Thursday, October 7, 2010

It Finally Happened ...

This is crazy ...

For the past 15 years, I've used one particular word to hold my place in the documents I'm editing or writing. I remember picking this word and thinking, "It'll be safe because I'll never actually find it in a document or use it myself." So for the last forever, every time I start working on a project, I open the file, do a Find, type in my code word, and zoom right back to where I left off.

The word is "byzantine." I always thought it was kind of appropriate.

Well, today it happened. I opened up my current editing project, searched for byzantine and actually found that the author had used it in his manuscript. I'm still a little in shock. Years and years have gone by ... hundreds of books have passed over my desk in one form of another ... and this is the first one to use the word byzantine.

What's going to happen next? Palin for president? A call from Oprah? I feel nervous, rattled.

8 comments:

Travis Erwin said...

Never say never.

Stephen Parrish said...

Byzantine is too hard to type! I use "xxx."

Jon VanZile said...

Travis,

I'll never say never again.

Hey, wait a second ...

Jon VanZile said...

Stephen,

If I used that, I'd be afraid of never finding my spot again.

Melanie Hooyenga said...

That is so cool.

Kath Calarco said...

Byzantine? I must say that word five dozen times a day. "Oh, that reminds me of my byzantine era," or, "Ovaltine? I thought you said Byzantine," and let's not forget "Get the byzantine outta here!" (Damn those Turks!)

;-)

So that's why I use bookmarks in Word. Handy little tool once I figured it out.

P.S. Here's to Oprah calling and not Palin for President.

Jon VanZile said...

Melanie,

One might almost say it's byzantine.

Jon VanZile said...

Kath,

Ha ha! Awesome!

You had me at Ovaltine.