Chicago Style Workout 73: Word Processing

/ February 28, 2023

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Tools of the Trade

Many of us who write or edit for a living spend a lot of time in a word processor, typically either Microsoft Word or Google Docs (or both). It’s only natural, then, that we know a lot about these programs. But it’s always good to brush up on the basics.

Take this quiz to test your word-processing know-how.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in some of the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Though the answers in this quiz are intended to test general principles of word processing, they rely on up-to-date versions of English-language installations of the desktop version of Microsoft Word for Office 365 and the browser-based version of Google Docs for many of the details.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 73: Word Processing

1. By default, Microsoft Word and Google Docs will automatically capitalize the first letter of a sentence.
2. On a standard QWERTY keyboard, the commands for cut, copy, and paste are normally associated with the keys for X, C, and P, respectively.
3. In Word and Docs, the feature that allows you to locate a specific string of text and replace it with another string of text is called “search and replace.”
4. Special characters like the accented é in entrée are available in all versions of Word and Docs, but to get Greek characters like α (alpha) or ω (omega), you’ll need to install a special font.
5. The spelling and grammar checker in Word will find things that the one in Docs won’t, and vice versa.
6. If·you·see·dots·between·words,·what·is·a·likely·explanation?
7. A paragraph indent in either Word or Docs is known as
8. You should turn automatic hyphenation on during editing to smooth out the right margin.
9. Thanks to context-sensitive AI, the feature for smart quotes and apostrophes in both Word and Docs never makes a mistake.
10. In Word, numbered notes may be inserted as either footnotes or endnotes; in Docs, only footnotes are available by default.

 

“Special Characters,” by bofotolux / Adobe Stock.

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