Resources for Writers—Microsoft Word

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Microsoft Word is an incredibly useful tool for writers—and one that I think is easy to overlook because we use it all the time.

Features that I use on a regular basis:

Highlighter.  I highlight problem areas that really don’t require explanation as I write my first draft.  This may be the fact that one of my characters doesn’t have a last name, or that a scene has gotten awkward or bogged down.  Maybe I don’t really even know what the problem is, but I want to highlight the area to figure out later.

Find/Replace:  This is very handy when I change character names in the middle of a manuscript. 

Find: I use the find feature to locate my favorite crutch words.  I tend to use just, some, and look a lot and want to find spots in my manuscript where I can remove the crutch word or maybe reword the sentence if needed.

Word’s Track Changes is a necessity when revising with an agent or editor and shows who made what changes or suggestions.  But I also use Track Changes during first drafts.  Instead of taking time looking up character details (are Lisa’s eyes green or blue?)  I add comments in the manuscript’s margins where I have a question.  Lately, I’ve been using the comments feature to change my outline, too.  More about that on Monday.  If you’re not sure how to use Track Changes, writer Jenny Hansen has a nice tutorial.

So…my uses have been fairly basic in the past.  But I’ve found some really interesting ways of using Word that other writers have employed.  Here are some of them:

Create a personalized AutoCorrect.  This one is from Hilary T. Smith.  Maybe you’ve got a character name that you always trip over when you’re typing.  You can program Word to automatically fill in the name whenever you type in a particular series of letters.

Combine different versions of a document (or incorporate beta reader changes and comments):  This helpful explanation is from Jami Gold. This is a helpful feature I’ve used several times when I’ve gotten changes from my editor and my beta reader and my agent.

View your manuscript in different ways. From Cheryl Reifsnyder.   As Cheryl puts it:



Full screen lets me write and edit without distracting menus.


View “side by side” allows me to move back and forth between two documents because they both appear on the screen. Side by side. Go figure.


Full page: This option will show you a full document page on your screen. It’s not ideal for reading text, but it’s a great way to scan a document for blank pages, chapter lengths, and formatting errors.


The REVIEW tab also offers different view options. If you’re using TRACK CHANGES or COMMENTS in the document, you can choose to have them visible or not—which can make it a lot easier to read the text.

Create a Macro that helps you show instead of tell:  This is a really cool way to help tweak your story to make it stronger. Corina Koch MacLeod from the Tech Tools for Writers blog explains: Copy the TellingWords macro, below, from Sub to End Sub and paste it into Word’s Visual Basic Application (VBA). When you run the macro, it will hunt down and highlight those telling words so you can tell them, I mean, show them who’s boss.

Writer Karen Woodward created a similar macro for adverbs.

Auto-outline as you take your story on a tangent.  Writer Martina Boone shows writers how to set up Word to track important changes as you write.

Other helpful posts regarding MS Word:

Using breaks properly (from Jenny Hansen).

Creating manuscript templates in Word—here and here (Jenny Hansen again).

A great list of keyboard shortcuts to use in Word (again, from writer Jenny Hansen…who is also a corporate software trainer).

Don’t have Microsoft Word? Digital Trends posted an article in May 2014, “10 Great Microsoft Office Alternatives” for those who don’t have Office.

Do you use MS Word to write your manuscript?  How do you customize it for your own use?

And–Happy 4th of July to all my US readers!  Hope you’re having a wonderful holiday/long weekend.

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