How to Improve your Style Guide

We reviewed PerfectIt last month and were impressed with its ability to edit and test our documents.

Daniel Heuman, the founder of Intelligent Editing Ltd has prepared this tutorial that goes into more detail and show some of the ways you can get more out of this editing product. Here’s Daniel.

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PerfectIt does not require any kind of configuration. Once you install it, you can use it straight away to find mistakes in any MS Word document.

This article is for users who want to get even more out of PerfectIt by fine-tuning it to search for particular errors or to enforce a style guide.

Fine-tuning PerfectIt

You can set your rules for how PerfectIt checks:

Hyphenation
Common typos
Numbers in sentences
Spelling variations
Keywords left in the body of text
Use of capital letters
Punctuation of bullets and lists
Capitals in bullets and lists

There are two ways to build your rules into PerfectIt, you can add them organically when PerfectIt runs or you can use the configuration screen.

Common Errors in English Usage

Organic fine-tuning

The easiest way to add rules for checking is to teach PerfectIt your preferences as you use it. When PerfectIt finds an error, just click the “Customise Test” menu to either exclude that from future searches or build a rule for checking it.

For example, if PerfectIt states that an abbreviation appears in two forms: “NASA” and “N.A.S.A.”, you can use the menus to specify that “NASA” is always preferred. After that, PerfectIt will prompt for any instance of “N.A.S.A.” with any document you test.

Fine-tuning with the configuration screen

You can specify an even wider set of rules by using the configuration screen. To load the configuration screen, select “Advanced…” from the “Customise Test” menu. This will provide options for setting your own checking rules. For example, to specify that semi-colons are the preferred punctuation for short bullet points, choose “Settings for Lists, Numbers and Compounds”, then choose “Punctuate Short Items”, then select “A Semi-Colon” from the drop down menu. Save your changes and PerfectIt will notify you if it finds any bullet points with other types of punctuation.

The advantage of customised versions of PerfectIt

It is possible to share configurations between computers – just copy the files ‘CustomExclusionLists’ and ‘CustomFindLists’ from one computer to another. However, for organisations, the best way to ensure that rules are standardised across computers is to have Intelligent Editing prepare a customised version for you. Intelligent Editing will scan your library for inconsistencies and review those with you. Then we’ll build a version of PerfectIt that is custom-designed for your organisation. We’ll include all of your preferences and supply you with a version that is built for the specifics of your style guide.

Conclusion

Style guides are important documents that all too often go ignored. With PerfectIt, you can quickly and easily check that reports, articles, contracts and proposals are all aligned with your style guide. You can build in the checking that is most important to you and ensure that documents are reviewed completely for the mistakes that matter most. To try PerfectIt for free, download it now.