Electronic editing

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Or "Report from the enemy camp." Last week I found myself in the company
of a number of other copy editors, many of whom were using Word to edit
on the computer. I questioned how they could do that, with a program that
resolutely hides all formatting (something one needs to see to copy edit
well). Turns out they are NOT using out-of-the-box, plain-vanilla Word.
No, the companies they work for have paid (and paid plenty, I'll wager)
third parties to create plug-ins, add-ons, templates, and macros to make
Word a--supposedly--suitable platform for online editing.
	Now it's true that one needed some tweaking to do this in XyW too. But
(Leslie will correct me if I have this wrong) that tweaking was done in
house, by admitedly skillful end-users. I really question whether any
Word end-user, no matter how savvy, could have constructed those add-ons
for Word. To do so no doubt requires privy knowledge of APIs and other
stuff that Micro$oft doesn't want end-users to know. Only those who have
signed (in blood?) nondisclosure agreements.
Patricia