Article Writing Skills 101 - Using Msword To Write Articles (curly Quotes And Ellipses Be Gone)

When writing articles, there are several text editors that can be used to your advantage

. One of these is Microsoft Word. This text editor has many advantages over the standard basic plain text editor. This is well and good, but there are a few issues with using Microsoft Word that can be overcome, once you are taught how.

Some of the issues you will encounter when using Microsoft Word are smart quotes, ellipses and added spacing. One nice feature of using Microsoft Word to write articles is the spell check, thesaurus, word count and formatting features. So what are the drawbacks of using this text editor for article writing and how do you correct them?

1. Curly quotes? So what are curly quotes and why are they a problem? Curly quotes or smart quotes are quotation or apostrophe marks that have little curls at the ends of them. You see them used quite a bit in written material. The problem is article directories do not allow the smart quotes or smart apostrophe, just straight quotes like this "" or this '. The problem is MS Word automatically reformats the straight quote or apostrophe into a curly quotation or curly apostrophe mark.

If you do not fix this little nuisance, then your article will show weird characters looking like hieroglyphics in the place of the quotation or apostrophe mark. This looks very unprofessional and will be rejected the majority of the time.

2. What is an ellipsis? An ellipsis is the dot dot dot or "..." punctuation you see used to persuade the reader to read on further. Here again MS Word reformats this into a special character. If left with the standard formatting, your article will show weird characters again usually looking like a block with a letter in it. This is not acceptable for article directories and looks very amateurish.

How to rid yourself of smart quotes and ellipses.

There is an easy fix thankfully to getting rid of these two culprits. If you are using Microsoft Word 2000, here are the steps to fix this issue (it works similarly in newer versions of Word.)

Step #1. Start up your MS Word program. Click on "Format" on the menu at the top left. Next click "AutoFormat." Click the "Options" button at the bottom right of the pop-up box.

Step #2. Now click the "AutoFormat" tab. Under the "Replace" heading, uncheck the box marked "Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes".

Step #3. Next click the "Replace As You Type" tab. Under the "Replace As You Type" heading, uncheck the box marked "Straight Quotes" with "Smart Quotes". That should take care of the curly quote problem.

Step #4. Now for the ellipsis. Click on "Format" on the menu at the top left. Next click "AutoFormat". Click the "Options" button at the bottom right of the pop-up box.

Next click on the "AutoCorrect" tab. Go through the list to find the ellipsis and click on it. You will now see "..." appear in the "Replace" and "With" boxes. Now click the "Delete" button. Next click the "OK" button and viola you are finished.

Finally, the evil little curly quotation mark and ellipsis will be put to rest. This will make your article writing life a lot easier and more enjoyable. Make sure to read and eliminate any unwanted spacing when submitting your articles.

Want to know more tricks to article writing?

by: Tony Edwards

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