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More and more editors and proofreaders are realising the huge potential of macros tools – and the macros are free! However, not everyone seems able to benefit from them, so what are the barriers, and are there any solutions?

Confidence barriers

‘It’s too complicated’, ‘I’m not technically minded’, ‘I tried before and simply couldn’t make sense of it.’

Technical barriers

There are computer technicalities to work through, and many people do find that they need support to get things going in the first place.

Conceptual barriers

Unfortunately, to gain the greatest benefit from these tools you will need to learn (some) new ways of working, but that’s true of most new-fangled techno-tools.

Solutions – professional

Ideally, our professional bodies would set up training courses,¹ but sadly, while the macros are free, courses aren’t: it takes time and money to develop and set up the courses, and then you have to shell out money to then take the course(s).

Solutions – self-help – and free!

The two most important barriers to overcome are (a) getting started with macros in the first place and then, once you’re up and running, (b) getting started with FRedit – ‘Find and Replace edit’ – the single most powerful macro, and this does involve grasping some new concepts.

In theory both can be achieved by: ‘Just download these free instructions and follow them:’

(a) Getting started with macros – Macros from Square One

(b) Getting started with FRedit – FRedit from Square One

Links to both are here.

But, being realistic, most people could really do with some help. Our view, however, is that your  own colleagues could help you get through to the next stage – even if they themselves have only recently broken through.

Jennifer and I feel strongly about the huge potential, so please consider working alongside colleagues to help them move forward into this new area.

Practical suggestion

For either of the ‘Square One’ documents, please feel free to contact Paul and arrange a ‘safety net’ Zoom session. The idea is that you sit down and have a go at the relevant Square One, knowing that when (if) you come unstuck you only have to wait until the Zoom session, and Paul will help you through. (Having arranged a date/time with one person, Paul would then advertise it so that others could join in on the day.)

Better still, arrange a time with a colleague to work through the Square One, again perhaps with Paul’s  Zoom as a longstop.

Together we can do this!

Paul Beverley, paul@archivepub.co.uk

Jennifer Yankopolus

30 October 2024

[1] EFA in the States offers Macros from A to Z: six weekly sessions run by the top world macro-trainer, Jennifer Yankopolus. For news of the next course, see Jennifer’s training page: https://macroofthemonth.substack.com/p/training

 

by Paul Beverley

Our recent macro survey shows how much editors value the speed and accuracy gains available, but here I want to concentrate on one of your favourites, FRedit, which for me is the best macro ever.

• Good news: FRedit is potentially the best macro ever
• Bad news: It’s quite a challenge to get started

But our experience as macro trainers is that many editors once felt exactly the same about macros:

• Good news: Macros can potentially save you lots of time
• Bad news: It’s quite a challenge to get started

So what are your ‘best macros’ according to our Editors Macro Survey (spring 2024)?

• 1          CaseThisWord
• 2          DocAlyse
• 3=       GoogleFetch
• 3=       [Dictionary]Fetch
• 5          ProperNounAlyse
• 6          FRedit
• 7          HyphenAlyse
• 8          CitationAlyse
• 9=       NumberToTextUK / US
• 9=       HighlightPlus

As you can see, FRedit is only number six – I wonder why?

Well, if you look at the other nine macros, I’d say that, conceptually, each is moderately straightforward, and it would be easy for you to explain its function to a macro-newbie. Not so with FRedit.

So is it worth the effort of learning? Well, you could ask a colleague who uses it, but you could just trust my experience, especially when you know that I started using a FRedit-like tool in an Apple-related application 37 years ago!

This technique really does work, and it’s powerful even if you only use it at a relatively simple level.

So what happened 37 years ago that generated this tool? I was using two computers, an Apple Mac Plus and an Archimedes computer from Acorn Computers in Cambridge, UK, to create an Acorn-based magazine.

Each month, I needed to transfer the Apple text across to the Acorn, but the Apple used dashes, ligatures (fi, fl), curly quotes and bullets (•), which I had to convert back to hyphens, ‘proper’ letter pairs, straight quotes and asterisks. (Yes, I know, but this was 37 years ago!)

So I did it by using a series of global F&Rs and, in case I forgot any, I kept a list of them all on one piece of paper. Then one day I thought: ‘Hang on! Couldn’t a computer program do this for me?!’ So someone in the Acorn community wrote one, and all I then had to do was to open a file containing a list of all the changes:

fi|fi

fl|fl

‘|’

’|’

etc

And that’s it! You now understand the principle of FRedit, so download a copy of the learning material FRedit from Square One and get started. (FSO was written by ace trainer Jennifer Yankopolus.)

We need training

But to be fair, it isn’t that easy a concept to get your head around, so we do need training. So why not get onto the training group in your professional body and encourage them to create a short course to teach how to use this powerful tool.

But the good news is that EFA already have such a course: Macros from A to Z: six weekly sessions, with one week devoted solely to FRedit, and it’s run by the top world macro-trainer, Jennifer Yankopolus. For news of the next running of the course, see Jennifer’s training page:

Taking it further

While FRedit can save you time even if you only use it in fairly simple ways, it is potentially an extremely powerful system with a wealth of facilities that you could gradually learn to use. As the years go by, you could get FRedit to do more and more of the mundane aspects of your work.

Today, FRedit has

• 17-page user manual
• 22 videos on YouTube (from beginners to advanced)
• 107-page FRedit library of applications
• 22 other FRedit-related macros, e.g. HyphenationToFRedit or ProperNounToFRedit

‘Invest time to save time’ – it’s definitely worthwhile in the long run.

Paul Beverley, paul@archivepub.co.uk