MS Word Tips

By using the MS Word Tips below, you can improve your speed and work more efficiently as a general transcriptionist. As the old saying goes, "Practice makes perfect," and that's all too true in the general transcription industry.

Nothing can increase your net words per minute for a typing test but consistently typing, and typing and typing. But knowing some good MS Word tips and learning how to get around your word processing software will increase your overall speed and transcription proficiency.

As a general transcriptionist, you will more than likely be required to have and know your way around Microsoft Word, including learning some of the MS Word tips on this site.

The version of MS Word you need to know will depend on your clients' needs and requirements as well as those of any larger transcription companies you may contract with.

For this reason, I'm focusing on MS Word tips and not any other word processing software, although a lot of the features can also be found in other programs as well, but they may be called something different.

Word's AutoCorrect

Watch our video demo on using AutoCorrect!

By using MS Word's AutoCorrect feature, you can add parts of words or key letters of words to the feature that Word will automatically expand to that specific word or phrase.

This is a great feature when you use the same words or phrases repeatedly from one transcript to the next. You can also use it for words that you often misspell.

For instance, when I type abs, Word automatically expands it to absolutely. When I type fls, AutoCorrect expands that to forward-looking statements.

There's virtually no limit to what you can add into AutoCorrect to help you with often misspelled words and often used words and phrases to help speed up your transcription speed.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Learning keyboard shortcuts in Word will speed you up because you won't have to be constantly taking your fingers from the keyboard slows to use your mouse. So learn the shortcuts in the table below and use them as much as possible.