[stylist] Checking Format

[Donna Hill]

Marion,
I find that I need to go paragraph by paragraph with format checking.
Theoretically, if you go down to the body of the article and select all, you
should be able to get the formatting info with Jaws key+ f. In MS Word, that
gives you the font face, style and size, paragraph type and line spacing. 

The problem is that it often says "mixed font, mixed style" when it isn't.
That's why I go one paragraph at a time. That also gives me a chance to
check the space between paragraphs. If you're in a block format (no indents
for paragraphs) where you need a blank line between paragraphs, you go to
the beginning of the next paragraph (control + down-arrow) and up arrow.
Hopefully, it will say "blank." If there are two blank lines, you can delete
one.

The problems come when you are copying and pasting material from other files
or the internet where the formatting is different than you wish, or when you
italicize or boldface something. The copy and paste is fairly easy, if you
remember to double-check it. 

If I'm copying from the internet, I use the "paste as special/unformatted
Unicode" option in the edit menu to paste the material into a separate
document than the one I'm writing in. That way, I can fix the formatting to
what I'm using in my article before I paste it in and forget about it. 

With the command "control + down-arrow, you are supposed to get to the
beginning of the next paragraph. If the next paragraph sounds like the
sentence is already in progress, you unfortunately have line breaks that
need to be removed. I usually just go through the material line by line to
see where the unwanted line breaks are and delete them. You often have to
add a space so words don't run together. If you're on the first line, go to
the end of the line and check the last character. Then right arrow to see if
there's a line break or a space. It's a bit tedious, but it works and does
get faster with practice. You also have to make sure that you don't remove
line breaks that really belong.

When you italicize, boldface, underline or center something, don't rely on
the select by line command. It often chooses more than you really want. I
select and then deselect character by character till I deselect the last
character that I wanted selected. Then, I re select just that character, so
I know I'm getting only the text I want to change. After it's done, I check
the formatting on the characters before and after the selection to make sure
they haven't been changed.

Spelling is another problem. Sometimes, you can hear that you've used the
wrong word. For instance, I can hear that "there" is different than
"they're" and I know which one is appropriate for which situation. Also, in
context I can hear that "This is going to far," is wrong. It's "this is
going too far."

This doesn't always work, however. Suppose you don't know that there are two
separate words like grizzly and grisly. The bottom line is that no one is
ever perfectly correct all the time. We're limited by our own knowledge and
by our habits. We expect that we've chosen the right form (who's or whose),
and even though we were tired and in a hurry when we wrote something, we
assume that we didn't get that wrong. Your proofreaders are also limited by
what they know and what they expect to see. 
HTH,
Donna 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Marion Gwizdala
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 3:47 PM
To: Stylist List
Subject: [stylist] Checking Format

Dear All,
    whenever I write something for submission, I always have a sighted
person take a look at the document to ensure that there are no formatting
issues, e.g., page or line breaks where they should not be, font changes, or
changes in print color or shading, that spell check or screen reading
software does not pick up. Is there a way such things can be proofed
independently by a blind writer? Any input is greatly appreciated.

fraternally yours,
Marion Gwizdala


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