How we show edits

When we return edited content to our clients, we want them to have complete control over what they do with that content. Some may be curious about exactly what changes we have made, while others may be happy with most of our edits but want to retain or make further changes to parts of the original text.

Whatever the preference of our clients, we like to be accommodating. That’s why we provide them with a record of every edit we make to their content.

How do we do this? It depends on which word-processing program you use. There are many out there, but only a few are widely used. Here’s a rundown of the most common ones we use with our clients:

Microsoft Word is still the most popular word processor out there. Most people are familiar with the program but may not know about its “Track Changes” feature (see the guide for the 2007 version of Word).

Word is handy because it can display all edits inline. This allows you to go through your content word by word and either accept or reject each change individually. Happy with all of the edits? Then simply select the “Accept all changes in document” option, and you’re left with a clean version of the final content.

If you like the layout of Word but don’t own Microsoft Office, we also collaborate with the similar but free Open Office Writer.

Google Docs has quickly become a viable web-based alternative to MS Word. Its advantages are that it is free, can be shared easily with anyone, and doesn’t leave a messy trail of documents lying in your email account.

One nifty feature of Google Docs is its readability statistics. If you’re wondering how easy your content is to read, click on “Tools,” then “Word count,” and you’ll get a convenient listing of your content’s score according to a few different readability indices.

Google Docs also automatically stores every change to a document, without needing the click of a button. Its major disadvantage, though, is that it lays out those changes in a separate list—not quite as neat as Word when you want to see all of the edits together or find one particular edit quickly.

Whatever your preference, just let us know and we’ll collaborate with you using the program best suited to your style of working.

And if you want an even easier time posting your content to the web, we can add simple HTML coding to our edits, so that the tags for headlines, lists, and other elements are already included when you receive your edits.