Chapter 8

EDITING TEXT

After downloading a book or article it is necessary to do a little editing to maximize later reading. All of these steps are optional, but you will be very pleased if you go through these steps. All of these steps can be done very quickly. Many of them may have already been done in the scanning process, if this was used.

Do not worry about paragraph indents. All these indents (if present) are automatically removed later during Proportionalizing.

The Last Word on a Page

The last word on the page may be broken apart from the first word on the next page. If so, it will be missing a hyphen. You should add a hyphen to such words. Alternatively, you can delete the hard return between the two word parts, thereby knitting the two parts together. Doing this is often a lot more work as the page number often falls between.

Page Numbers on Top of the Page/Remove Header

Make sure that page numbers are on the top of the page. If the page number and header is still on the top of the page you can manually delete the header and add the characters"p#" before the page number. You can also use our macro programs to do this quickly. Click just after the page number if the number is first on the line; this will move the cursor to this point. Now type: F9. All header text to the right of the page number will be removed and the characters "p#" automatically inserted to the left of the page number. If header information is to the left of the page number, click just before the page number; this will move the cursor to this point. Now type: F8. All header text to the left of the page number will be removed and the characters "p#" will be automatically inserted to the left of the page number.

Marks for Text Boxes and Captions for Graphics

All of these should be marked with << before and >> afterwards.

Note: Simple one-column outlines and one-column lists are fine to leave as is.

Footnotes

Footnotes should either be cut out completely or placed next to their reference number in the text. You also need to type a period after any footnote number in the actual text. This way sentences will end properly with a final period. This problem arises because footnote numbers are added right next to the end of sentences without a space break. Hence they are read as part of the preceding word. Adding a final period after the number allows the end of the sentence to be recognized as such by the PR program.

Next, select and cut footnotes. Either discard them or paste them next to their reference number in the text, separated by a space or treat them like captions.

Margin Notes

Margin notes should be removed or treated as captions. The easiest thing to do is to cut them out when you block text.

Separating Two Pages Scanned at the Same Time

The easy way to do this is to automatically zone text as "no zones". Then before you start text recognition rezone each page. Only include the page number and not the rest of the header or footer.

Math

Math equations need to have the spaces removed between characters. Otherwise, each number in the equation will appear on a separate line when they are presented in Proportional Reading.

Furthermore, scanning usually does a terrible job on sub and super scripts as well as fancy math graphics. If you do not want to rework the math, it may be easier to just treat math sections like a graph and have the student refer to the appropriate page in the book. Type in the words "SeePage".

The third and best approach for math equations is to cut them from the text and re-scan them as a line drawing graphic which you copy and paste into the word processor text at the right point.

Adding Interactive Pauses

If you want to add pauses to the text to make interactive questions and answers out of the text as it is read, now is a good time to do this. All you do is to type a ~ in the sentence where you want a pause to occur. When the text is Proportionalized, these marks are automatically turned into hidden signals which the reading programs recognize if you so choose. Otherwise, they will not play out.

Adding Markings to Chapter Titles and Sub-Titles

Now is one time to add markings manually to text for chapter titles and sub-titles. Use <:#; <:=; <:; <:-; and > respectively just before the first word they refer to. Of course you can also add these markings as you read. See section on outlining text.

You can use the keyboard and shift key in the regular manner or you can quickly type marking combinations using the following keystrokes:

for <:# (indicates a chapter title) Type: Option+a or aaa

for <:= (indicates a primary sub-title) Type: Option+s or sss

for <: (indicates a secondary sub-title) Type: Option+d or ddd

for <:- (indicates a tertiary sub-title) Type: Option+f or fff

for <:> (marks a selected name or word) Type: Option+g or ggg

for <:% (marks a new part of a book) Type: Option+h or hhh

for p# (marks a page number) Type: Option+z or zzz

for << (marks beginning of caption or box of text) Type: Option+Comma or 555

for << (marks end of caption or box of text) Type: Option+Period or 554

If you use the triple letters and 555 and 554 you need to run the change code program in WordPerfect which will change these keystrokes into the right code. These triple letter codes and 555 and 554 are usually used on the Caere documents where macro keystrokes won't work. They save a great deal of time. To run the change code program in WordPerfect just type: Control+Option+Command+c.

Title and Sub-Title Lines Should End with One or Two Hard Returns

Note: Be sure sub-titles are not part of regular lines of text. Sub-titles should end with a hard return; that is, they should not be the first part of a line of text. Add a hard return if necessary. You do this by pressing the return key. Also the outlining program finds a title and subtitle code and then selects all the text to the first hard return. Therefore, knit the titles and sub-titles together until they have just one or more hard returns at the end. This way your outline entries will be complete.

To check outline entries of titles and sub-titles and key words, just type: Control+F4 and you will move to the next outline code.

Reversed Titles

Reversed titles, where the letters are white and the background black, will not scan. You must retype these titles if any.

To Remove Spaces Between Letters in Line of Text

Sometimes a line of text comes out with unwanted spaces between the letters. To fix this situation, place the cursor at the beginning of the line and type: Control+minus. Then read spaces between words.

Move Captions and Boxed Text to End of Section

It is very important to move captions and boxes of text to the end of the sub-section of main text which they are in. Otherwise, the flow of text is hopelessly interrupted by these intursions. Placed at the end of the sub-section of a chapter to which they refer, they fit in perfectly. You will discover that many text books are written with the formula: one picture or chart and caption, or text box, per sub-section. One does not usually realize this with pictures and graphics and text boxes all over the page.

To Quickly Remove an Entire Line of Text

Place or leave the insertion point anywhere on the line and type: F10.

Saving Prepared Text

It is a very good idea to save text that is all prepared for Proportionalizing. This is text that can be read as a regular word processing file. Furthermore, saving text at this point takes up a lot less memory. It actually takes six times as much storage to save the same amount of text once it has been Proportionalized.

If you are working with a lot of books which you are not going to use that often, you may want to save them as text files. Then you can Proportionalize a whole book overnight as necessary. This means you can save the average book on just one diskette (1.4 megs.).

Alternatively, about seventy pages of Proportionalized text can be saved on each diskette (1.4 megs.)

The best approach for a school is to keep all the books in current use on a file server in Proportional format on locked files. Each student downloads Proportionalized text as needed from the central memory onto his own, or lab computer and plays it as he or she wishes, marking the text as desired and saving selections onto personal files. This way text can also be sent via modem over the phone lines to students at home. This process can operate automatically without involving school personnel.

Text Section with Too Many Hard Returns and Tabs

Occasionally, the ocr program will create a short section of text which is all chopped up. It will have extra tabs and hard returns in it. It almost always occurs on indented text. This problem is very easy to fix. All you need to do is to select the section of text and then go up to the Search menu and activate Find/Change. Pull down the Direction sub menu to "Within Selection" then insert "hard return" in the find line and click on Change All. Next insert "tab" on the find line and again click on Change All. Your section of text will be all fixed up.

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