~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ....I'm a Frog ....*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ....I'm a Frog ....*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Member since:16.06.2003
Reviews:13
Members who trust:14
Hello my fellow dummies.
NB: The following opinion is a mere translation of one I've posted on the french twin of Ciao (naaah not the evil twin *g*), namely ciao.fr, so I apologize for any inaccuracies regarding the Dummy's book in itself, as it may not be the same across the Channel (but the success of this collection is worldwide, so I suspect it IS the same). I also apologize for any misspelling, mistyping, syntax errors and other offensive linguistic mistakes I could make in my translation process, please, keep in mind that I wasn't born speaking English (well you weren't either, lol), I'm just giving it a try, for fun. Fell free to post any helpful comments about it.
Ok, that said, let's get down to business. I recently bought a laptop computer (a real cutie, my baby Sony, I'll tell you about it later, if you're not fed up with my opinions *g*), and then I bought the whole Office pack, thank you very much Microsoft for taking my hard earned money, and then, I had to face the hard truth: I couldn't master Word. (or Excell for that matter, but that is a problem I haven't addressed yet).
Of course, I could do the basic stuff (I'm not that- dumb): open a new document, write my prose, then save it on the disk. Big deal, the Windows Notepad can do that too, no need for me to waste that much money on a fancy Word 2002 if I can't even use all its wonderful possibilities (I've even heard that the little wonder could whip cream, but I think it is just another urban legend * g*) so I went out hunting.
~~~~~ HUNTING YOUR PREY ~~~~~
I knew about this fabulous books collection "for dummies", which sounded just
like me, so I went to the bookstore to see if I could catch one. One good thing about those books is that, in France at least, you'll tell me about UK, they are sold everywhere books are, no need to go to special computer shops where the salesclerks speak that weird language no one understands but nerds *g*.
Second good thing, one can't miss them on the shelves, the cover is an eye-offensive yellow, with a big title eating up a third of the space, on a black background. Talk about an easy prey, lol. Moreover, their size gives them away: a good 13 x 19 centimeters quit throwing stones at the frog, please, I'll convert which is 9.24 x 7.43 inches (thank you Internet for small blessings). A paperback, yes, but if you manage to fit it in your pocket, I'll seriously question your sense of fashion.
When you enter the computer section of the bookstore, the whole Dummy's collection is peacefully sleeping on the shelf, unaware that one of them is about to fall prey to well, a dummy *g *. All I had to do, was localise the one I needed: "Windows XP for dummies"? Nah I'm not that much of a dummy. "Internet for dummies"? Naah I'm an internet goddess, see? It only took me three years of surfing to discover Ciao * g*. "Photoshop 7 for dummies"? Naaah I'm still too much of a dummy for this one. Ahaaaah here it is, my "Word 2002 for dummies". Make sure you have the right book for your version of Word before leaving the shop, as Word 2000 for dummies is also available (and Word 2004 will soon be). Got it? Ok, grab your prey with a swift movement, don't listen to its cries and pleas, and then go back home with the satisfaction of a good hunter. Oh, but don't forget to stop by the cash register first * g* ( I will spare you the cost in euros, amazon.uk tells me you, dear reader, will have to pay around 19 pounds in a regular shop, 13,29 if you order it online)
~~~~~ TAMING YOUR PREY ~~~~~
(here, my french opinion of the book was full of wit and humor and sparkle -- yes yes yes it was, believe me. Come on ! I swear it was !! *g *-- but it was all lost during translation, RIP, so I'll just give you the hard facts and keep it clear and concise)
This is not a book with a story, and the author warns us at the very beginning, that we can read it as we please, no need to follow the chapters one after the other. The only thing you have to read first, is the table of contents (a very detailed one, it takes up to 4 or 5 pages), so you can locate the chapters you're interested in, and then skip directly to them. That's the theory.
But I'm a disciplined kind of dummy, I've been reading books starting at page one and following through dutifully for the the last twenty years, that kind of habit is hard to break. So I read the first few chapters in order. And what I found is a clever book, where bits of knowledge are laced with humor ( I even frankly laughed once or twice), but for all its fun, it is still a very pedagogical book. -- Here I'm taking a wild chance, I hope "pedagogical" does exist in English, and it holds the same meaning as in French, if not, well I hope it is not a rude word
The first few chapters introduce Word and what one can do with it, but are not just waste-of-time introductions: these are practical tips to start working with your software, and even if you haven't ever used it, you can start doing useful things. There are a lot of pictures of computer screens, to illustrate the technical points, so you don't have to be in front of the computer when reading a specific one. But I would recommend you work with Word open and running, so you can practice what you're reading. The author also used funny pictograms to stress the important points, deadly mistakes and funny peculiarities of the software, and one can't miss them. And most of all, there is no jargon and obscure technical stuff, the style and explanations are easy to understand, even for regular people like me.
~~~~~ SHOWING OFF YOUR PREY ~~~~~
The table of contents is very clear, complete with an index at the end of the book, so the not-so-dummies can search for a specific function they want to master and get to it without having to leaf through the whole book.
Here it is, dear reader, displayed in front of your amazed eyes: (I spare you the French TOC, this one is the English one, found on the internet)
Introduction.
PART I: Hello, Word!
Chapter 1: The Big Picture. Chapter 2: How Most Folks Use Word. Chapter 3: Basic Movement. Chapter 4: Basic Editing. Chapter 5: Search for This, Replace It with That. Chapter 6: Working with Blocks of Text. Chapter 7: Minding Your Ps and Qs. Chapter 8: Basic Document Tricks. Chapter 9: Getting It Down on Paper. Chapter 10: Tips from a Word Guru.
PART II: Letting Word Do the Formatting Work.
Chapter 11: Formatting Characters, Fonts, and Text. Chapter 12: Formatting Paragraphs. Chapter 13: Formatting Tabs. Chapter 14: Formatting Pages. Chapter 15: Formatting Documents. Chapter 16: Working with Styles. Chapter 17: Working with Templates. Chapter 18: Formatting and Spiffing-Up Tricks.
PART III: Sprucing Up Your Document.
Chapter 19: Borders, Boxes, and Shading. Chapter 20: Building Tables. Chapter 21: Folding Your Text into Columns. Chapter 22: Lots o' Lists o' Stuff. Chapter 23: Picture This. Chapter 24: Inserting Objects.
PART IV: Land of the Fun and Strange.
Chapter 25: Listen to Me, Stupid! Chapter 26: Working with an Outline. Chapter 27: Collaboration Tricks. Chapter 28: Working with Documents. Chapter 29: Modifying Word's Appearance.
PART V: Creating Lotsa Stuff in Word.
Chapter 30: Just Your Basic Letter and Envelope. Chapter 31: Brochures and Greeting Cards. Chapter 32: Making Some Labels.
PART VI: The Part of Tens.
Chapter 33: The Ten Commandments of Word. Chapter 34: Ten Truly Bizarre Things. Chapter 35: Ten Cool Tricks. Chapter 36: Ten Things Worth Remembering.
Index.
During the course of my reading, I quickly skipped to the "ten things" part (pretty much the way I'm used to reading mysteries, always peeking at the last page to see who killed), and found it funny and full of helpful bits of advice. (well, one could say that's what advices are made for, being helpful)
All in all, I can use Word far better than I used to, even if I'm not a whiz yet. It is a book for dummies, but not once did I feel like one, and THAT is a small miracle when dealing with computer stuff.
~~~~~ GOING BACKSTAGE ~~~~~
For those of you who always want to know it all, here it is:
The book was written by Dan Gookin, who regularly writes for the Dummy's collection. Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc (copyright july 2001) ISBN: 0-76450-839-3 Paperback 406 pages Dimensions: 9.24 x 7.43 inches (by the way, what is the abbreviation for "inches"?)
Real computer geeks will tell you (at least the French ones told me) this book is not sophisticated enough, that you could learn a lot more about Word in other books. Well, that may be true, but you wouldn't have as much fun (supposing you could understand the jargon), and worse, you'd have no use for them. As I said, for regular people like me, Word for Dummies is perfect.
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Jun 16th, 2003
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