Readability Grayed Out In Microsoft Word For Mac

On Jul 21, 11:52 am, John McGhie <j...@mcghie.name> wrote:
> Hi John:
>
> Heading numbering is outline numbering. You can have only ONE series of
> heading numbering, stretching from the front to the back of the book.
>
> And you must have your styles linked into the Outline Numbering format.
>
> Shauna Kelly has one of the best explanations I have seen, here:http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/index.html
>
> Study Shauna's pages, then come back with your specific questions :-) Sadly
> neither the Help nor the Microsoft website covers the topic.
>
> Cheers
>
> On 21/07/08 2:27 AM, in article
> b4b7fed1-dcf2-4cdb-918c-5a7aa7a47...@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com,
  1. The languages that you use in a document can affect how your Office program checks and presents readability scores. If you set up Word to check the spelling and grammar of text in other languages, and a document contains text in multiple languages, Word displays readability statistics for text in the last language that was checked.
  2. Office Word 2010 Readability Stats greyed out Hi All, I'm trying to help someone less tech savvy than myself with a Office Word 2010 issue in that the want to turn on and use the 'Readability Stats' option when running the spell/grammar checker.

May 29, 2015 We recently showed you how to set the user information in Word. Word also stores several additional advanced properties related to your documents. Some of these are displayed on the “Info” screen and you can change these properties. NOTE: We used Word 2013 to illustrate this feature. Many questions come down to a core misunderstanding about Word – what Word calls ‘Headings’ aren’t really headings at all – they are outline levels. ‘Headings’ are different from ‘Outline Levels’ but sometimes Microsoft uses the term ‘Headings’ wrongly so confusion is understandable.


>
>
>
> 'j...@johnhands.com' <j...@johnhands.com> wrote:
> > Hi
>
> > For some reason the original message didn't appear in the post.
>
> > I've defined a numbered heading. I've used this in a document that is
> > a chapter in a book. When I paste this chapter into a longer document
> > that is the whole book, the heading numbered (1) appears as (7). When
> > I go to Format>Bullets and Numbering, the screen shows both the
> > Restart Numbering and Continue Previous List buttons greyed out.
>
> > I've also defined a (different) outline numbered heading. After
> > pasting in the chapter this series of headings was missing entirely.
>
> > The two styles are defined identically for the book document and for
> > the chapter document.
>
> > I'm using Word 2004 for Mac V 11.3 with Mac OSX 10.4.11
>
> > VERY GRATEFUL
>
> --
> Don't wait for your answer, click here:http://www.word.mvps.org/
>
> Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
>
> John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
> Sydney, Australia. mailto:j...@mcghie.name

Hi John

Apologies for delay. In fact I had used Shauna's pages to define my
Styles [eg. (1) List 1] that use
Outline Numbered Headings. When writing within one document they work
fine. I come to where I want to begin a new list, select the style,
the format is produced beginning with where the last list left off,
and then I go to Format>Bullets and Numbering where I click the
Restart numbering button.

When writing a book, I work on one chapter at a time because it may
undergo significant changes in drafting. When that chapter is ready
(and the document for it uses identical styles to the document
containing the book to date) I paste it into the book document.
That's when the problems set out in my second post occur: the Restart
numbering button is greyed out.

I've surmounted it only by a very tedious workaround: (a) copy list to
blank document and remove all styles; (b) delete the list from the
book document together with para marks before and after; (c) paste in
unformatted list from blank document; (d) apply the required stye; (e)
Format>Bullets and Numbering, click Restart Numbering (which is not
now greyed out).

I'd really appreciate knowing how to work this one without such a
tedious workaround.

Readability Grayed Out In Microsoft Word For Mac Shortcut

Many thanks

John

Now you know what readability is and what the Readability Stats on your screen look like… how do you access them?

To score your readability, follow two steps: 1) activate the stats; 2) run the Spelling & Grammar check. Let’s deal briefly with step 1 in Microsoft® and Apple.

Activating the readability stats in Microsoft® Word

Click on ‘File’ in the toolbar, ‘Options’ in the left-hand column, then on ‘Proofing’. The dialogue box that appears looks like this:

Towards the bottom, under the heading ‘When correcting spelling and grammar in Word’, are two options: ‘Check grammar with spelling’, and ‘Show readability statistics’, which is greyed out. To activate the stats, tick/check the ‘Check grammar with spelling’ option. The ‘Show readability statistics’ option below it should then automatically be ticked/checked; if not, do it manually.

Microsoft

Make sure as well that the drop-down box alongside ‘Writing Style’ says ‘Grammar & Style’ (as above), and not ‘Grammar only’.

Activating the readability stats in Microsoft® Word for Mac 2011

In the toolbar under ‘Word’, go into ‘Preferences’: under ‘Authoring and Proofing Tools’, click on ‘Spelling and Grammar’. You should then see this screen:

Tick/check the box marked ‘Show readability statistics’ and make sure that the ‘Writing style’ drop-down box says ‘Standard’ or ‘Grammar & Refinements’. Click ‘OK’ and you’ve activated the stats.

How to score your readability in the above programs

Place the cursor at the start of your body copy or highlight the text you want to score. Run the Spelling & Grammar check (‘Tools’, in the toolbar), accepting or rejecting the options as you wish (click on ‘Ignore’, ‘Ignore all’ or ‘Ignore rule’ to get through them quickly). At the end of the S & G check, a dialogue box asks if you wish to check the remainder of the document – click ‘No’ and the readability stats appear.

Trouble-shooting problems in the readability stats feature

If you get odd scores (0% readability doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer!), it may be because…

… your document has lots of graphs, graphics or bullets (the stats work best on body copy/narrative text, i.e. prose of complete, punctuated sentences);

… your word count is too low: the stats struggle with text of fewer than 200 words;

… when you activated the stats in the dialogue box shown above, if you’re on a PC you should have opted for ‘Grammar & Style’ in the ‘Writing Style’ drop-down box, rather than ‘Grammar only’ (otherwise the ‘Show readability statistics’ option may be greyed out).

Word of warning: the stats work best on fully punctuated body copy of at least 200 words; they don’t work well on titles, headlines, subheadings, bullet points and captions. If your document has lots of these, save it as a text-only file and run the stats on that for a truer score.

If you struggle accessing the Stats, ping me an email: scott@writeforresults.com.

Microsoft Office For Mac

Don’t let the tail wag the dog

Mac

When I show people on my training courses how to use these readability stats, they run around like frisky puppies editing their work to edge their FRE score over the magic 60% plain English line and beat their colleagues. I like to see healthy competition, but don’t let your new-found toy blind you to its limits. The stats only tell you what’s going on in your writing mechanically; they don’t assess the quality of your content.

You could be writing complete rubbish; you’ll only know it’s readable rubbish!

What I want to cultivate in you, rather, is your writerly judgment, your ability to assess your own writing. If you’re happy with what you’ve written and reckon it hits the spot as far as your reader goes, then whether it scores 59% or 61% is immaterial.

The bottom-line

Get into the habit of scoring your readability, to track how your writing is improving. And show your colleagues how to do it!

~~~

If you’d like to go to the heart of the matter and download three chapters of my book, rhetorica® — a toolkit of 21 everyday writing techniques, here’s the link: Download rhetorica® Chapters

For

Scott Keyser runs Write for Results, a communications and business development consultancy. Write for Results works with professionals who perform technically complex work (eg lawyers, accountants, engineers), but who sometimes struggle to communicate the value of that work to their market in an engaging way. Scott and his team simply show them how to make their comms — including their bids, tenders, pitches and proposals — clear, concise and compelling.

To book a slot to speak to Scott about your or your team’s writing, click here: http://bit.ly/2f5o6di