Quickly inserting novel notes in a working manuscript helps remember details for later editing. This macro inserts an inline note with the text, so we can move on with writing.
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Quickly insert an inline novel note
Sometimes a setting detail or even something as simple as a secondary character name can slow down our writing. It's easy to stop and want to get it right, but our minds can freeze like stubborn neurological mules. On the more dangerous side, we might squint at the screen and wonder how did they use those thing-a-ma-jigs back then? Do we stop and "research" it now?
Enter novel notes. Wouldn't it be handy if we could just quickly insert a relevant note and move on with writing for now? The macro below allows us to do that with a fixed, but customizable, note inline with the text in a distinct character style.
Novel note variations
A lot of variation exists based on the placement, wording, context, or style of different note types; so a few sibling articles include more options.
- A slight variation inserts a note as a styled paragraph above the current one.
- A member article adds contextual information to the note which works well for research-related comments.
- We may want to include more varied notes in our workflow, but each performs essentially the same task. We can ease the repetition using functions that handle the common details, but it comes at a cost of being more technical.
I'm not a fan of inline notes since it clutters the novel text to my eyes, but some writers might prefer them. The paragraph version stretches the manuscript text out lengthwise, but the novel text at the paragraph level is clearer to me. I quickly abandoned Word's document comments feature for any novel notes due to the tedium of adding, editing, and removing them.
Notes help us relax about remembering details during a later editing phase, and this collection of articles should get you started on notes that benefit your own workflow.
Create the empty macro
A previous post covers creating an empty macro like the one shown below using the Word interface. The result will look something like:
The single quote tells VBA the rest of the text on that line is a comment meant for human readers. We start our macro steps on the empty line.
What is an object in VBA?
An "object" is how VBA represents the various document elements we use in Word. Obvious examples include a Paragraph or a Document, but they extend to more generalized concepts like a document Range. As part of the internal representations, objects include various actions (called "methods") and data (called "properties") that we can use to manipulate them or any associated document content.
What is the Selection?
The Selection is a VBA object that internally represents what we see and manipulate on the screen. It can include selected content or just be an insertion point (i.e., the blinking I-bar waiting for us to type) since the latter is essentially an empty selection. It has defined Start and End positions marking the spanned content, but it also includes many methods and properties that allow us to control its extent or position in the document, change various settings, and handle other details specific to its purpose in a document. Since it directly correlates to what we manipulate on screen, only one Selection exists per document. A separate article goes into more detail about the Selection.
What are the manual steps?
What steps would we do to manually add an inline novel note at the current location? We'll assume we start with an insertion point rather than an initial selection.
- Start the character style (optional, but slow unless a shortcut is used)
- Type the text (repetitive, blehh) or more likely use an AutoCorrect entry
- Turn off the character style
This sequence is only three steps, but the repetition would quickly become annoying. A macro would drop the typing to a single keystroke. Using a character style for the note is optional, of course, but it helps visually separate notes from manuscript text. We can use different styles for different types of notes such as editing warnings, research related, setting comments, etc.
When a note task is finished, a few Control+Delete (or Command+Delete on Mac) shortcuts will probably delete short notes just fine, but we could further enhance the process with a macro to quickly delete the inline note.
Using the Selection
The current macro will use the Selection for simplicity. Using a document Range variable is often a better approach for editing macros, but this macro makes several localized and small changes to the document. We must also use the Selection to clear a character style anyhow. We also need the insertion point placed after the note anyhow, so we can just keep writing. Working with the Selection will automatically accomplish this expected placement.
Yucky steps ahead
I don't like some of the following steps, but they're necessary based on how text inherits local character formatting.
With the text above, every character inherits the prior formatting of the character to its left. Character styles and other character formatting work the same way.
What's the problem?
Inheriting formatting is intuitive until you want to do something else in a macro.
We want to add a space between the note and the novel text to follow, but the extra space will inherit the character style we applied to the note. Even if we try to end the character style with the Selection's ClearCharacterStyle method in preparation for adding an un-styled space, Word doesn't cooperate (Copilot says this should work, but testing says not so).
What's the solution?
Several approaches exist to solve this small, annoying issue, but each is a little clunky in its own way. Briefly, we will insert the note text and the space separately and remove the automatically-applied character style from the space. Let's break it down into distinct steps:
- Collapse the Selection toward the end to avoid any initial selection issues
- Insert the inline note text (selection extends over the new text)
- Change the note text character style
- Collapse the Selection toward the end of the note
- Add a space which will inherit the character style
- Remove the character style from the space
- Collapse the Selection toward then end
Ughhh, and we still have a style validation problem to consider. It's a lot of steps for such a simple macro task, but every other approach has it's own quirks and requires about the same number of steps.
Insert an inline note
Rather than just implementing the manual steps above like a VBA automaton, we'll take advantage of more VBA-like thinking.
Store the note text
We can define a fixed note as a plain text “string” of characters. This is not strictly necessary, but it helps make the macro easier to read and modify for any other notes we create.
The note text needs to be in double quotes, so VBA knows it's plain text. We use an equals = sign to store the note text value in the variable, and VBA automatically determines the variable's data type based on what we're storing in it.
This is just a generic note, but of course, customize it to your own needs. I included double square brackets on either side to set it off from the main text. We'll further add a character style Strong Emphasis (a default Word style) below to clearly indicate the note within the novel text.
Collapse the Selection
If the writer runs the macro with any text selected, we need to make sure everything works correctly. The easiest way to do this is to just collapse the Selection using its Collapse method.
The default is to collapse toward the Start (left side) of the selection, but we want to add the note on the right side. We assign the wdCollapseEnd constant to the Direction option. The constant is from a very short Word constants table.
This command effectively "moves" the Selection to the end of the original selection where its Start and End positions are the same. It does nothing if the cursor is just an insertion point, so it's safe to use either way. It's also necessary since it prevents the later character style from being applied to any initially selected text. Document positions are counted based on the number of characters from the beginning of the document.
Insert the note text
Finally insert the actual note text using the InsertBefore method.
Only one option is allowed with InsertBefore, so we are allowed to omit the Text:= option name to simplify the command. With a collapsed Selection, the InsertAfter method is equivalent. The Selection extends to include the new text.
What do we do now?
If we don't want to apply a character style to the note, we can just collapse the newly extended Selection, and we're done (see the simplified macro below).
Change the note paragraph style
Applying a different style will better distinguish the note from the surrounding novel text. Of course, the style needs to be available in the document or the Normal.dot template.
What are character styles?
Character styles apply to text, and paragraph styles apply to paragraphs. Some overlap exists because paragraph styles can also apply some character formatting to all text in the paragraph. Manually applied character styles or formatting will override any paragraph style text formatting.
We're using the "Subtle Emphasis" character style in the example below since it is different from typical novel text while not being overbearing. It's also installed with Word by default.
Set the new note character style
We set the paragraph style using the Style property of the Selection.
We just assigned the literal style name as plain text to the property, but the Style property is general enough that we could also assign a Style object that we've saved in a different variable. It's usually easier to just use a valid style name.
Collapse the Selection again
We need to add a space to prepare for upcoming novel text, but we want to remove the above character style. With that in mind, we again collapse the Selection toward the end of our note text, so we can add the space as a separate character.
Insert a space
We separate the inline note from the upcoming novel text with a space.
The Selection automatically extends over the inserted space. We're intentionally adding the space separately, so we can remove the style it will automatically inherit.
Remove the applied character style
We do not want the writer's novel text to inherit the note character style, so we explicitly remove it from the preceding space using the ClearCharacterStyle method.
Collapse the Selection again
We've inserted our inline novel note which is now followed by a space, but the space is currently selected, so we again collapse the Selection toward the end.
Now, the writer can keep writing in the regular novel text format.
Gotchas
Could anything go wrong?
Does the character style exist?
Of course, the Subtle Emphasis style (or whichever one is used) must be accessible in the document. Unfortunately, it will cause an error and crash the macro if not, so just be sure the note style is included in your work in progress.
Ideally we would check whether the style exists first before trying to apply it to a paragraph, but detecting whether a given style is valid is more complicated than it should be. A separate article covers style validations, but it is a little technical and awkward and using it requires an extra conditional statement.
Character style issues (nominal)
The above clears the character style from the extra space. As a result, the space reverts to the default paragraph text styling. A tiny problem occurs if the note was inserted in the middle of some other desired character style. It's a niche case, but technically, we would be removing local character style formatting in that case.
Final inline novel note macro
Put the commands together to quickly insert our novel note into the document.
I don't use this particular version, but the paragraph sibling definitely helps me remember details during editing while allowing me to move on with my writing at the moment. While we don't want to leave everything for the editing phase, some details just have to wait. Defining the note text at the top of the macro makes it easier to create other variations.
This macro's sibling inserts notes as a styled paragraph. Another member article includes any selected text in the note which I find useful for research-oriented notes (e.g., a historical phrase I can't quite remember) where i need to mention some extra context. Of course, many other possibilities exists based on the placement, wording, context, and/or style of the different notes.
A formatted AutoCorrect entry would accomplish most of what this macro is doing, but this could be used as a starting point to add easily context to the note based on nearby surrounding text.
Plain text version
If you prefer to just add the note in plain text matching the paragraph font, the macro is much simpler. Without a lot of explanation, the result is:
The double square brackets (or whatever distinguishing text that sets the note apart) is more important in the plain text version since we can search for these characters when working through the notes during an edit. The MyNovelNote variable was also removed because this version is so much simpler.
In full disclosure, an AutoCorrect entry would do everything this macro is doing.
Deleting the notes
As we take care of the notes during an edit, we need a quick way to delete them. The double square used in either macro work well with an Advance Find search (Control+H in Windows or Command+Shift+H on Mac). A search pattern something like [[*]] in a wildcard search would quickly jump to the next or previous note. The asterisk * is an "any character(s)" wildcard.
On the other hand, even that will get tedious after a while, so it could be customized with a macro using the Find property. While not overly difficult, Find operations in a macro require some explanation.
Improvements
In addition to implementing other note types, we could improve a few more things.
Spacing issues
I don't like adding wonky spaces or formatting in my text or notes, so I would add a extra steps to check for prior existing or missing spaces. Then remove or add them as needed just to keep things looking tidy. However, these additions make the macro look more complicated than it is in principle, so they were omitted.
Screen updates
This macro makes multiple changes to the document using the Selection, so it is a good candidate to disable screen updates while running. On the other hand, the simple changes are probably so fast we would never notice the difference.
Add an undo record?
This macro makes multiple small changes, so it's a good candidate for adding an undo record. However, they're excluded from this version for simplicity and because then can cause problems if they're not properly implemented.
Function version?
It's easy to envision multiple variations of this macro for different notes, but it's clunky to copy the entire block of macro steps into a new macro for each note type. This is why functions were invented, but that is outside the scope of this article. We will likely implement function versions of the paragraph-oriented novel notes.
