Disclaimer: This article is not in anyway personal finance related, but just thought of writing it as it might help someone who uses word processing at lot and could pick up something from this, especially if that someone is an editor who works at home and with no one to ask little things like this.
A lot of us use MS Word, and while it is true that many of us have been using this word processing software for a long time, not many of us are familiar with some of the easiest Word functions. For editors who need to keep track on their changes, one of the helpful tools that not many use is the line numbers. If you are an editor who needs to communicate with your author about errors in the document, line numbers will truly help you navigate through these countless errors easily if the document you both are working on have them. Haha, shameless confession, I didn’t know about line numbers in the first four years I worked as a copy editor. The first company I worked with didn’t find the need for it, and I have never encountered any documents that had line numbers on it before until I changed company that required those in their documents. So yeah, I had to google my way through it too.
With line numbers, editors can easily direct authors to where the error occur or which line needs changing by simply pointing to the affected line number. So yeah, below is a helpful guide of the very easy steps of inserting line numbers and modifying them to the font style and size that you prefer.Inserting Line Numbers
1. Go to Layout tab. Find the Line Numbers option. Tick on the option you prefer. There are four options:
- Continuous
- Restart Each Page
- Restart Each Section
- Suppress for Current Paragraph
And just like that, your document will now have the line numbers. If you want to remove the line numbers, just revert to None.
So you have the line numbers, but the default font is different from your main texts, like in the above (Verdana line numbers, Garamond texts). Cringe. Kaway-kaway, fellow OCs. “Can the two fonts be uniform?” you ask. Word replies a resounding of course. Simply go to Styles and locate the Line Number option.
Where’s that? I don’t see Line Number in the list.
Modifying Line Numbers
2. In the Home tab, you’ll find Styles in the ribbon. Click the little arrow right beside it to open the Style menu and look for the Line Number (that portion [picture above] where you see Subtle Reference, Intense Reference, Book Title, List Paragraph, and so on). If you don’t find Line Number on the list, modify first the Style list to make it appear in the menu. Click on Options (labeled 2 in the picture above).
3. Once you click the Options, the Style Pane Options window will pop up. Change (1) Select styles to show to All Styles and (2) Select how list is sorted to Alphabetical for easier navigation later. Then click OK.
(Side bit. Place a comma after Style Pane Options in the picture above, haha.)
4. Once you’ve done step 3, Line Number should now appear in the list the next time you click on the little arrow opening up the Styles menu pop-up. As the list is now alphabetical, just simply scroll through to find Line Number in the menu (as shown above).
5. When you find Line Number in the Styles list, there should be a drop-down arrow beside it. Click on that down arrow to open the pop-up window where you’ll find Modify and click on that. The Modify Style window will then pop. Locate Formatting and then indicate your preferred font style (Garamond, Courier, etc.) and font size (8, 10, etc.) .
After setting the preferred font style and size, click OK, and you’re done. It’s that simple.
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