Macro of the Month – April 2021 – WordPairPunctuate

Makes word pair hyphenated or one word

Last updated: 4/26/2024

Welcome! This month features a speed-editing macro, a useful resource about style sheets that pairs well with analysis macros, and a survey about macro use. Even if you are only an occasional user of macros or haven’t yet taken the plunge, your experience is important. I encourage you to fill it out, if you haven’t already.

WordPairPunctuate

Have you ever worked on a document where you suspected the author’s keyboard was missing the hyphen key? WordPairPunctuate will hyphenate a word pair. If you run the macro a second time, it will join the two words into one. (Don’t forget the keyboard shortcut.) With the word “back yard,” for example, if you run the macro once it changes it to “back-yard.” Run it a second time and you get “backyard.” (And if you realize you’ve made a mistake, you can run it a third time to return to “back yard.”)

Note that this macro works best with tracking turned off. Toggling through the different variations with tracking on can introduce mistakes.

Get a copy of WordPairPunctuate here.

A Survey to Help Make Macros More User Friendly

Whether you're a seasoned macro user or a dabbler, or macros are still sitting in your too-hard basket, the global Word Macro Tools Team would love for you to complete a short survey about your use (or non-use) of keyboard shortcuts and macros. The results will be used to inform the design of an accessible website for Paul Beverley's free macros—which will remain free—as well as training to demystify and simplify macros for editors. 
 
The survey should take about 4 minutes. Complete the survey here. The deadline is April 23.

Related Resource – Customizing a style sheet

There are many document analysis macros that identify potential inconsistencies before you begin a project. DocAlyse, ProperNounAlyse, HyphenAlyse, and SpellingErrorLister are some of the most popular. They generate a report that highlights potential issues that may need to be addressed. This information can also be used to start populating your style sheet.
 
If you are looking for information about how to create and maintain style sheets, 6 Easy Steps to Customize a Style Guide: What’s Your Style? by Robin Martin was recently reissued by the Editorial Freelancers Association. The booklet breaks the process into six steps and, most helpfully, provides examples of different types of style sheets suited to different projects. (Note that it doesn’t discuss macros.)
 
 
As always, I would love to hear from you. Tell me what your current favorite macro is or a tip or trick you’ve discovered. 
 
Be safe and well,
Jennifer