Year: 2010

by Jennie Ruby

Short answer: yes.

You can change the width of the balloons, the color, which margin they appear in, whether that margin has background shading, whether the balloons have lines connecting them to text, and the typeface and type size of the text in the balloons.

The shading of the comments margin is called the Markup Area Highlight, and is controlled by the Show Markup drop-down list.

Most other balloon settings are found in the Track Changes Options dialog box. You find this from the Review tab. Click the bottom half of the Track Changes tool, and select Change Tracking Options.

The background color of the balloons themselves is controlled by the Comments drop-down list in the Markup section. If you choose By author, Word automatically assigns each person who comments on the document a different color. If you choose another color, Word displays all comment balloons on your screen in the color you choose. However, if you send the document to someone else, they will see whatever color their copy of Word is set to display.

The bottom section of the dialog box controls other balloon appearance options.

Those settings are straightforward. But changing the typeface and type size of the text is not so obvious. To do this, you must locate and modify the Balloon Text style.

To find the style, open the Styles pane by clicking the expander arrow at the bottom right of the Styles group on the Home tab. At the bottom of the Styles pane, click the Manage Styles tool.

In the resulting Manage Styles dialog box, set the Sort order to Alphabetical, and select the Balloon Text style. Click the Modify button to select a new typeface and type size for the balloon text. Click OK to modify, then OK to close the Manage Styles dialog box. Your balloons then display their new text style.

These settings apply to all balloons, whether they contain deletions, formatting changes, or comments. If you want to change the typeface and color of comments only, so that they stand out more from the other balloons, follow the same procedure described here, except the style you are looking for is Comment Text. The Comment Text style controls the appearance of comment text when it occurs in balloons and in the Reviewing Pane. However, the size of the comment text in balloons is controlled by the Balloon Text style.

Making the comments and other balloons readable and clear is an important part of gaining acceptance for using tracked changes, and it is important for ensuring that your comments get the attention they need. So get control of your balloons, and get a good review of your document.

Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class.

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by Jennie Ruby

In my classes on editing with Word, I hear one complaint more than any other: "The people whose writing I am reviewing do not know how to use tracked changes."

Editors and publications people take my classes, but then express despair at the thought of getting their colleagues to cooperate in doing their reviews with the software:

"I can see a fight coming."

"My boss hates tracked changes."

"The problem is, the people I work with won't do this."

IconLogic reader Lia Scott adds, "Those who do attempt to use the online tracking often have difficulty following it–resulting in many double words, extra spaces and formatting issues. These are usually easy to fix, but show that they have trouble reading the document with the changes tracked."

When I first started teaching "electronic editing," or editing with red-lining or tracked changes, I figured I would have a couple of years of teaching the subject and then the entire industry of editing would be using tracked changes routinely. But this barrier still exists: the reviewers outside the editing department are nervous, reluctant, or downright against working with the tracked changes.

How can we get these colleagues to feel more comfortable with tracked changes and work with us on eliminating the redundant work of paper-based reviews?

One direction is to educate. As my colleague Dave Mankin said once in an Acrobat class, we have to be emissaries to our less tech-savy coworkers and explain the features of the software and show them the many ways it can be used beyond the basics.

I routinely include a cover letter to reviewers (the email message to which a document with tracked changes is attached) that explains a few settings the reviewer may want to use in reviewing the document. One of the tools I recommend in Word is the Display for Review tool, where a reader can select Final versus Final Showing Markup. By selecting Final, I explain, the reviewer can see a clean copy of the document. If any questions about what was changed arise, I explain, the reviewer can switch back to Final Showing Markup to see the changes.

For especially averse reviewers, I sometimes include two copies of the Word document: one with the changes accepted and one with the tracked changes still showing. I recommend that they read the clean one and write me an email with their changes.

I have also had success including a brief how-to about the Comments tool. Even if that is the only tool the reviewer uses, I do often get the changes in electronic form instead of in a faxed-back hand-marked printout.

Adobe Acrobat takes a different approach than Word, offering tools that reviewers may find are more akin to writing changes on a printout. The Text Edits tool harks back to the carats and dele's (a proofreading symbol used to mark something for deletion) world of hand-written changes. And the Sticky Notes tool, both in name and appearance, mimics the process of attaching a small, colorful sticky to a print document. For offices that have at least one copy of Acrobat Standard or Professional, the Acrobat reviewing tools are a nice alternative that may get reviewers over their tracked change aversion.

Have any tricks you use to get reviewers to be comfortable? I'd love to hear from you about this issue. And in upcoming classes these and other tools both in Word and Acrobat will be examined in depth.

Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class.

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