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- Type Over Text In Word For Mac
- Type your text over the placeholder text. Select the text to display the Drawing Tools tab. Go to either the WordArt Styles or Text Styles group, then select Text Effects, which is represented by a blue and white letter A. In Word 2016, Text Effects displays when you hover the mouse cursor over it.
- Typing Over Text in Microsoft Word. One day, all of a sudden, your text isn't inserting anymore, but typing over top of your previous text. There's a few things you can do, but they all accomplish the same task. Hit your Insert key once. My wireless keyboard doesn't.
- Dictate messages and documents on Mac. With keyboard dictation, you can dictate text anywhere you can type it. Turn it on in the Dictation pane of Keyboard preferences—your dictated utterances are sent to Apple to process your requests. A feedback window gauges your speaking volume and provides basic dictation controls.
- Whether you frequently communicate with people from around the world or need to compose a writing that is correct for the particular language, you likely need to use accents when typing your letters. Luckily, you have a couple of different ways to pop those accents into your writings. This tutorial shows you how to type accents on a Mac keyboard.
Ok, so you’ve formatted your text to be two columns in Word and you’ve typed something in the first column. You haven’t filled the first column because you don’t want to. Fair enough – it’s your document – your choice. But you do want to type something in the next or second column but however hard you try – Word won’t play nice.
Some of us are old enough to recall life before word processors. (It wasn’t that long ago.) Consider this sentence:
How did we survive in the days before every last one of us had access to word processors and computers on our respective desks?
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That’s not a great sentence — it’s kind of wordy and repetitious. The following sentence is much more concise:
It’s hard to imagine how any of us got along without word processors.
The purpose of this mini-editing exercise is to illustrate the splendor of word processing. Had you produced these sentences on a typewriter instead of a computer, changing even a few words would hardly seem worth it. You would have to use correction fluid to erase your previous comments and type over them. If things got really messy, or if you wanted to take your writing in a different direction, you would end up yanking the sheet of paper from the typewriter in disgust and begin pecking away anew on a blank page.
Word processing lets you substitute words at will, move entire blocks of text around with panache, and apply different fonts and typefaces to the characters. You won’t even take a productivity hit swapping typewriter ribbons in the middle of a project.
Before running out to buy Microsoft Word (or another industrial-strength and expensive) word processing program for your Mac, remember that Apple includes a respectable word processor with OS X. The program is TextEdit, and it call s the Applications folder home.
The first order of business when using TextEdit (or pretty much any word processor) is to create a new document. There’s really not much to it. It’s about as easy as opening the program itself. The moment you do so, a window with a large blank area on which to type appears.
Have a look around the window. At the top, you see Untitled because no one at Apple is presumptuous enough to come up with a name for your yet-to-be-produced manuscript.
Notice the blinking vertical line at the upper-left edge of the screen, just below the ruler. That line, called the insertion point, might as well be tapping out Morse code for “start typing here.”
Indeed, you have come to the most challenging point in the entire word processing experience, and it has nothing to do with technology. The burden is on you to produce clever, witty, and inventive prose, lest all that blank space go to waste.
Okay, got it? At the blinking insertion point, type with abandon. Type something original like this:
It was a dark and stormy night
If you typed too quickly, you may have accidentally produced this:
It was a drk and stormy nihgt
Fortunately, your amiable word processor has your best interests at heart. See the dotted red line below drk and nihgt? That’s TextEdit’s not-so-subtle way of flagging a likely typo. (This presumes that you’ve left the default Check Spelling as You Type activated in TextEdit Preferences.)
You can address these snafus in several ways. You can use the computer’s Delete key to wipe out all the letters to the left of the insertion point. (Delete functions like the backspace key on the Smith Coronayou put out to pasture years ago.) After the misspelled word has been quietly sent to Siberia, you can type over the space more carefully. All traces of your sloppiness disappear.
Delete is a wonderfully handy key. You can use it to eliminate a single word such as nihgt. But in this little case study, you have to repair drk too. And using Delete to erase drk means sacrificing and and stormy as well. That’s a bit of overkill.
Use one of the following options instead:
- Use the left-facing arrow key (found on the lower-right side of the keyboard) to move the insertion point to the spot just to the right of the word you want to deep-six. No characters are eliminated when you move the insertion point that way. Only when the insertion point is where it ought to be do you again hire your reliable keyboard hit-man, Delete.
- Eschew the keyboard and click with the mouse to reach this same spot to the right of the misspelled word. Then press Delete.
Now try this helpful remedy. Right-click anywhere on the misspelled word. A list appears with suggestions. Single-click the correct word and, voilà, TextEdit instantly replaces the mistake. Be careful in this example not to choose dork.
Ah, the em dash — that multifaceted, all-purpose punctuation mark that can act as a parenthesis, comma, colon, semicolon or even quotation mark. It’s used in so many manners: to separate clauses that still want to be close friends; to create asides or add emphasis or signal amplification or denote interruption.
With such a wide range of acceptable applications, an em dash might seem easy to use. But despite its flexibility, there’s one way in which the em dash is anything but intuitive — and that’s typographically.
If you want to benefit from the em dash without littering your manuscript with double hyphens (–), here’s what you need to know.
Here’s how to type an em dash in your favorite word processor
No matter where you do your writing, there’s a trick to ensuring you get the perfect em dash every time!
In Google Docs
Although MS Word has long been considered industry standard, many writers have moved on to Google’s free cloud-based word processing platform, Google Docs. However, in this program, dual hyphens stay dual hyphens by default.
In order to put an em dash into your work, navigate to the “Insert” menu, and then select “Special Characters.” Instead of scrolling through the various symbols available to you, you can simply search for “em,” and the dash will come right up.
If you — like me — use Google Docs almost exclusively and love your em dashes, I’d recommend creating an automatic substitution command.
Click on the “Tools” menu, and then click on “Preferences.” At the bottom, you’ll see a tick box next to the words “Automatic substitution.” Ensure it’s toggled on, and then set a command to replace — with — (grab the symbol from the “Special Characters” menu referenced above, and copy/paste it into the right-hand text box).
Ta-da! You never have to go menu hunting for em dashes again.
In MS Word
One of the most popular word processors on the market, MS Word offers users a variety of ways to make an em dash appear.
The first of these is AutoFormat, which is likely already enabled and will automatically create an em dash when you type a double hyphen (–). In order to make AutoFormat change your — to —, you’ll need to type one word before and one word after the double hyphen, without pressing the spacebar until the end.
Example: hocus–pocus (space) becomes hocus—pocus
If AutoFormat is not enabled (and you don’t want it to be), you can also find em dashes by navigating to the Insert tab, selecting Symbol, choosing More Symbols, and clicking the em dash on the second row. Finally, there’s also a keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+minus, where Num Lock is enabled and you’re utilizing the minus symbol on your numeric keypad.
On a Mac
If you’re operating on a Mac, the basic instructions for MS Word and Google Docs above should still apply — though you’ll have different keyboard shortcuts. In Word, you’ll hold down Shift+ Option+minus rather than the Ctrl+Alt+minus mentioned above.
In the native Mac word processor, Text Edit, you’ll have access to the Emojis & Symbols menu under Edit, which you can browse for the em dash.
Okay…but when do I use an em dash?
If you’re like most of the writers we know, chances are you’re already comfortable employing this enigmatic piece of punctuation— if anything, you use it too much. (Yes, I could cram an em-dash into just about every sentence I write if my editors would allow it. Who says you have to follow grammar rules?!)
Indeed, em dashes are so versatile it’s hard to find examples wherein they’re truly wrong.
But just in case you’re looking for ways to spice up your punctuation, here are a few scenarios in which an em dash is a valid option.
To set off parentheticals
Just as you use parentheses to set aside auxiliary information (like this), you can use em dashes for the same purpose. However, where parentheses cast the information very much as an aside, em dashes have a tendency to emphasize the information — so be sure you choose wisely.
Em dashes are also particularly useful in setting aside appositives that contain commas, since they offer a less cluttered, more streamlined sentence to the reader.
Examples:
- Portland is a city where the weather — by which we mean rain, and a lot of it — can be a detractor for those who are susceptible to seasonal affective disorder.
- Learning to use proper punctuation — including periods, commas, question marks and more—will make you into a much stronger writer.
In place of a semicolon or colon
We’ve already talked about when to use a semicolon and their plain-old-colon cousins. In many cases, an em dash can be subbed in for either of these punctuation marks.
For instance, if you’re separating an independent clause and a list, an em dash is just as valid an option as a colon. An em dash can also separate two independent clauses, just like a semicolon does, though it may feel more casual and signify that the two ideas are quite closely related.
Examples:
- There are a few things you need for a safe hiking trip — sunscreen, water and high-quality footwear.
- We still aren’t sure if the manuscript is going to be accepted — we’re in a rather nail-bitey mood as of late.
To signal interruptions or shifts
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When writing narratives or dialogue, em dashes become even more useful; they can help you bring a reader into the scene by displaying interruptions or changes in tone.
Examples:
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- “Where are we goi—”
“Shh,” he interrupted her, grinning. “Just trust me on this one, okay?” - First comes love, then comes marriage — then comes the $30,000 bill for the wedding.
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So now you’ve got everything you need to put em dashes in your own writing — the when, the where and the how. So what are you waiting for? Get writing!
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