Computers Are Great – Except When They Aren’t
January 7, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
Arghhhh. Here I am, happily composing an exercise for my up-coming book on getting a book written. I decide it’s time to put some lines in… you know, the kind of lines that signal and allow you to fill in the blanks.
So, holding the shift key, I used the underline key to create a line. At least that was what I was trying to do.
¬¬¬¬I’ve been using word for years, and I still have no idea what happened. I ended up with some sort of object that only looked like a line… at least I think it was an object. I could move it up and down, but not delete it. And worse, it started to replicate and I ended up with three of these “lines,” one where I was working and two more on the following page.
Geeze I hate this sort of thing. I’ve learned not to panic, so I kept writing out the questions, etc. As I finished that part, I noticed the type face had changed, then I realized that the paragraphs in question were formatted “normal web” rather than just “normal.” Ah if word processors actually had a normal!
I kept fiddling and eventually got rid of the object lines and was able to enter a set of the kind of lines I want, but it wasn’t easy, and I truly don’t know what I did to get rid of them either.
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
Hey, this has happened to me a whole bunch of times! I’m pretty good with Word formatting because I used to work as a documentation specialist, but that line thing has me perplexed. Every time it happens, I just hit a bunch of keys, and I never end up knowing what did the trick. Once I couldn’t get rid of the lines and had to start a whole new document! Well, now I don’t feel so alone (or crazy).
Thanks for your humorous post this morning. We could probably all write books on the horrors of computer glitches. Sometimes it makes me yearn for the dark ages of pencils, paper, and typewriters. (But not for long!)
*shivers* What creeps me out is I tell Word to do something, it refuses, and then if I leave it till morning and try the exact same thing, it works.
For an underline, make a tab by clicking on the ruler where you want the end of the line to be. You go into Format > Paragraphs, click the “tab” button, and it’ll let you place a tab and pick what kind of underline it has, or add an underline to an already-existing tab.
At least, that’s one way to do it.
lol Misti… it’s printers that do that to me more often than computers… but I know what you mean… now to try your directions… thanks!