Jumping Jack

My boookmark string is @@. I insert it all the time, for every word I need to look up. Then later, should I be in a time crunch, I only attend to the most important ones, and these I have marked by hitting ALT+M twice: @@@@

I then filter my bookmarks for '@@' to line up those Biggies:

• this pares down the list to super-sized bookmarks only, an email-address@will.not show up
• purging them, printing and exporting still works fine, no remnants to worry about

If two sizes are not enough for you, go triple, but be aware that the number of @@@@@@ must add up to 6. Not 5, not 7. Otherwise they leave traces when exporting or purging.

Another heavy duty workhorse. Comments would be stampeding my list if I had not seperated them into groups: Based on Josip's trick I have set up a system of

• !N Narrative
• !D for Dialogue
• !A for Action

I put these as comments right where they belong, into the main text.
To account for sloppy typing I allow optional whitespace after the dashes // !N

Here's the jump mask for Narratives: ^//\s*?!N.*?\n
The ( \s*? ) -part takes care of the optional whitespace.
The result of this mask:

• I see how my narrative sections are spread out over the length of the text (represented by vertical stripes)
• I can ear-mark them for further treatment //!N could easily be broken up by some !D or !A

To really turn this into a slick method ...

• I changed the mask for regular comments: ^//\s*?[^!]+?\n
• Now it will NOT show comments with an '!' up front. Whitespace optional (again, to cover my sloppiness)

Wouldn't it be easier to keep the original (include-all) comments-mask and filter it?

• When you negate the '!' in the filter box (to NOT show !N !A !D etc.) you run the risk of not seeing comments you want, comments that have an '!' anywhere, not just up front
• Plus, and here comes the real beauty of it (or my insanity, depending on your POV), you still have the filter available to fine-tune comments that may look like this: //!N convert to some !D
  This allows you to
  • filter your narratives to see only those that could be broken up by dialogue !D
  • filter your dialogues to see only those that could take narrative !N or benefit by action !A

Only the special comments described above provide this specifity.

Categories: Tips & Tricks