Shabash Merops

Microsoft Word interface

Merops output documents are reviewed using Microsoft Word. This means:

• minimal impact on business re-engineering
• minimal training required
• user settings are retained (e.g. custom dictionaries, view settings)
• users still have access to normal Word functionality (e.g. macros, AutoCorrect, Find and Replace)

Merops leverages the power of the Merops correction and XML markup capability into Microsoft Word, the most familiar editing and authoring environment.

Merops is compatible with all versions of Microsoft Word 2000 onwards.

Tracked changes

When Merops changes the formatting or text of a document, it uses ‘tracked changes’.

Tracked changes are a feature of Microsoft Word that enable you to see and revert individual changes to their original text.

Rather than need to accept all Merops changes individually, the user can simply read through the document, rejecting any errors, then accept all remaining changes.

Merops comes with a number of useful tools to help simplify and speed up this process, such as a tool to reject all identical changes in the document.

You can learn more about Microsoft Word tracked changes here.

Comments

Sometimes Merops will not be able to automatically standardize a term, because there is information missing, some information is ambiguous, or something may need to be rewritten.

In these cases, Merops can alert the user with a comment, so they can address the problem.

Examples of alerts include:

• when something is missing from a reference (e.g. a date or page numbers)
• the use of poor grammar or inappropriate words (e.g. slang words in a technical document)
• when standardizing a telephone number, where no international code is given
• when a term was not known by the system, which may be a spelling error

Merops comes with a number of useful tools to interact with comments, such as a tool to delete all identical comments in the document.

Merops also includes tools to allow the user to quickly add preset comments, e.g. to query an author about a missing citation.

You can learn more about Microsoft Word comments here.

Colour maps of complex structure

Merops uses coloured character styles in Microsoft Word to show the user how the text has been identified.

Simple and informative

Merops presents complex structures in an immediately intuitive way. The colour markup makes it easy for the user to determine that the text has been correctly identified.

This is particularly useful where a series of different elements are found close together. References are an obvious example:

Green, F., Machin, S. and Wilkinson, D. 1999: Trade unions and training practices in British workplaces. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 52, 179–93.

Guest, D. and Hoque, K. 1994: Employment relations in new non-union workplaces. Human Resource Management Journal 5, 1–13.

Optional XML output

Merops colour markup corresponds directly with the underlying XML. Corrections can be made by the user to the output Word document by applying character styles manually, and this can then be used to update the output XML file.

This means users don’t need to retrain extensively to become familiar with XML.

Finishing the document

At the end of the reviewing process, the user can remove all the coloured styles, using the Merops Finish Document tool.