Digital Directions - Columns

Quark Xpress Production Artists take notice:
by Trish Harpring
If you're editing a document that has an abundance of returns, soft returns, tabs, etc., that need to be deleted or changed, you can do this quickly using the Find-Change dialog box.
In the find field, you type in the command key plus whatever key or combination of keys you need to find. For example, to find all soft returns, you type command-shift-return in the find field. Then you can specify the desired character in the change field. Use the Find-Change command as you always would to change your soft returns.
Also on the subject of the Find-Change dialog box, have you ever been on page 15 of a 30 page document and wanted to search a certain word or phrase starting at the front of the document? Ordinarily, you would need to return to the first page in order to search the document from the beginning, because the Find Next command in Find-Change does exactly what it says it will do - it finds the next example of the character you have designated.
Instead of going back 15 pages and hitting the Find Next key, you can hold down your option button while in the Find-Change box and Find Next will become Find First. This allows you to find the first example of the character in your document without having to spend extra time returning to the beginning of the document.
When working in a large document, there is a shortcut to changing text size, style, etc. If you did not set styles for the entire document and find yourself regretting it, you can still use your style sheet to shorten your editing time. Set a style in your style pallette, then set up a keystroke command for your new style. You can set the keystroke command as the command button plus any function key or any key on your number keypad. This will be quicker than using your mouse to hit the style sheet to change subheads, blocks of text, etc. But remember: when making these changes, all items in the paragraph you have selected will change to the new style. If you need to change only part of a paragraph (say bolding the first few words), you must use traditional methods.