At Last! Word Fixed

Ever since I got my new computer, I’ve been wrestling with a problem with Word 2007.  Every time I opened the program, it would freeze up instantly.  Which meant I had to open it in safe mode.  That meant that things like Smart Quotes were turned off.  It was a big pain.

I went through everything, trying to solve the proble.  I deleted the registry entry, changed the normal file, ran two variations of repair on the program–and nothing.  That left the Add-ins.  I disabled one–not the culprit–but the second one it kept saying I needed administrator rights (can you hear me pounding my head against the wall).  I searched for that on the Word discussion baords and finally found out  how to enter with administrator rights.  Disabled the Microsoft Live add-in (have no idea what it will do, and then reopened Word normally.  No freezing!

Yea!

Proofreading Tips

Proofreading is the one thing I hate about writing.  It’s terribly boring and tedious.  So these are some things I do to try to make it easier.

Get it reasonably right from the start.  When I type in the first draft, I make the effort to do it correctly.  One time, an army buddy gave me her father’s first few chapters and wanted comments on it.  He’d done stream of conscious writing; it was one long sentence.  All I could think was that this guy was going to spend a lot of time adding all the punctuation in, and then he would take forever proofreading it.  Worse, he would probably never find all the mistakes!

Use the grammar checker.  While the grammar checker shouldn’t replace good grammar skills, it can be used for a quick search for mistakes.  It’s sometimes helped me find sentences with omitted words. 

Autocorrect is my friend.  I have words I always spell wrong.  One of them is a character’s name; another is the word version (verison).  Word has a Autocorrect feature where I can add in a misspelled word like “verison” and the program will automatically correct it when I type it wrong.

Finally, I also know I make certain types of errors, particularly omitted words.  These are ones I specifically look for when I’m making a proofreading pass.