Format Painter is a time-saving tool I only recently discovered while working with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This handy button allows you to copy the formatting from one place to another. In Microsoft Excel, you can copy formulas, fonts, you name it. Microsoft Word works the same way. It works like copying and pasting; the difference is that it doesn’t change your actual numbers and text, it simply copies the formatting of the section you highlight.
By Cheri Lasota
Ever heard of an em dash? I thought not. I hadn’t heard of it until a few years ago, when I finally delved into the subject after much confusion on what a hyphen and dash actually look like. According to the Chicago Manual of Style, “Hyphens and the various dashes all have their specific appearance … and uses.”
There are three types that fiction writers generally use:
- the hyphen: used in compound words, in URLS, and to separate telephone numbers, etc.
– the en dash: used to connect numbers such as dates, times, verses, sports scores, etc.
— the em dash: used to set off an explanatory element or to indicate a sudden break in thought or sentence structure.
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