[stylist] Word 2007: Some Things I Learned From Writing Poetry

[Jacqueline Williams]

Jim,
Thanks so much for the info. I am about to install Word 7. In my poetry
submissions of over one page, I had been putting line break or stanza break
at the bottom right in parenthesis. This   will save time.
Jackie

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Homme, James
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 10:27 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] Word 2007: Some Things I Learned From Writing Poetry

Hi People,
This is how to fix two issues that you can have with writing poetry if you
do it in Word 2007. The first is the difference between line breaks and
paragraph breaks and what that can do to the reading of your poetry, and how
to deal with it. The second is how to keep Word from putting in unintended
capital letters at the beginnings of the lines of your poetry.

The difference between a line break and a paragraph break. In Word, to
create a line break, it is often said that you hit Return, and that to
create a paragraph break, you hit Return twice. That isn't true. To get a
real line break, you hit Shift + Return. To get a real paragraph break, you
hit Return. This includes the paragraph break after such things as heading
styles. Word takes care of what happens visually between paragraphs, even
though it doesn't register with your screen reader. If this doesn't happen,
then you should get someone sighted to help you alter paragraph styles,
usually a Normal or Body style or a Heading style, so that it does what it
should, visually.

This is significant when you are doing poetry. Why? Because in your poem, a
line of the poem can end with a line break, while a stanza can end as a
paragraph break. When you use a screen reader, you can then read a line by
pressing plain old Down or Up arrow. You can read an entire stanza by using
Control + Down or Control + Up arrow. If you use true line breaks in your
poetry, you can also use the sentence reading keys to read sentences in your
poems, even if they span multiple lines within a stanza. Reading sentences
can help you listen to a whole thought without having to paste things
together in your brain. If you use paragraph breaks instead of line breaks
within the stanzas of your poetry, this forces the sentence reading keys to
stop at every line of your poem. This is probably what you want to avoid.

In Word 2007, to make Word avoid putting unintended capital letters at the
beginnings of your lines, just do this.

* Hit Alt + F, Followed by the letter I. This opens up Word Options.
* Arrow down until you hear Proofing, then press Alt + A for Autocorrect
Options.
* Hit Shift + Tab until you hear a check box about capitalizing letters at
the beginnings of sentences. Turn that off.
* Go to the Close button and press it, then press OK until you are back to
your masterpiece.
* No more unintended capital letters at the beginnings of your poetry lines.

The only down side to this approach is that you will need to make sure that
you capitalize every letter of your own sentences, which I think you'd
probably do anyway, so no big deal, right?

That's it for now.

Thanks.

Jim

Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
Phone: 412-544-1810.


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