Hello and welcome to Microsoft Word for writers. My name is Jamie Stevens, I am founder and CEO of your of the book press and a Microsoft Office certified instructor. This course is designed for you as a writer or author to help you wrangle this word processor, and get it to bend to your will so that you can stay about the job of writing and creating in this world. The course is divided into three sections may primarily, we'll learn the basics, which could be everything from word wrap, even selecting the version of Microsoft Office that you're going to use to work with, up through font characteristics dealing with paragraphs and line spacing, page characteristics, including page breaks or scene breaks that you want to include there. And then we'll move into intermediate aspects of the program using cut, copy and paste in more powerful ways than ever, then you've known accessing the full clipboard and even Format Painter to make your job much easier, especially when you're formatting documents that are lengthy.

Really digging into some of the options that Find and Replace can give to you using special characters to remove things like when you've double spaced between when you've put two spaces, not a double space line break, but when you put two spaces between sentences, so that you can meet the new publishing standards of single space in there, finding your word count very easily accessing all the features that are available in spelling and grammar check. Even without additional add on plugins like Grammarly that you might have heard of Microsoft Word has a ton of these already built in looking at ways to use your headers and footers, especially if you're going to be submitting manuscripts. This can be a lovely way to for you to keep all of your pages numbered and together easily. Or if you're formatting for self publishing or independent publishing ways that you can use this feature to distinguish yourself in the field because there are many indie publishers out there.

And when we pick up books by them, we notice right away that there are certain elements of those headers and footers that just don't quite match the standards that we've been used to. So I'll teach you specifically how to make that work for you so that you can look indistinguishable from traditional publishing will cover things like the synonym lookup feature, and the both the source as well as a new options to translate right within your Word document. We'll look at ways to insert pictures and format those both in size, resolution quality and even frames around them to dress them. Up, as well as symbols. So if you happen to type and need foreign words that have accents, or things like this, I'll show you where to locate and insert all of those easily and add hyperlinks. If you're a blogger, this could be very important for you to be able to link back to sources that you're including in your text.

Or if you're formatting something like a modern ebook, where you want to have hyperlinks in the table of contents to allow your readers to immediately jump to certain chapters in the book, this will be a game changer for you. And then finally, we'll head over to the rock star advanced portion of the course where I show you the text to speech dictate new available plugin for that. The feature that will allow your computer to read your document aloud back to you so that you may hear it in a new way than editing on screen. I'll introduce styles usage The navigation panel. Now if you've been tempted by Scrivener to move to a place where they say that you can easily move your chapters around as you're devising the plot and layout of your book, I'll show you how to do that in Microsoft Word even simpler.

So I think that, for me, that is one of the favorite tools that I use in the course of my daily writing, and editing. I'll show you the full thesaurus and how that's used. And in in addition to the spelling and grammar check that we'll have spoken about in the intermediate area. We'll talk about a system that can be incorporated into that called the flesh Kincaid reading statistics that will help you understand especially if you're writing for younger audiences, perhaps middle grade readers, help you understand the academic level of your writing so that you can make changes appropriately there. I'll help you format tables of contents. Almost one click if you can believe that, utilizing some of the things that we'll have learned in that style section, and covering things like adding those pretty little leader dots that go out to a page number on the right hand side, making it super simple for you.

We'll also have a section dealing with footnotes and endnotes, so if you're writing academically, or you need to reference a source within your document, I'll show you how to add those quickly and easily and not be a formatting nightmare. If you ever add more text or delete text and your footnotes change pages, I know that that can absolutely wreak havoc on your entire production schedule. So I'll show you how to make that simple. I'll also show you if you're of my age and generation or even, you know 1020 years younger you may not be aware of that Microsoft Word makes citations and bibliographies stupid simple now. So I'll show you how you can add those citations within your document and almost One click wonder again, create your entire Bibliography format and whether you're for MLA or APA format, or Kate Arabian, one click to change between those formatting of bibliographic citations.

Wow, that is huge for me. I'll also introduce you how to index your book. So it let's say you're writing a cookbook or something that needs an index. I'll show you how to add those references to the items that you want to include in the index, and then plug in that index again in a one click wonder. And we will discover things like spellcheck available in other languages, and keyboard shortcuts that you can use all along at every level of the game to make your life simpler so that you don't have to move your hand back and forth to a mouse if, if that's your method of mouse rather than a touchpad. And then we'll dig into some super powerful tools.

Tools for revision and editing, including Track Changes in Microsoft Word. If you're going to be working with a professional editor, or perhaps even sending your manuscript out to two or three other folks to offer feedback on your book, this can be a wonderful time saver for you, where items can be marked right in the manuscript, but they do not permanently change the text. And so this can be a wonderful way. So we'll dig richly into that Microsoft bracket changes. And then finally, we'll end with formatting your book for manuscript submission to agents and editors, or formatting, a very, very overview version of formatting your book for independent publishing. And I'll give you some hints for shortcuts that she might use, featuring some free services that are available outside of Microsoft Word.

So I look forward to spending this time with you and ask salutely to you finishing your writing projects and books and seeing them in print published for you Because ultimately, your words have power. And when you can share them, that's when the world can benefit as well. Thank you and welcome