In today’s world, most administrative texts are produced on a word processor. Within this context, those who work with text need to be able to exploit the full potential of digital text processing, a field that goes far beyond the textual and linguistic issues that are dealt with in other sections of this guide. Much of what could be said is applicable to all languages, but in this section, as far as possible, we will restrict the discussion to aspects that affect texts in English.

Popular word processors, such as the broadly equivalent Microsoft Word (commercial software that is a registered trademark of Microsoft), and LibreOffice (open-source software), are sophisticated configurable programs with many tools to improve productivity, that is, to work faster and achieve higher quality. These programs are installed with a series of default settings and while some affect the creation of texts in all languages, certain settings can specifically affect English. An example is the language setting for the text, which establishes the spell-checker dictionary to be used, among other things. If you are typing in English but the spell checker is checking for words in Catalan, productivity goes down rather than up. Default settings for new documents can be established by creating a template document and saving your preferred settings into it. Precisely how to do that will depend on the program and the version you are using.

There are various kinds of language tools. Not all of these are installed with the word processor itself, but usually the relevant files for English will be. In general, different variants of English are available, so you need to check that the variety chosen is the one you want to use. Language tools not distributed with the original versions can usually be downloaded from the Web.

10.1 Spellcheckers, grammar checkers and thesauruses

Spellcheckers are perhaps the most useful of the language tools on offer. Incorrect spellings are automatically detected. You can set up the checker so that it detects spelling mistakes as you type or you can turn it off and activate it later.

It is easy enough to use the wrong word, however, typing for example sight instead of site. In such cases your spell checker will not detect any error, so you still need to check your work carefully after typing it.

Another potential problem is that you may disagree with the established criteria of the spellchecker. For example, does your institution prefer cooperate or co-operate? This is largely a matter of taste. In such cases, you can add what you consider to be exceptions to a local dictionary so these spellings will be accepted in the future but only for documents edited on the same computer.

Word processors offer users grammar checkers and thesauruses, but non-native users should bear in mind that these are not always as useful as other similar tools available online. For example, while grammar checkers can detect a lack of verb concord or suggest the punctuation of long sentences to improve readability, they can also mark a sentence as unacceptable when there is really nothing wrong with it. And while thesauruses can suggest synonyms of selected words, they are not always very complete and do not include guidance on differences between suggestions. For this reason, if you are writing in English but it is not your first language, you will need to find other tools and resources to support your word processor’s grammar checker and thesaurus.

10.2 Automatic correction tools

The most popular word processors, such as Microsoft Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs, all include correction tools (often called Autocorrect), which automatically replace certain typed sequences of characters with other characters. These tools are language specific so, if you use them, make sure they are correctly configured. Otherwise, you may find yourself unable to enter a correct sequence at all, because the program will unhelpfully change what you type.

Automatic substitution of characters may be a useful option, if set up in accordance with the way you want to work. It can include the following:

1. Correction of common typing errors (such as teh to the or abotu to about)
2. Automatic suggested completion of long words
3. Expansion of abbreviated forms
4. Substitution of character sequences to access special characters, such as two consecutive hyphens replaced by a dash or 1/4 replaced by ¼
5. Replacement of unlikely sequences, such as double capital letters at the beginning of a sentence replaced by a single capital letter
6. Automatic formatting of lists

10.3 Configuring text format and language tools in your word processor

Configuring language tools is important because, if you are using a local version of Microsoft Word, the default settings for your document may not be for English, even though your document is in that language. In this section we outline how to configure the tools in your word processor and establish suitable default settings for an administrative document in British English. The following guidelines focus on the use of the Catalan version of the desktop program Microsoft Word 2021.

To create a template with suitable default settings, create a new Microsoft Word document and then follow the steps below.

• Maximise the Estils panel on the Inici ribbon to visualise it. Position the pointer over the Normal style and an arrow for a drop-down menu will appear. Right-click on the style or left-click on the arrow to open this menu. Choose Modifica and the dialogue box will open.
• Click on the Format button and then on the first item, Tipus de lletra, in the drop-down menu. Here you can choose the default font and its size and colour, among other things. Confirm any changes you make with the D’acord button.
• Select Paràgraf from the same drop-down menu. Click the first tab, Sagnia i espaiat, to establish the line spacing, the paragraph spacing, the indentation, the justification and the tabulation positions. Click on the second tab, Salts de línia i pàgina, to avoid single final lines at the top or bottom of a page, and to insert a page break before each paragraph with this style. Confirm all the changes.
• Select Llengua, choose anglès (Regne Unit) from the list and make sure the box No revisis l’ortografia ni la gramàtica is unchecked. Confirm those changes. (The spellchecker will only work if it has been installed. If in doubt about this, contact the computer service responsible for your hardware and software maintenance.)
• Click on the Anomena i desa in the Fitxer tab. A dialogue box will appear, in which you can give your document a name, such as admin-en-template1. Then open the drop-down menu for Tipus de fitxer and choose Plantilla de Word (*.dotx) and click on Desa.

Your document format preferences are now saved in your template. To create a new empty document based on these settings, double-click on the template file in a Windows Explorer window, or create a new document based on your template by clicking on Crea. (Templates for many kinds of documents are also available online. Such templates tend to focus on complicated formats, such as tri-fold brochures. For simpler documents with a single flow of text, it is preferable to create your own template, as we describe here.)

To view the spellchecker and grammar checker settings, click on the Fitxer tab at the top on the left and choose Opcions to open the corresponding dialogue box. Then choose Correcció from the menu on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side of the box you can establish settings for document proofing. To turn off as-you-write spell checking, uncheck Revisa l’ortografia a mesura que escric. To turn off grammar checking, uncheck Marca els errors gramaticals a mesura que escric. To choose what kinds of error the grammar checker will identify, open the Estil d’escriptura dialogue box by clicking on the Configuració button. Uncheck boxes for items that you do not want the program to automatically correct. Do not forget the Format automàtic a mesura que escric tab in Opcions de la correcció automàtica, where you can set up the automatic treatment of quotation marks, among other things. When you finish, save your changes and exit the dialogue box. These autocorrect settings are not saved into your template but are associated with your profile as a user on that specific computer.

You can establish various other general settings in the Visualització and Avançades tabs in Opcions del Word.

10.4 Special characters

Some characters are particularly problematic for electronic media. For example, the older type-setting tradition of curly apostrophes (’) and curly quotation marks (“ ”) corresponds to print media. They were not available on mechanical typewriters at all and are not immediately available on computer keyboards either. (They need to be looked up in character tables.) Like straight apostrophes (') and straight quotation marks (" ") they are available on word processors, but curly quotation marks are often misinterpreted by web servers and incorrectly displayed on web pages.

You may encounter problems with other special characters. Our recommendation is to save Microsoft Word documents in .docx format (which, by default, uses standard Unicode UTF-8 character encoding).

10.5 Word wrap and word division

The difference between print and web text editing traditions is not merely confined to character selection. Text justification may also be an issue. Texts for print media such as books, magazines and newspapers are usually fully justified (left and right). Web media, in contrast, tend to be left-justified because they are viewed at different page widths on different screens, and large horizontal gaps may appear between words if a fully justified text is viewed in a narrow window. This problem can be solved in word processing documents if the right dictionaries are installed (if not, words may be divided in the wrong place) and automatic word division is activated. The program will then split long words at the end of lines to reduce the appearance of long spaces between words when full justification is used.

Word wrap is the feature that automatically carries down any word that does not fit at the end of a line. Although it is a fundamental feature of word processors, it can lead to problems when items that should be on the same line are split over two lines. To avoid this, use non-breaking spaces, for instance between an honorific and the following name, and non-breaking hyphens, for instance as a separator between numbers.

In Microsoft Word the following key combinations may be used to insert these characters: Control+Shift+Space for a non-breaking space; Control+Shift+Hyphen for a non-breaking hyphen.

10.6 Team projects and revision of texts

Generally speaking, texts for publication pass through various hands during stages for creation, editing, proofreading, etc. This chain is fragile when using desktop software such as locally installed word processors because the most recent version of the project file is held by only one person at a time (and stored in only one place). Users need to take turns working on the document and send the project file on to the next member of the team when they finish.

This can slow work down and lead to problems of traceability, meaning that it is difficult (or impossible) to know what versions a document has gone through and who has introduced which changes.

This issue is addressed by the Track changes tool in word processors, but as with all digital tools, it is vital to make best use of the instrument provided. (Hidden revisions can be inadvertently distributed in a final version, to the potential embarrassment of all concerned.)

The following guidelines focus on the use of Control de canvis in the Catalan version of Microsoft Word 2010.

To turn Track changes on and off, go to Revisió > Seguiment > Control de canvis or use the key combination Control+Shift+E to toggle Control de canvis on and off.

You can see if you are currently tracking changes by looking for Control de canvis on the status bar (the bottom border of the Microsoft Word window). If this control is not visible, activate it by right clicking on the status bar itself and selecting the corresponding option on the menu that appears.

To control whether tracked changes are displayed in your document, use the drop-down menu controls in the Revisió > Seguiment group. You can modify how changes appear by clicking on the bottom half of the large Control de canvis button and selecting Canvia les opcions de seguiment from the drop-down menu. Experiment with the various options here until you visualise things as you prefer.

Accepting or rejecting changes is different and more permanent than just showing or hiding them. To accept or reject them, use the Revisió > Canvis controls.

If a document has passed through various reviewers with Control de canvis turned on, the proposed modifications will be marked with an identifier for each person. If you click on Revisió > Seguiment > Subfinestra de revisió, you will see this identifier beside each change. When you hold the pointer over a change in the document window, a pop-up text also shows this information.

Each author’s suggestions can be colour-coded in the Canvia les opcions de seguiment dialogue and changes proposed by just one reviewer, for example, can be shown using the Mostra l’etiquetatge > Revisors dialogue.

Control de canvis can be used in combination with the insertion of comments (on the same Revisió ribbon) to create an effective process for proofreading by teams of reviewers, but circulating a document leads to problems of downtime, where team members are held up by sluggish work from their colleagues.

If you are the manager of a group of document reviewers, there are a number of issues to bear in mind, most of which concern actions to be avoided. The most important of these are outlined below.

• Base your document on a template that includes all the paragraph and heading styles you will need. Do not introduce any manual paragraph formatting into the document. Use your template styles instead.
• Never use the Enter key to create extra vertical spacing. If necessary, adjust your template paragraph styles.
• Never use the font and font-size controls to change the appearance of text manually. Incorporate font features into your style definitions instead.
• Never apply italic and bold styling to a whole paragraph to make it look like a heading. Use a real heading style instead.
• Never use the space bar repeatedly to create horizontal space or to centre your text. Make sure your tabulation positions are defined in your template styles and use the tab key to position text. If text needs to be centred, this should be part of the paragraph style definition.
• Never type a manual number to create the effect of a numbered list or heading. Incorporate automatic numbering into the paragraph style instead.
• Never create a page number, a table of contents, an index, a crossreference, and other calculable items by hand. These items should be automatic fields so that they can be updated automatically when the document is modified.
• Use inline images (instead of floating images) to prevent unpredictable movement of text content.

Some of these problems, and many others, may be detected and corrected by skilful use of the Cerca i substitució command. For instance, many touch typists leave double spaces between words unintentionally every time they are momentarily distracted. Such extra spaces may be eliminated by searching for double spaces and replacing them with single spaces throughout the whole document. The same trick may be used to eliminate extra empty paragraphs in a text.

The items listed above are guidelines to avoid frequent text-formatting errors. Once you start to use the built-in features of the word processor to create the desired effects in a reproducible and configurable way, you will find it much more effective than manual formatting.

Current versions of Microsoft Word offer another method of working with a document that has been circulated among various editors: Compara, which is available on the Revisió ribbon. This function allows you to see all the differences between versions of a document and who has proposed each change.

Nonetheless, circulating a document to different members of a team is a cumbersome process. This problem may be addressed by resort to online tools, which is the subject of Section 10.9 Online word processors and other online tools.