Visual Format

Look to see if the document has any formatting that is particularly unusual (e.g., especially large or small fonts, odd typefaces, garbage characters). Such formatting problems may indicate a document that was poorly imported from another word processing program or that will cause other problems as you work with it. If you encounter a document like this, determine which word processor the author used.

To facilitate the visual check of a manuscript, we recommend setting Field Shading in Microsoft Word to Always. This setting will cause all embedded fields (such as citations and references set up with reference management tools such as EndNote) to appear with a gray shade. Often this gray shading will aid in identifying potential problems in Word documents.

To enable Field Shading, select the File tab in Word and navigate to Word Options > Advanced > Show document content > Field shading, and change from When Selected to Always.