein a reader said Reservists won't receive honors for participation in this thing that's not called war, another reader says:
More likely, they will indeed receive ribbons once the bureaucracy finally gets around to designating the terms. There were no service awards for Gulf War I ~ at the time of the war ~ the SW Asia Service (US) and Kuwait Liberation (Kuwaiti) awards took a year or so to appear. They were, of course, backdated. I would note that service awards go to every service member who meets the requirements ~ so many days in such and such an area, for example ~ whether officer or enlisted, regular or reservist.
In PO 49 I mentioned a new book by John McWhorter, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a senior fellow at a policy research group in New York, the Manhattan Institute. A reader forwarded an interesting NY Times review of the book, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care.
I figured out "bestowee" (PO 48) practically the instant before its creator wrote explaining it to me: obviously, when the second syllable is stressed, it means one who has something bestowed on her, in this case the sobriquet "hon." When I first read it, I was mentally stressing the first syllable. Maybe that's a word we could find a place for, if only it had a meaning.
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