Helpful Editing Tool in Microsoft Word

Nicki Jacobsmeyer, an amazing author and critique member, and a great friend of mine, recently shared a wonderful writing tool with our group.  She showed us a way to use Microsoft in our editing process, so I thought I’d share it here. 

Nicki Jacobsmeyer: author

If I didn’t know about it, possibly some of you out there in the writing world didn’t know about it either.  And I’ve found it very helpful.  The first one is about Readability.  Have you written something and wondered what grade level it is?  Did you write a first-grade picture book but are afraid the words might be more at a tenth-grade level?  If so, this tool is for you.  Here are her directions on accessing this simple and fun and oh-so-helpful tool:

SETTINGS IN WORD FOR READABILITY

 OPEN Microsoft Word program.

 Click FILE, then OPTIONS.

 In Left Column click PROOFING.

 Under sub title “WHEN CORRECTING SPELLING AND GRAMMAR IN WORD”,

choose SHOW READABILITY STATISTICS. When your document is complete click REVIEW tab, click SPELLING & GRAMMAR.

 A box will appear that will show you information in three areas: Count, Averages, and

Readability.

 Under COUNT: # of words, characters, paragraphs, and sentences.

 Under AVERAGES: sentences per paragraph, words per sentence, and characters per Under READABILITY: # of passive sentences, Flesch Reading Ease (100% ease

being the best), and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (5.0 is 5^th grade, 3.5 is half way through

3^rd grade, etc.).

This was a great tool that I used to check a picture book I had in the rough draft.  It showed that I was about 3rd-grade level, which is about where I wanted it to be, maybe slightly harder.  I may rework it during editing to make it a bit easier to read but that’s where it stands right now.

The next tool, many are familiar with but maybe have not used it as much as you could.  It is the “Find” tool under the Home portion of Word.  Using this tool you can search for a specific word in your document.  It not only will find the word, but will tell you how many of that word you have in your document.  

Here are the specific directions for this tool:

SEARCHING SPECIFIC WORD IN DOCUMENT

 OPEN Microsoft Word program.

 Select HOME tab.

 Far right section under EDITING, click FIND.

 NAVIGATION will pop up with a search box underneath.

 Type which word you would like to search.

 The word you searched will be highlighted throughout your document.

I have used it in several stories recently to find the evil words such as “was” and “that,” and trying to rework the sentence to make it stronger, more detailed, more active.  One document alone, a short story with only 2,000 words, I had 18 “was” in it.  If the evil word is in dialogue, I ignore it.  But in your document, non-dialogue portion, try to remove it/reword it.  It is often amazing how descriptive you can be just changing that one word. 

Good luck and God speed your writing!