[stylist] Checking Format

Wed Mar 14 19:14:43 UTC 2012

Donna,
    I discovered by doing a little testing, that when JAWS encountered a 
change in the font style during a read all, it gave an alert to the change. 
Otherwise, during the read all function, it read the whole document 
uninterrupted.

Fraternally yours,
Marion


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna Hill" <penatwork at epix.net>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] Checking Format


> 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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