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Small writing tip

Home › Forums › General History Chat › Small writing tip

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Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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  • June 26, 2009 at 10:18 am #1634 Reply
    skiguy
    Moderator

    This is something I do that may be helpful to others.  Whenever I write a first (or 15th) draft, I will put my footnotes or citations within the text and keep them there until the final revision.  This is especially helpful when or if you end up not using that particular cited sentence/phrase or have to add a new one. You won't have to reformat the whole paper to make it fit properly or move the citation when the second or third line of the footnote ends up going to another page.  All you do is c&p the citation to the bottom of the page and then you won't lose any lines or have extra blank space at the bottom of the page (like I've done a few times).

    June 26, 2009 at 3:25 pm #15863 Reply
    Phidippides
    Keymaster

    I'm not entirely clear what you mean by this.  What do you do, then, for the “final revision”?

    June 26, 2009 at 4:15 pm #15864 Reply
    skiguy
    Moderator

    I will start writing it like this:Caesar was born in 100 BC (full citation).  He became emperor in whatever year (full citation).Since all that is on the same page for the final revision I just c&p the citations and place them at the bottom of the page like this:Caesar was born in 64 BC.1 He became emperor in whatever year21full citation2full citationIf I just wrote those sentences and left the citation as 1 in my first draft, then when I try to add the full citation I have to make sure I have the room left at the bottom of the page otherwise the citation will go to the next page.

    June 26, 2009 at 5:11 pm #15865 Reply
    Phidippides
    Keymaster

    I'm not sure what program you're using, but it sounds like you're manually putting in superscript for your footnotes.  The program I use, OpenOffice, has an automatic footnoting system (under Insert > Footnote/Endnote) which prevents footnotes from running onto the next page (unless it's really long).  I know that Microsoft Word has the same type of automatic footnotes as well.The benefit of using the built-in footnoting function is that it does the numbers automatically; if I want to take a paragraph from page 19 and put it in page 4, for example, I can cut and paste it and the footnote numbers will automatically adjust.

    June 26, 2009 at 5:24 pm #15866 Reply
    skiguy
    Moderator

    I can never get that feature in Office to work correctly.  Maybe I should try OpenOffice someday.

    June 28, 2009 at 6:39 pm #15867 Reply
    skiguy
    Moderator

    I know that Microsoft Word has the same type of automatic footnotes as well.

    I just figured out how to do it in Word.  I feel so stupid.  As far as this tip goes….nevermind.  :-[

    June 29, 2009 at 4:13 am #15868 Reply
    Phidippides
    Keymaster

    You'll come to really appreciate the footnote tool…I don't know how I'd survive without it.

    June 29, 2009 at 11:05 am #15869 Reply
    scout1067
    Participant

    Both Word and Open Office can do amazing things.  While writing my theses I am finding stuff that Word can do that is making the job immenseley easier.  Word's indexing feature alone will save me hours of time.

    July 8, 2009 at 11:09 pm #15870 Reply
    DonaldBaker
    Participant

    I downloaded Open Office and I think I am done purchasing Word.  If you have 99% of the real thing for free, why buy the real thing?

    July 27, 2009 at 4:16 pm #15871 Reply
    Phidippides
    Keymaster

    I downloaded Open Office and I think I am done purchasing Word.  If you have 99% of the real thing for free, why buy the real thing?

    After I got my present desktop in the fall of 2005, I downloaded OpenOffice since the computer didn't come with Word.  Although it's no problem to save OO documents in Word format, the formatting is sometimes a bit different so it's annoying trying to make sure such documents look right.  Now what I try to do is save documents in pdf format so that the formatting is preserved just as I want it.

    July 28, 2009 at 8:26 am #15872 Reply
    scout1067
    Participant

    The current version of Word also allows to save documents as PDF's.  It is my preferred method because it is harder to change a PDF document than a Word file.  I am uneasy submitting anything to a third party that is easy to edit.

    July 28, 2009 at 12:49 pm #15873 Reply
    Wally
    Participant

    The current version of Word also allows to save documents as PDF's.  It is my preferred method because it is harder to change a PDF document than a Word file.  I am uneasy submitting anything to a third party that is easy to edit.

    Reason I keep both files… for many things I used pagepaker 6.5 for the perm. doc. as I can control specail formating better (too many years working on school annuals)  ;)Wally

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