Recommendation

If you are ever considering going into tech writing or editing I highly recommend looking into MSOffice 2007. Its programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) are formatted and operate very differently. The design is dramatic (and exciting!) and it seems there are many more options available. I personally love the new layout and enjoy working in the program. But in order to be an effective editor, you need to be at the top of your game. You cannot spend 20 minutes looking for a captioning tool. Co-workers will be coming to you with Word questions, you are the writing expert.

During my first week I was told many times, "oh so you're one of those people who knows her way around Office," "you can find stuff so fast on Word, can't you, I'm coming to you when I get stuck." In order to be effective you need to know your tools. I hadn't played around with Office 07 but in my first few weeks I spent a good bit of time reading about the programs on the Internet and familiarizing myself with them in my downtime. If I hadn't my documentation would suffer. As it is, I would love to take a course in Office 2007 and become certified in the programs because there is so much to know and it would make me a better editor.

When formatting is used incorrectly it slows everyone down. This is the fewer people who touch a document the better. You never know how many people hit tab 50 times or individually spaced something instead of centering or using the proper tool. Here are a few of my favorite formatting tools that I think everyone should know, learn, and love:

• Headings- Headings make outlines uniformed not only in sizing and spacing but they will remain in chronological order. The correct use of headings will allow the table of contents to be easily updated.
• Captioning- Captions for tables and figures can help create a professional looking document. Also, using the caption heading and caption format will allow a list of tables/figures to be created and easily updated.
• Ctrl+F- Control F finds anything you want in a document just as it would on an Internet page. It could be a word, a character, or a number. This feature also has the ability to replace all. So if a term is outdated and used 20 times in one document Ctrl+F and then replace all with the new word. The incorrect term will be replaced at every instance it occurs. I found an website today that said you can search for specific instances of formatting too, such as italic text as opposed to just words. (I was excited!)