Strange Word bug...

From time to time, when working on Russian documents compiled in Word, I run into patches of text that Word thinks are French. This has never been much of a problem, as it has occurred only with scattered words, maybe one or two.

My current document, which was generated from scratch, shouldn't have anything "French" in it (just English and Russian), but it does, according to the spell checker.

Doing a select-all and changing everything to English won't work, because then the spell checker will stop at every Cyrillic acronym and ask about it (since it'll think the acronym is a misspelled English word).

I hazarded the following a few minutes ago:

Edit|Replace

Find what: ^?
Formatted as: French

Replace with: ^&
Formatted as: English (U.S.)

Replace All

This changed the language of over 600 characters from French to US English! (FYI: ^? is Miscrosoft searchspeak for "any character," and ^& is searchspeak for "whatever 'Find what' is")

Do a spell check.

Three "French" words are found, for which I click "Ignore All."

With the spelling check completed, repeat the Edit|Replace.

Now, 750 characters are replaced.

On a hunch, click "Replace All" without quitting the dialog box.

Now, 9 characters are replaced.

I'm going to quit while I'm ahead, before something breaks for real and I'm left twisting in the breeze, sans final document.

Cheers...

Marvy...

The job is out the door, along with its invoice. I've even sent out (slightly overdue) monthly statements to the clients who need 'em.

The "state of the plate" currently is: clean.

There are a ton of things that need doing around the house. I should probably turn to.

Cheers...

Thrashing like a disk...

I was prepared to do the "haven't got a care in the world" act today when suddenly, an old colleague calls with a high-priority item. Can I do about 2500 words by tonight?

The uninitiated might think me greedy, but I said yes. Freelancers have to be extraordinarily successful (or extraordinarily debt-free) to be able to say "no" anytime they feel like it.

But there was a fly, so to speak, in the ointment: visiting my dad. Doing so would take a chunk out of my day, and delay delivery of my translation.

But visiting one's dad in the hospital is a "fly" only if you let it. Sure, I could have called him to say I had work to do, and he'd doubtless tell me to turn to on it, and not come to visit him, but that was not the point.

My dad always set a high standard for me, and I think he did it the only way I would listen (not that I necessarily think he was in any way trying to speak to me): He said not a goddam word, he showed me what needed doing. Maybe I'm a weak-kneed cretin, but I took note, and applied the result to my life.

So I managed to visit the old man, and then return and finish the translation. Everyone's happy, except I actually need to finish checking the thing and send it.

A mere detail, dontchaknow.

Cheers...