MathType Tips: How to Remove Italics

Just a quick Thursday tip for all of your writers who use MathType, which I happen to know is most of you...

You may have noticed that we often tell you not to italicize units in MathType or we ask you kindly to add a space between the unit and the value, but maybe you're not sure how to un-italicize them because you're stuck in "Math" mode. Well, here's how to easily fix that issue. No more italicized units or weird formatting problems.

Italicized units look like this screenshot, and you'll confuse students if you randomly italicize something like "feet", "meters", or "inches" for no good reason.

 To fix this, just double-click on the Mathtype and the editing box will open. Then highlight the right side of the equation (you want that L' variable to remain italicized, so leave that little guy alone). From there, go to "Style". You'll see that "Math" is selected by default. This automatically assumes you're typing equations so it will italicize everything and will not allow you to input spaces at all. Instead, click "Text" style.

Voila! This screenshot below is exactly what you want to see:

Then when you exit out of the box, make sure to hit "Save". Your answer will now look proper and lovely and have the correct italics or non-italics. 

Now, on to the next solution... 

How To Create a Template in Word (.dot)

Happy Friday! We're bringing you another helpful tip on authoring today to close out the week.

This week's tip is a HUGE time-saver. We're teaching you how to create templates in Word. Do this now and save yourself hours and hours of boring formatting work over the long run! That means more solutions written, more productivity, and more money for you. That's good all around.

Now, let's get started. We'll go over what a template is, how to create one, and how to save it. If you have further questions, ask them here on the blog or on the LinkedIn group.

What is a template?
A template is a document that saves all of its formatting (fonts, delimiters, margins, page size, headers) so you can easily duplicate your solution format again and again. Imagine all the tedious time saved! A template saves in a .dot format, so make sure that when you finish each solution and save it, you change the name and convert this to .docx. More on that in the final part of this tutorial.

How do I create a template?
It's super easy. For our purposes, you can actually use our template document that we send you when you start a project, and then just go to File>Save As>Word Template. Alternatively, create your own template for certain types of solutions (i.e. maybe you have a lot of similar discussion questions or accounting questions with similar tables). Now, each time you open that file, it will preserve all formatting so you can start fresh with each new solution. Voila!

How do I save each solution?
Now, you know you'll need to change certain things in each file, like the chapter ID and problem ID, possibly the date (unless you also make that update automatically too, smart idea.). Then you're all done writing the solution. You can't simply hit Ctrl+S. You'll need to go to the file menu and Save As. Just hit .docx, update the file name to reflect your BookID-ChapID-ProbID, and then you're all set.

It's as easy as that. Imagine how much time that will save you in the long run if you set that up now. In solutions authoring, time really is the same thing as money, so we recommend you do this today!

For more information on this, check out Microsoft's tutorial on their website. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

New Textbook Policy

As many of you already know, we adopted a new textbook policy for all new projects starting in January 2013. One of the most common questions for brand new authors with us is "How do I get the textbook?" and we've been working out the best possible way to deal with this issue. Since we don't own the textbook material, we can't simply send you an electronic copy. And why don't we just send you a copy from our warehouse? Well, we have to establish some sort of accountability. Otherwise,  people would inevitably change their minds about projects and take the book and disappear, potentially costing us thousands of dollars.

So, after a long meeting, Ryan and I decided the best possible policy is to have everyone rent a textbook or eTextbook only from Chegg. Why Chegg? Because we have a 21-day return policy, so you can give the book a try and return it if you don't hit your first due date-- at zero cost to you and zero cost to us.

It's up to you whether you prefer our eTextbooks (read about our award-winning eReader here) or if you want an old-fashioned print textbook. What's even cooler is that most of our old-fashioned print textbooks come with free 7-day access to the eTextbook, so you'll have no problem getting started immediately and returning the book if it isn't a good fit for you.

We just thought we'd let you know why we decided to change the policy in the spirit of transparency.

I hope everyone is having a great, productive week. We sure are over here!

Math Sample Templates

In response to a request by one of our experts, I'm posting math templates for a few different levels of math authoring. Feel free to use the template as a guiding point and a starting point for your own, but please don't copy any of the original content.

• College Algebra Template
• Engineering-Level Math Template
• Geometry Template
• Math Template for Graphing Calculator Problems
• Calculus Template