Word should have tools to help me shorten a paper

[Ilya Shlyakhter]

Common task: paper is 11 pages, need to shorten it to under 8.
Word should have tools to help me solve this problem, e.g.:
-- Tentative deletion of text: mark regions of text and assign them an
"importance value" (1 -- very important, 2 - less important, ..., 5 - can be
deleted with no problem). Then have a display mode where Word shows: only
important text (marked "1"); important & less important text (marked "1" or
"2") etc.
-- Find all paragraphs with a very short last line -- trimming these just
a bit can reduce the line count
-- Tool: analyze a sentence and suggest how to say the same thing in
fewer characters -- e.g. suggest shorter words from the thesaurus.

E.g. from Winnie-The-Pooh:

The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately," said Owl.
"The what?"
"It has been raining," explained Owl.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin. "It has."
"The flood-level has reached an unprecedented height."
"The who?"
"There's a lot of water about," explained Owl.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Ilya,

For some advice and tips on reducing length, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FitCopy.htm.

You could try the Tools > AutoSummarize feature, but be prepared to be
disappointed.

As far as analyzing sentences for shorter ways of saying the same
thing, I would never trust that task to software. After all the work
that's been done on it, the grammar checker is still barely
functional, and what you're suggesting is several orders of magnitude
harder.

Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:20:02 -0700, Ilya Shlyakhter <Ilya