Another Word Tip, from Jane Finnis

You might recall that I previously mentioned Jane Finnis, who writes ancient mysteries set in Roman Britain.

Jane left me this very useful tip on writing with Microsoft Word:
Not everyone knows that when doing a straight "Find" in Word, once you've typed in your keyword, you can press Escape and move between occurrences of the word by hitting Control with PageDown or PageUp. Often quicker than the button.
Jane is remarkable for writing mysteries starring innkeeper Aurelia Marcella, thus making her one of the very few mystery writers with a female detective in the ancient world. I only discovered yesterday that she also writes this very interesting blog.


6 comments:

Jane Finnis said...

Thanks for the kind words, Gary! Whoops - while editing my w.i.p. just now, I've used the search tip I mentioned yesterday, and am embarrassed to realise I left out one important keystroke: once you've typed in your keyword, press Enter (which is the same as clicking the Find Next button) and *then* press Escape and use Ctrl with PageUp or PageDown! My fingers just do it on autopilot...oh well, I'll wipe the egg off my face, and get back to my editing!

Stephanie Thornton said...

Holy cow! I had no idea Word could do that! I just finished a revision last night- that handy little tip could have saved me a lot of time!

Gary Corby said...

Hi Jane, your exactitude does you credit, but hitting enter was so obvious I just took it for granted, as I'm pretty sure everyone will.

Jane Finnis said...

You're probably right, Gary, but thanks anyway. I used to be a computer programmer in the late '60s (I was a very precocious toddler, you understand,) in the days of huge mainframe computers the size of a room. We input our code by way of punched cards, and had no interaction at all with the machine till the program had been run. I wasn't particularly good at it, but I did learn the need for 100% accuracy; a typo, or an extra space, and the program would fall over and not finish its run. Modern software is much more forgiving, thank goodness, but its nit-pickeery can still trip you up at times.

Gary Corby said...

There must be something that causes former computer programmers to turn to ancient murder mysteries.

I never worked with mainframes and punch cards; my earliest possibly still extant work was that I wrote the first device driver for Australia's first national satellite. And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Jane Finnis said...

Wow, Gary, I'm impressed! The project I (and two others) worked on was a huge payroll program, which had to be updated when the UK decimalised its currency in 1971. The whole program ib rgw mainframe - checking incoming wages data, calculating everyone's wages, taxes, and deductions, printing payslips and other forms - all of that - could not exceed 120K. So it didn't. Extraordinary, isn't it? As to what makes computer people turn to ancient murders - perhaps it's the attraction of an era when computers didn't exist! I always reckon if the Romans had managed to invent them, their Empire would still be supreme, and we'd be holding this discussion in Latin. Wonder what the Latin is for blog...