Devilish Details
Fiendish Tips for Writers and Editors
APA Style hacks: Top 15 APA7 style edits that will save you time (and money)
The Detail Devil has turned 7 years old! And to celebrate, I’ve put together my Top 15 most commonly edited APA7 style points, gleaned from my applying APA style to hundreds of manuscripts over the last 7 years.
Benefits of keyboard shortcuts in Word and how to assign your own
Keyboard shortcuts enable you to work faster, more efficiently and with increased precision, thereby saving you time and improving your productivity. And by giving your mousing hand a break, shortcuts can help you reduce the risk of repetitive strain injury. In this blog post, I show you the most popular keyboard shortcuts to get you started, along with a few lesser known ones that will have you working like a pro.
APA Style hacks: How to implement the em/en dash in Word (4 simple ways)
In APA Style, en and em dashes have specific uses. In this blog post, I introduce you to the two dashes, explaining when you should implement them according to APA Style. I then demonstrate four simple ways to insert them into your Word manuscript.
Passive Voice: When is it the better choice?
Many style guides recommend using active voice wherever possible, but is passive voice acceptable, and if so, when might it be a better choice than active voice?
How to Make the Most of Word’s Custom Dictionary
This blog post outlines the benefits of creating a custom dictionary for each unique writing or editing project, followed by step-by-step instructions on how to create, add/edit/delete a word, make default, change the language of and transfer your custom dictionary to another person.
APA Seventh: What’s New? 20 Changes You Need to Know About
The APA published the seventh edition of its publication manual in Oct 2019. So what’s new? This blog post highlights changes from the sixth edition, including reference to the manual’s section numbers and links to resources.
How to Eliminate Wordiness: 8 Fiendish Tips for Clear, Succinct Writing
Writing clearly and succinctly is important for communicating effectively to your intended audience, and to do this, economy of expression is key. This blog post gives 8 Fiendish Tips for eliminating wordiness, resulting in clear, succinct writing.
A Guide to Working with Word’s Track Changes + 5 Fiendish Tips to Use Them More Efficiently
This blog post guides you through the basics of turning Track Changes on and off, choosing what to show as markup, viewing the changes to your text in different ways and accepting/rejecting a reviewer’s recommended edits.
How to Apply, Modify and Create Word Styles with Confidence
This blog post shows you how to confidently apply consistent formatting throughout your document using Word’s in-built styles, modify styles to suit your needs, and create new styles from scratch.
