What the Heck is an Editing Macro?

Welcome to The Modern Editor Podcast, where we talk about all things editing and what it’s like to run an editorial business in today’s world. I’m your host, Tara Whitaker. Let’s get to it.

Hello everyone. Today we are going to be talking about macros. Now if you’re already going, nope, no way, too scary, too techy, hold on, hold on, because the whole idea of macros completely freaked me out too.

I’m, you know, techy enough for what I need to do, but macros just terrified me. I just, I wrote them off completely. “I’m not techy, so I can’t do this. I’ve been editing for too long.” Talk about the list of limiting beliefs, right? Silly thoughts, but I’m human. Yes, I came late to the game on macros, what can I say?

And I’m still a very baby user, but they have made such a positive impact on my editing in such a short amount of time that I just feel like I have to shout it from the rooftops now. So this will be more of a love letter to macros, but there’s some clarity on what they are, how they can help us, and then I’m going to share my favorite ones so far.

This is going to be particularly helpful if you’ve never used macros before. If you’re an expert, you’re probably going to find this episode a little too basic. I’m just not there yet. And a podcast isn’t exactly a great format to actually teach macros, in my opinion. Nor do I have the audacity to attempt to teach something I know so little about. So we’re not going to be doing that. But I am going to be giving you some resources that you can use to explore on your own. 

All right. So let’s start with what the episode title suggests. What the heck is a macro? I’m pulling this straight from Paul Beverley’s website, which is wordmacrotools.com. And macros are computer programs written in Visual Basic, which is a language that allows us to create tools that essentially do cool things.

Now that last part is not Paul Beverley. That was me. And these tools can do a ton of different things in our editing world. We can use them to look up words in the dictionary. We can use them to point out inconsistencies. We can add words to a style sheet, which I will talk about more in a minute, and so much more.

On Paul’s website, he has over 1,200 macros listed for free, along with instructions on how to install them. He also has a YouTube channel and a blog. What he has given for free to the editing community is unreal. His website is how I learned to install and use the macros. It’s very easy to understand. He breaks it down in such a good way. Cannot recommend enough.

And then the second person I learned from was Jennifer Yankopolus, who also is a macros expert. She’s taught courses through the EFA, I’ve seen her speak at a lot of events. She also has a Macro of the Month newsletter that I’ll include in the show notes that highlights a macro every month, and she has some really cool ones that she shares.

And she’s actually the one that helped me troubleshoot when I was installing macros for the first time, because of course I ran into a tech issue. But she got me straightened out and I cannot thank her enough either. So there are phenomenal resources out there to help you get started. You’re not alone. It can be done.

So why even use macros in the first place? This is my maybe not-so-eloquent reasoning behind them. Macros help you keep an eye on things in a piece of content that you’re editing that are, quote, easy to fix. And I’m going to explain this. That allows you to be able to use your editing eyes and skills for things that can’t be picked up by spell-check or PerfectIt or a macro.

Because we need to use and reserve our brainpower for the trickier things that set us apart from the tech tools. Where our expertise shines. Why you should hire an editor instead of running your book through Grammarly. Those kinds of things. We’re not technology, we are human, and we need to home in on those skills that we have and use other tools—ethically—that allow us to better serve our clients.

So I’m going to give you an example. There’s a macro called ProperNounAlyse. And what it does is when you run it, it gives you a list of similar-looking proper nouns and their frequency. So you can check if any are misspelled or if there is inconsistency between them.

So the example that Paul Beverley gives on his website is seeing how often an author used abbreviations for days and months instead of spelling them out. So like Monday, is it “Mon” or is it the full word “Monday,” so on and so forth. Or is it “Jan” or “January” spelled out.

Now, if you’re copyediting or proofreading, you always want to stay consistent, of course. So this list helps you see the frequency and the, the different Iterations, you know, is it “Jan,” is it “Janu,” or whatever, all in one spot, and it allows you to make that call on whether or not the days and months should be abbreviated, should they be spelled out, or, if they’re abbreviated, how are they abbreviated?

So, Thursday is it “Thu,” “Thur,” “Thurs,” and we know, that’s an entire manuscript or report. Of course, a copyeditor or proofreader is going to be looking out for that type of inconsistency, but to have it all pulled into one list makes it so much easier, and with that saved time and mental energy, then you can focus on things that are not able to be used or able to be analyzed with a macro or PerfectIt.

You know, are you keeping an eye on a character’s eye color, or maybe you’ve been tasked with doing something like making sure the author’s tone, which, you know, as a copyeditor, you’re not totally doing, but you’re really focusing on things that technology cannot focus on. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.

Okay, so now, my three favorite macros, and I have three, and they’re my favorite because they’re the only three that I use right now. They’re the only ones that I’ve mustered up the courage to use. But these three alone are so simple and easy to use, and they’ve saved me so much time.

Okay, so the first one is called MerriamFetch. As it probably suggests, this helps you look up a word in Merriam-Webster. Now, instead of copying the word, opening up your browser, pasting it, hitting enter, all those extra steps, all you have to do for the macro is you have to put your cursor inside the word that you want to look up, or if it’s more than one word, you just have to make sure that you highlight at least part of every word, and then you run the macro.

And you can set up keyboard shortcuts for your macros. So for me, I put my cursor in a word and I hit Control + D. And I chose D for dictionary. And up pops a new tab in my browser that’s Merriam-Webster that has the word looked up already. It’s like magic. So keyboard shortcuts are where it’s at too. I also just recently learned that some keyboards have macro buttons. I haven’t looked this up. Maybe they’re the function buttons, I’m not sure, but that sounds incredible. And I feel like I need to get myself one. A tip with this, though: It is going to pull up a new tab every time you look up the word in the dictionary. So be sure to exit out of your tabs every so often so you don’t completely crash your computer.

Okay, the second one that I just kind of hinted to is called GoogleFetch. And it’s the same process as MerriamFetch, except instead of looking something up in Merriam-Webster, you’re looking it up in Google. My keyboard shortcut is Control + G. G for Google. Let’s keep things simple here, right? 

I don’t know if there are any for a browser outside of Google. I’d have to check, because I know some of us are getting away from using Chrome. I’ll have to look into that, but if anybody knows the answer, it will be Paul Beverley.

Okay, and my third favorite, which honestly is my favorite favorite, is called CopyListToAlphaMenu. And it’s the same process as the other two macros with, with the, you know, putting the cursor in the text or highlighting it, but instead of opening up a browser or searching for something, it automatically adds that word alphabetically to your style sheet. Oh, copyeditors! Rejoice! It’s so amazing. The first time I got it to work, I was just in awe. Complete awe.

I use Control +  P for that keyboard shortcut. I really don’t know why I used P. I think probably because I was using D and G, and I wanted something on the other side of the keyboard. I don’t know. Maybe S was too close to D. You can pick whatever you want.

But these three, I cannot tell you how much time it has saved me. Because normally, you know, you have to highlight everything, copy it, open up a browser, open up your style sheet, paste everything. You also run the risk of Incorporating or introducing errors if you didn’t copy and paste correctly. And this way, it eliminates that. The style sheet, oh my goodness, it just plops it in there magically.

It is incredible. I can’t stress enough, copyeditors and proofreaders, how much that one alone has saved me time. I even try and run macros when I’m not in Word and get really frustrated because I want to use them in everything, like websites. Anywhere that I’m typing, I’m like, why won’t this macro work. Oh, right, because I’m not in Word.

So there is my love letter on macros. If they weren’t on your radar, or if you wrote them off like me, give it another thought. Everyone has different skill sets, right, and patience levels. And you probably will run into a tech issue, because it’s tech. I mean, I did when I was installing them.

But after that initial minor headache, you will never be able to pry them out of my fingers ever. And I got so excited about using these that I’m actually having a speaker come in April inside the Freelance Editors Club, the lovely Jess Stampe, and she’s going to do a workshop on macros and I could not be more excited.

You are free to join us. You can always go to TaraWhitaker.com/club. Regardless, I cannot recommend Paul Beverley and Jennifer Yankopolus enough. Again, I’ll put their information in the show notes. They’re incredible.

So until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember to tell those limiting beliefs to zip it.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. If you enjoy The Modern Editor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes. And as always, you can head to TaraWhitaker.com to connect with me and stay in touch. We’ll chat again soon.