​Document-polishing tips & tools

The Student Proofreading Toolkit provides guidance on how to tidy up a Word document. And guess what? It's completely free!

​I'll show you how to use some simple macros, and Word's find/replace tool and the wildcard-search function, to deal with a number of problems, including:
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  • Removing double spaces
  • Removing all rogue spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs
  • Removing double line returns
  • Changing hyphens used as parentheses to dashes
  • Changing tabbed paragraph indents to proper line indents (using Word’s ‘Styles’)
  • Changing a hyphen in a number span
  • Finding lower-case letters at the beginning of paragraphs
  • Finding a paragraph that ends with no punctuation
  • Finding a full point followed by a lower-case letter
  • ​Changing date styles with wildcard searches
  • Running a confusables macro
  • Removing unnecessary spaces before or after punctuation

These DIY tips are designed to complement, not replace, a rigorous professional proofread. I hope you'll find them useful!
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Fancy working with me?

If you'd like to discuss a line editing, copyediting or proofreading project, get in touch so we can have a chat.​