Protect the environment and save on paper and ink.

 

CAVEAT! I'm not an "expert"; I can only share with you my experience, which is using Microsoft Word on a PC, with my default browser, Mozilla Firefox. If you are savvy with HTML/CSS, read no further!

After a piece of writing has undergone several to "countless" drafts, many writers often print out the work so they can give it a thorough and maybe the final edit. I seldom print out my piece of writing, usually a chapter of my novel—a Microsoft Word document.

After I learned how to construct my own website, I fashioned out a simple webpage to display my work-in-progress, to help me copyedit it. This way I get to see my work in HTML with "fresh eyes", and it pleases me to think in doing this I'm making a small contribution towards saving the trees.

I'm not giving a HTML tutorial here—really I'm not qualified to do so. I only wish to share the way I go about using a webpage to display my writing so I can edit it. Let me show you how I do it.

Copy and paste your work that needs copyediting to a new Word document so you don't mess up with your original document. Click on the Find and Replace feature under Edit on the Menu toolbar.

1. First, you are going to get rid of double spacings. So use the Find and Replace feature (in Special, select Paragraph Mark) — enter Paragraph Mark twice under Find, and once under Replace. Then hit the Replace All button. You keep hitting the Replace All button till there are no more two Paragraph Marks to be found. Voila, your essay/short story is in single-spacing format.

2. Open up the Find and Replace feature again. This time Find a single Paragraph Mark and replace that with Hit Replace All button.

3. SELECT ALL your essay and COPY and then PASTE it in the HTML master copy as shown below:

HTML master copy

1. Open a Word document.
2. Type out the master copy shown here.
3. Note the text in RED and replace it with your titles
3. Paste your essay/short story, you have prepared earlier, in the space indicated, after removing the text in red.
4. Click on Save As Under Filename, type in My Story.html and in Save as type pick PLAIN TEXT. Now hit SAVE.
5. Note where you have saved this html file. Then on the Windows Explorer, locate the file, and double-click on it.
The webpage should display on your default browser.

6. If you spot mistakes, correct them, then save as a plain text file, with the html extension. Check the "refreshed" webpage to see the corrections take hold. THAT's it. Now you can do all your copyediting electronically!

CHEERS!