How to Use Textpad to Write Articles Faster

© 2003 Judy Cullins

It's important for you to use TextPad because all ezine publishers want your articles without any formatting. Also, for any email exchange, you need to put your article in the body of the email, not an attachment. Most Online readers who don't know you will not open your email, and people who do know you want it this faster, easier way.

Textpad is a shareware download from www.textpad.com. Shareware means you can use it, fully functional, but you are expected to pay for it if you use it a lot.

The very first thing you should know about Textpad is that it is a PLAIN TEXT editor. That means there is absolutely no formatting like bold, underline, or italics. One of the benefits of this program is that it can wrap you articles at 65 chanters across fast and easily.

Textpad is straightforward and easy to understand and work with. Here's how to set up the program to make your articles.

First, click on the "Configure" menu, then 'Preferences...." then under the General page uncheck "Allow multiple instances to run." Doing this makes it so that TextPad can't be run twice at the same time. Check the box next to "Allow multiple files in command line." This allows you to open multiple files at once.

Next, click on the plus sign next to the words "Document Classes." Then, click on "Text." You will notice a little to the right a bunch of settings. These are the settings to make your articles wrap. First, check "Word Wrap Long Lines," underneath that click the circle "Save with hard breaks." Finally, underneath the white area put a check mark next to "Word break at column numbers:" and fill in the text box with 65 or what ever number you want (for article purposes 65 is the best way to go).

Press OK and you are done!

To do a word count to your articles, simply highlight your entire article, right click on it, go to properties and remember the number under the "Selected Column" in the "Words:" row. Most opt-in ezines want the word count.

TextPad can do a lot more than just wrap your articles for you. You can sort a list of things in alphabetical order, find and replace, give you total number of words in your article, spell check, and lots more. This is the one program I wouldn't be without. It makes article submissions so much easier and faster.

Judy Cullins: 20-year author, publisher, book coach Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams eBk: Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Your Book Online www.bookcoaching.com/products.shtml Send an email to Subscribe@bookcoaching.com FREE The Book Coach Says... includes 2 free eReports Judy@bookcoaching.com Ph:619/466/0622

Note: When I installed Textpad, it connected to the Internet During setup and downloaded a 1669 KB ActiveX control from Microsoft's Web site. Then I had to click on a button to restart my computer.