Logical Writing Solutions, Inc.

Admittedly, the technologically savvy people in the world are often left scratching our heads, wondering why the poor victims... um, users... can't readily understand the Next Big Thing.

That is what makes this spoof on that challenge such a hoot. You have to check it out.

I just noticed a curious note at the bottom of my legislator's web page: This site is "copyleft". You are encouraged to reuse any material on this site.

Now what does that mean? Of course, I found the answer in Wikipedia. Although the entry appears to have been written by a lawyer, I gather that copyleft is a form of copyright that allows free distribution and even adaptation of a work, while preserving at least some rights of the original author. 

Just thought you might find that interesting.

Have you ever been working on a lengthy document in Word that had several numbered lists, when all of a sudden the formatting or numbering got whacked and, even using the Undo feature, you couldn't find your way back?

I bet you have. We at Logical have a method of dealing with this: we add an empty paragraph mark using a List Number 0 style before each list, as advocated by Dave Rado on google groups. Then the List Number 1 style is applied to the actual numbered items. Whenever Word sees the zero style, the next occurrence of List Number 1 begins at one, and each additional paragraph is property formatted and numbered. Works every time.

We've tried the other most popular approach to number control, which is to insert fields. That works consistently too, but we found it more clunky to implement.

Still, both approaches concern me when we turn over a document for client maintenance. Neither approach is truly appropriate for a possible non-writer who gets stuck with documentation, even though we provide instructions. And why must we all be rocket scientists in order to manage numbered lists anyway?

Note:  To view the entire discussion at the link above, click More Options and then View Thread.

As always, have a nice day!

I was looking for help to figure out why a misspelled word was not identified as wrong in Microsoft Word when I found a comment that seemed innocent enough: a blogger complained that she preferred Google's alternate spelling suggestions to those offered by the Microsoft spellchecker.

This generated a conversation suitable for an episode of Spellchecker Gone Wild, relating mishaps that occurred when Microsoft automatically replaced one or two words to the embarrassment of the writer.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, I should put in my request. I think you should auto-replace the word manger with manager, since that is almost always the intended word. Except maybe at Christmas!  (Can a replacement be effective just part of the year? LOL.)

Have a great day!

When motoring around the internet, checking out some style information for a project, I came across this free prior version (2004) of the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. This 3.2 meg file used to be available in the Microsoft Knowledgbase.

Honestly, it was kind of surprising how little it changed since the 1998 version I have in hard copy!

But it still certainly comes in handy! As always, have a wonderful day. ~ Ann