For an editor, working with track changes is as natural as breathing (if it was natural to sometimes forget to breathe for a couple of pages then curse and smash the back button a few times… We’ve all been there!). I know I’ve definitely been guilty in the past of assuming it’s like that for all of my authors too.
But the truth is that even people who do all of their writing in a program like Microsoft Word or Google Docs or OpenOffice might never have needed to turn the track changes feature on – let alone review a whole document full of them!
And if you’re new to track changes, receiving your manuscript back from an editor can be a bit of a shock. They might have suggested loads of really helpful changes and corrections, but how do you turn a manuscript that’s suddenly full of red text and comments into a finished product?
If that’s where you are right now, this blog is for you!
What are track changes?
Track changes is a feature on Microsoft Word (and other similar word processor programs) that allows users to record any changes they make to a document so that another user can review them before accepting/rejecting them. Any text that has been deleted, replaced, or added is highlighted in a different colour, making it easy to see at a glance what has changed from the previous version of a document. You can find track changes, and toggle them on and off, in the “Review” tab of the bar at the top of your document:
In the default view, you’ll see both the original text and the new text next to it, so you can see the editor’s changes and what was there before.
Some editors will offer you a track changes version of your manuscript and a “clean” version, with all the changes already incorporated. Unless the edit is a straightforward proofread for any lingering errors (and all of their changes are therefore a matter of “correct” and “incorrect”), I wouldn’t generally recommend this. It’s much better to review and accept/reject the changes yourself.
Read on to find out how…
What does your manuscript look like with track changes on?
Below is an example of a page from a manuscript with track changes visible.
Reviewing track changes
Do you have to review the changes individually? Why not just “accept all”?
While it might be tempting to simply accept all of your editor’s track changes and be done with it, I would always recommend reading through your manuscript and reviewing each change individually. This is for a couple of reasons:
- Ownership: However much you value your editor’s opinion, remember that this is your book at the end of the day; only you get to decide exactly how you want it to look. While an editor will correct straightforward mistakes, they might also make suggestions that are less clear cut in terms of right and wrong – and you absolutely have the right to decide whether to accept or reject these suggestions. You might have made a deliberate style choice that they advise you against, but you still feel strongly about retaining. It’s only by looking at each track change individually that you can truly stay in control of those decisions.
- Editors are not immune to mistakes: This point might be controversial, but it’s true. In a straightforward proofread, where very few corrections are needed, the track changes will be pretty straightforward too. But the more changes an editor makes, and the more complex the changes are, the more likely it is that minor errors might sneak in as a result. Lots of track changes that leave both the old and new text visible can make it very difficult to see the minor details around them.
A line editor making suggestions to change full sentences might not spot that they’ve accidentally added a extra full stop/period or deleted a space. That’s why editing is done in stages, each using a slightly different skill set to look for different issues (see How to hire an editor: what type of editing do you need? for more on the types of editing). You can and should have your manuscript proofread after any type of substantive editing, but reviewing each change individually yourself means your chances of spotting any unintended consequences of track changes is much higher than if you accept them all blindly.
Viewing modes
Track changes can make a document look messy and hard to read though, so you can use the different viewing modes Word offers to help you see what the text would look like with the changes incorporated (which I think gives you a much better sense of how the document now reads).
To change the viewing mode, go to the “Review” tab of the toolbar at the top of your document. Then, in the “Markup” section, use the drop-down menu to change “All Markup” to “Simple Markup”. This will incorporate the changes into the text so you can see what they look like without the messiness of the original text before accepting them. The location of any track changes is still marked with a red line in the left margin.
The same example is shown below in “All Markup” mode on the left, and “Simple Markup” on the right.
You can switch back to seeing the track changes by choosing “All Markup” again in the same place.
Accepting and rejecting track changes
You can accept or reject individual changes in a couple of ways:
- by right-clicking on them and using the menu that appears (shown on the left below). When you do it this way, the cursor stays in the same place on the document.
- by placing the cursor on the change you want to accept/reject, and using the button in the toolbar (shown on the right below). When you use the buttons on the toolbar, the cursor will skip forward to the next track change in the document. For this reason, I tend to prefer the first option!
There are also “Accept All Changes” or “Reject All Changes” options in the toolbar, but – as discussed in more detail above – I wouldn’t recommend using them!
Managing comments
Comments – which appear in the right margin of a document, next to the text – are treated slightly differently. You can’t accept or reject a comment, and it will remain in place even after you’ve accepted or rejected a change it’s linked to.
Below is an example of a page from a manuscript with comments in the right margin.
To review a comment, you simply need to read it and decide how you want to deal with it. Your editor might have used a comment to expand on their reasoning for a track change – in which case you will need to deal with the track change itself – or they might have added a suggestion or query that requires you to make revisions to the manuscript (for example, you might have given conflicting information about a character and they’ve asked you to decide which of the two descriptions you prefer).
Once you’ve dealt with the content of the comment, you can delete it – either by right-clicking on the comment and selecting “Delete Comment” from the menu that appears (shown on the left below), or by placing the cursor on the comment and pressing the “Delete” button on the top toolbar (shown on the right).
If you want to reply to a comment your editor has made – or if you want to reply to a comment with a reminder for your own revisions – you can simply hit the “Reply” button on the individual comment. This will open up a new line within the comment bubble with your name at the top, where you can type your response or reminder to yourself.
There’s also a “Resolve” option in the individual comment bubble, which greys out the comment, but doesn’t fully remove it from your manuscript. There are limited circumstances in which this is useful (if you’re working with a team and want to show a third party that the comment has already been dealt with while leaving it visible, for example) but in most cases, it’s far easier and neater to delete comments you’ve already dealt with.
I hope this very brief overview of how to deal with track changes and comments has been helpful!
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