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United States24745 Posts
Recently I find myself editing sections of manuals to add new information, remove outdated/incorrect information, or simply correct silly errors. Rather than actually edit the manual's source files myself, I send a letter to a person who then makes the changes I indicate. This indirect method of editing invites miscommunication and mistakes. To combat this, I use a commonly accepted method for showing edits involving underlines and strikethroughs. Showing changes using this notation is also useful when you want to show another person what changes you are planning on making before you make them. For those of you who are not familiar with this practice, I will explain it and provide some insights I picked up (note that I will not discuss MS Word's review functionality here).
Additions:
When adding new words or characters to a body of text, you should underline the new content. For example, suppose you are editing the following sentence:
I like your new haircut.
The best way to edit this sentence, when handing it off to another person is like this:
I really like your new haircut.
Note that it is not enough to simply add the word 'really.' Without the underline there is a good chance the editor you are handing off your changes to will not notice there was a change.
Removals:
When removing words or characters from a body of text, you should apply a strikethrough to the deleted content. For example, suppose you are editing the following sentence:
I insanely like your new haircut.
Striking the word insanely, which is pretty awful, and replacing it with "really" looks like this:
I insanelyreally like your new haircut.
Small Changes
Adding or removing a very small amount of text, like a comma, can be difficult to spot in a large body of text, even when using the above methods. Therefore, I suggest using a trick like the following. Suppose you are editing the following sentence:
Water water everywhere.
I want to add a comma after the first word, but the difference beween , and , is rather difficult to spot. Therefore, I write this:
WaterWater, water everywhere.
That might seem redundant and overkill, but it draws your attention to the change. Once you use this method a few times, the editor you are communicating with will quickly learn to make these types of changes the way you intended (change one character) rather than the way they were written (remove some characters, then put them back again, then change one character).
Multiple Versions
For bodies of text requiring large amounts of editing, it can get very difficult to read the edited text. Sometimes readers want to see what the text will look like after the edits, and don't actually care about the strikethroughs. In this case I maintain two version of the text: one with strikethroughs shown, and one where stricken words are deleted entirely (I always leave in the underlines since that doesn't hurt readability much). When making large numbers of edits to complicated bodies of text, it can be extremely difficult to keep both version of the document perfectly consistent. At this point you should seriously consider using editing tools such as tracked changes in Microsoft Word. However, my objective here was to demonstrate the theory behind the edits rather than the tools you can use to make it easier. Note that my "Small Changes" tip above is an argument for not using tracked changes in a text editor (unless you can show additions in a different color!).
Hopefully the above proves useful to some of you in the future. If you have questions please ask away.
  
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Interesting read, thank you!
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What if you want to underline a word? Then your system breaks down.
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United States653 Posts
Doesn't Microsoft Word's track changes system do this automatically, along with a bunch of other things?
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On July 26 2014 17:38 nohbrows wrote:
Doesn't Microsoft Word's track changes system do this automatically, along with a bunch of other things?
Note that I will not discuss MS Word's review functionality here
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
I absolutely hate editing
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draft, revising and editing, kill me now
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United States24745 Posts
On July 26 2014 17:07 kushm4sta wrote:
What if you want to underline a word? Then your system breaks down.
Yes, I have been fortunate not to have to work around this problem much! I think your best bet when editing text involving underlines is to introduce your edit with an explanation of an alternate method you are going to use. For example:
Chapter 2, Paragraph 3.c references outdated information which needs to be updated. However, many words in the paragraph are underlined by default. Therefore, instead of using underline to indicate added words, bold will be used.
Just an idea.
On July 26 2014 17:38 nohbrows wrote:
Doesn't Microsoft Word's track changes system do this automatically, along with a bunch of other things?
Yes, but with pros and cons. Either way, it's good to understand the principles behind this before depending on software to just do it for you.
edit:
Oh haha I found a couple of mistakes with regards to where the underline should terminate. I made the appropriate edits.
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If you're not having the chance to work with latex, why not work with plain text and version control/autopatches? Not like ms word will facilitate the subsequent formatting in any signifcant way.
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United States24745 Posts
On July 27 2014 01:09 FakePseudo wrote:
If you're not having the chance to work with latex, why not work with plain text and version control/autopatches? Not like ms word will facilitate the subsequent formatting in any signifcant way.
Sorry but I don't understand your suggestion.
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EPT
