TLC Tips of the Week:                          from Helen Olberg

This week’s tip applies to Microsoft Word.

Do you get frustrated with ‘the mysteries of Word’? You’re typing away and you realize that Word has made changes to your typing? Sometimes you like what it changes, and sometimes you don’t.

By default, Word’s AutoCorrect feature corrects many common typing mistakes and spelling as you type. For example, if you type teh and a space or other punctuation, AutoCorrect replaces it with "the". If it happens to be at the beginning of a paragraph, AutoCorrect replaces it with “The” to capitalize the first word in a sentence.

You can undo the changes with Ctrl Z shortcut keys or the Undo button … or you can click the AutoCorrect Options button  that appears near text right after an error is corrected to undo the correction. The button first appears as a small, blue box when you rest the mouse pointer near text that is automatically corrected, and it changes to a button icon when you point to it.

To see all the corrections that Word will do automatically, click Tools,  AutoCorrect Options…

You’ll see five tabs showing what will be ‘corrected’ as you type. It is well worth your time to look through each of the tabbed screens.

Notice that within the AutoCorrect tab you can let Word insert symbols that are included in the built-in list of AutoCorrect entries. For example, type (c) to insert ©. Take some time to scan through the ‘Replace as you type’ built-in list. If the list of built-in entries doesn't contain the corrections that you want, you can add your own entries.

… Of course, you need to be careful not to make an entry that will replace a real word. As an example, you could add initials and a name to the list.

As an example, typing JMS could be replaced automatically by John M. Smith, but be careful putting in COD to be replaced by College of DuPage – you’d get aggravated if you were typing about cod fish. You can always undo the change, but a better entry might be CODu

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