John B. Rosenman

John B. Rosenman 

    Singer noticed the cute dog as he left his apartment.  It was an adorable puffball of white fur with a tiny, delicate face, perched in the window of a parked car.  Its bright eyes radiated intelligence, drawing him to it. [O1]  Then he stopped. 

Consider the passage above.  It is the opening paragraph of a story I recently wrote, and it was edited by a friend using “Track Changes,” a feature in Microsoft Word 2000 (antiquated, I know) which you can find under “Tools.”  I have used Track Changes for the last three or four of my novels.  It’s an amazing feature and enables editors (and friends) to edit writers’ manuscripts and communicate their corrections and comments in a very effective way.  For beginning writers, it’s a software tool they should expect to use one day, and for the established pro, it’s something with which they are probably already familiar.  Either way, it’s a method that facilitates and speeds up the editing and preparation of manuscripts.  Most writers should familiarize themselves with it. 

Currently, I am using Track Changes to edit a 116,000 word novel which an editor sent me.  I’m facing a deadline, so I’m going to keep this tutorial skimpy and brief.   

If you notice the word “cute” in the first sentence of this essay, you will see that it has [or should have] a line though it.  In Track Changes, if you click your mouse on that word, you can either accept or reject the suggested change, which is to delete the word.  As for the highlighted area in the third line [it's designated as QI], it indicates that the editor (or editors) left a comment or comments, perhaps questioning your word choice or something else.  Hold your mouse over that area, and you can read their comments [see the comment at the bottom of this page]; click your mouse on it, and you can post your own comments, thereby communicating with your editors and perhaps initiating a dialogue.  With Track Changes, time can be saved and used so much more efficiently.  Long gone are the days when you had to send your mss back and forth via snail mail and wait for a response. 

One last point: in the left margin, you’ll often find a vertical line if you’ve missed an editor’s suggested correction.  That feature protects you from overlooking something and makes it more likely that your manuscript will be clean. 

That’s about it, folks.  I’ve used Track Changes a lot, find it very useful, but I don’t claim to be an expert in it.  In fact, right now, I’ve just started the process of learning to use Track Changes in MS Word 2007.  Brave New World, indeed!