Essentials of Business Communication 10th Edition by Dana Loewy,Mary Ellen Guffey

Exercise 42

Collaborative writing and editing projects are challenging. Fortunately, Microsoft Word offers many useful tools to help team members edit and share documents electronically. Three simple but useful editing tools are text highlight color, font color , and strikethrough , which you learned about earlier in this chapter. These tools enable reviewers to point out editing changes. Complex projects, however, may require more advanced editing tools such as Track Changes and Insert Comments , as illustrated in Figure 4.7.
Track Changes. To suggest specific editing changes to other team members, Track Changes is handy. When this command is in effect, all changes to a document are recorded in a different color, with one color for each reviewer. New text is underlined, and a vertical line appears in the margin to show where changes were made. Text that has been deleted is crossed out. Suggested revisions offered by different team members are identified and dated. The original writer may accept or reject these changes. In Word 2007, 2010, and 2013, you will find Track Changes on the Review menu.
Insert Comments. By using Insert Comments , you can point out problematic passages or errors, ask or answer questions, and share ideas without changing or adding text. When more than one person adds comments, the comments appear in different colors and are identified by the individual writers' names and date/time stamps.
Career Application. On the job, you will likely be working with others on projects that require written documents. During employment interviews, employers may ask whether you have participated in team projects using collaborative software. To be able to answer that question favorably, take advantage of this opportunity to work on a collaborative document using some of the features described here.
Your Task. Divide into two-person teams to edit the Editing Challenge document. One partner downloads the file from www.cengagebrain.com or retypes it from the textbook. That partner makes all necessary changes using font color, strikethrough, and the Comment feature and then saves the file with a file name such as PartnerName-Editing4. The first partner then sends an e-mail to the second partner with the attached file and asks the partner to make further edits. The receiving partner prints a copy of the sending partner's file before editing the message further using font color, strikethrough, and the Comment feature. The second partner approves or rejects the first partner's edits and then submits the edited copy along with a copy of the message with both partners' edits. Be sure to name each file distinctly. Your instructor will decide whether to require hard copies or e-mail copies.