Board index » Word » Automatic species name formatting?

Word112
I biology, species names should be italicised and written in full on their

first mention (for example, Arabidopsis thaliana) and abbreviated in all

subsequent mentions (for example, A. thaliana). Is there a way of making this

formatting automatic (including the abbreviation of the name after its first

mention)? Thanks.


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Yes, use Autocorrect, but you will have to be very specific with your

abbreviations.



"Reluctantly Speaking" <ReluctantlySpeaking@discussions.microsoft.com>wrote

in message news:B022259A-1A27-43D0-8E09-B540372C0E12@microsoft.com...



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I'm a little new to Autotext. Could you be more specific about what you mean

by " be very specific with your abbreviations"?



"Summer" wrote:

Autocorrect not autotext. By specific Summer meant that if you are not

careful with your trigger letters you could get the autocorrect operating

when you don't require it. eg for A. thaliana you could use #at rather than

at.



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Graham Mayor - Word MVP



My web site www.gmayor.com

Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

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Reluctantly Speaking wrote:



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Apologies for the confusion between autotext and autocorrect. I see how I

could add separate entries for the full name and the abbreviation. However, I

was interested in whether I could type a single entry that would generate the

full name first and the abbreviated name on subsequent occassions.



Thanks.



"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Unfortunately Word still doesn't offer the ability to extract part of a

field in a cross reference, so no.



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Graham Mayor - Word MVP



My web site www.gmayor.com

Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

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Reluctantly Speaking wrote:



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So there's no way of, say, playing with the IF field to generate one thing on

it's first mention and another on subsequent occassions?

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You would have to insert the fields at each location. it would be far

quicker to use autocorrect/autotext.



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<>><><<>><<><>><><<><>>< <>><<>

Graham Mayor - Word MVP



My web site www.gmayor.com

Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

<>><><<>><<><>><><<><>>< <>><<>



Reluctantly Speaking wrote:



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But if it was possible to make a field that would generate the correct form

of the species name, couldn't you then add that field as autotext? I'm sorry

to keep going on about this, but I'm interested in how it works now!



Thanks



"Graham Mayor" wrote:

The principles are covered at http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Repeating_Data.htm



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Graham Mayor - Word MVP



My web site www.gmayor.com

Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

<>><><<>><<><>><><<><>>< <>><<>



Reluctantly Speaking wrote:



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I'm really sorry for sounding so utterly stupid, but I still don't quite

understand. Do you mean I could insert a form field for the species name and

reference it elsewhere in the document? This still only gives one form of the

species name.

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Yes you could, but it would be more trouble than it is worth eg



Arabidopsis thaliana



was the example you quoted, and



A. thaliana.



was what you wanted to use as reference, so if you entered Arabidopsis

thaliana in a form field bookmarked (say) Text1 you could use a reference

{IF {Text1} = "Arabidopsis thaliana" "A. thaliana"}

You would then have to repeat that conditional field for each one of your

possible terms. It simply isn't practical unless you are working with only a

handful of terms, which seems very unlikely in the field of Biology!



Word does not have any intelligence to work out the version you really wish

to insert automatically and I cannot think of any method that you could use

in Word that would be faster than having a set of alternative autocorrect or

autotext entries. If I was doing this I would use autocorrect. I would setup

something like

#arth for Arabidopsis thaliana

%arth for A. thaliana



I don't know if it would help you, but I use an application called

GhostTyper as an aid to storing standard texts. This works very much like

the best of autocorrect and autotext, but has the advantage that you can

setup more than one entry on the same 'trigger'. This you could use the same

trigger for all entries of the same genus. Then #arth could pop up a list of

likely candidates for you to select from. It also works in any application

with keyboard input.

http://www.sc-data.de/ghosttyper/en/index.php3?nav=Produkt You would have to

pre-program it, so how much time it would save you would depend on how much

of this work you are likely to do to justify the time and expense.



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<>><><<>><<><>><><<><>>< <>><<>

Graham Mayor - Word MVP



My web site www.gmayor.com

Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

<>><><<>><<><>><><<><>>< <>><<>



Reluctantly Speaking wrote:



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