Removing graphic lines from Microsoft Word

One of my jobs as a copy-editor was to deal with any oddities in a Word document that might cause problems for the typesetter. Once upon a time, this effectively meant stripping out virtually all the formatting and replacing it with textual codes (e.g.  <H1> to indicate a top-level subheading). Latterly, typesetting programs became much better at coping with Word styles, so this aspect of my job was more a matter of making sure that the author had applied styles consistently throughout the document.

But there are still occasions when one comes across something that needs to be stripped out. One of those annoyances would be the automatic graphic lines that Word is so good at creating (just type three dashes and press Enter) in even the oddest places (I have occasionally come across them in the middle of a set of footnotes!). The first time I encountered one of these, which an author had inadvertently created between a couple of paragraphs, I spent hours trying to delete the thing.

Once you know what to do, it only takes moments to get rid of the offending line:

• Place the cursor in the paragraph above the unwanted line.
• Go to the Home tab.
• In the Paragraph section, click the arrow to the right of the Borders button. This will bring up a drop-down menu of options.
• Choose the No border option from the menu. And the line will disappear.

On splitting infinitives

From a letter from Raymond Chandler to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly:

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have. I think your proofreader is kindly attempting to steady me on my feet, but much as I appreciate the solicitude, I am really able to steer a fairly clear course, provided I get both sidewalks and the street between.

Copy-editors (which is what Chandler meant when he said ‘proofreader’) really do need to develop a sensitivity to their author’s prose style. Their job (or, at least, an important part of it) is to polish the manuscript so that the author is shown at their best not reduce the text to some imagined standard English.

Lesser-known editing symbols

 Here’s a piece of editing humour, which reminds me of my days as a copy-editor. Some of those ‘lesser-known’ marks would have come in handy at times!