A blank line is appearing between footnotes in a document I have been sent. When I try to delete the line, from above or below, MS Word tells me that “this is not a valid action for footnotes.” Why can’t the line be deleted? When I reveal formatting, it turns out that it is a [...]

Reversing text direction in comment balloons for documents created in a right-to-left language country SOLUTION: Open up a marginal comment to the MS Word file; Click in the marginal comment (i.e. place cursor inside it); Click the left-to-right icon on the upper-most menu strip (normally to the right of ‘View Gridlines’) — text in comment [...]

Shout of

My cousin, a music producer, told me: sure it’s possible to polish a turd. First you bake it, then lacquer it. I reflect on these words as I attempt to language polish the output of Google translate. I wonder what subtle principles of linguistics and aesthetics — principles of which we as sentient language speakers [...]

I’m switching a set of papers from Chicago notes-bibliography style with full bibliography to Chicago notes-bibliography style without full bibliography. As any fule no, this will mean expanding the first occurence of the reference item in the notes from shortened to full form (among other things). Since it’s May, and a sunny evening, it’s important [...]