Apologies for the delay, but it’s been a busy and crazy month with a slew of writing projects. I hope to be back on a regular schedule starting next week.

Today’s tutorial focuses on the basic parts of the Editor–the area where you’ll be writing, editing and revising your draft.

Like any word processing program, the Editor has a format bar, which you can hide by going to Format->Hide Format Bar. The format bar consists of the following tools: presets, font family, typface, font size, text attributes, text alignment, text color, highlight color, line spacing, and list style. If you’ve used a word processor you know how to fiddle around with each of these tools.

Below the toolbar is the Header. This area has four functions.

On the extreme left the two side by side triangles indicate last document viewed (the triangle pointing left) and next document viewed (triangle pointing to the right). Click and hold and you can see your entire history.

The item icon next to your title has several functions. Click on it and you’ll see that it displays a shortcuts menu.

These items include:

Reveal in Binder : Shows the location of the currently edited file in the binder. This is useful when the method you used to get to the current document didn’t involve clicking inthe binder (such as using the history navigation buttons or a such result).

: Shows the location of the currently edited file in the binder. This is useful when the method you used to get to the current document didn’t involve clicking inthe binder (such as using the history navigation buttons or a such result). Path : Reveals the location of the current document in descending order. The top entry will always be the current document; the entry below that its immediate parent; and so on until the top of the project binder is reached.

: Reveals the location of the current document in descending order. The top entry will always be the current document; the entry below that its immediate parent; and so on until the top of the project binder is reached. Go To : Prvides another way to jump to a specific binder file or folder without using the binder.

: Prvides another way to jump to a specific binder file or folder without using the binder. Bookmarks : Displays any text bookmarks (to be discussed down the road) that have been added to the current document in a handy menu.

: Displays any text bookmarks (to be discussed down the road) that have been added to the current document in a handy menu. Take Snapshot : This command will take a snapshot of the current text and store it for later use.

: This command will take a snapshot of the current text and store it for later use. Lock Group View Mode : When viewing a container or collection group, this command will be activated. It will lock the currently used view mode for this container, so that no matter what you change it to at a later time, clicking on it will always return to the selected view mode (much more later on about this).

: When viewing a container or collection group, this command will be activated. It will lock the currently used view mode for this container, so that no matter what you change it to at a later time, clicking on it will always return to the selected view mode (much more later on about this). Match Split Documents : Open the currently viewed item in the inactive split. The command is greyed out if no splits are open.

: Open the currently viewed item in the inactive split. The command is greyed out if no splits are open. Lock in Place: Locks the editor (or one of the split screens) so that no Binder clicks affect it. When an editor is locked, the header bar turns a shade of red

To the right, the two up and down arrows will take you to the previous and next documents. The double box on the extreme right is the split screen tool. Click on that and you can have two screens of the same document, or a different one, sided by side or hit option and click to change the split (top to bottom).

Beneath the Header bar is the ruler.

You can hide the ruler by going to Format->Hide Ruler. In the next lesson, I’ll go into detail about setting margins and tabs.

At the footer of the editor, you can change the text scale. It goes as low as 50% and as high as 800%. I like to keep it at !25%.

In the center, you’ll see the word and character count, click or hover your more over those to view the statistics for document.

Finally, the small circle that looks like a bullseye on the extreme right sets the word or the character count for the document.

And that’s the Editor dissected. Next time, I’ll get more in detail about formatting the Editor and setting margins and tabs.