PB Author Tools — Help & Post-Installation Tips

Once you’ve installed the PB Author Tools add-on, you access the tools via the “Add-ons” menu item in Google Docs.
Select “Add-ons”, then “PB Author Tools.”

* Note: if you are editing a Word Document (.docx) within Google Docs, you will not see the \”Add-ons\” menu and will not be able to use the PB Author Tools Add-on. You must work in native Google Docs format.

Manuscript word count

The “Manuscript word count” feature automatically shows you the word count of your manuscript, with illustration notes subtracted. To use the feature you should first select the text of interest (e.g. all the text after your title, until the end of your story). If you do not select any text, it counts all words in the document.

How does the tool recognize art notes?

  1. Any standalone line fully contained in square brackets [ ]
  2. Any line that contains any of these: \”Illo:\”, \”Illus:\”, \”Illus note\”, \”Art note\”, \”Illustration note\”, \”Art:\”.
  3. Other similar tricks…

If there is any question whether or not the tool is correctly identifying all your illustration notes, you can use the “Toggle highlighting art notes” to highlight and un-highlight your art notes. If your art notes are correctly highlighted, the word count should also be accurate.

Art notes formatting features

The add-on also has tools to automatically format all the art notes in your document:

  • Italics on/off
  • Change text color
  • Align right/left

The formatting commands will apply to your selected text, or the entire document if you have no text selected.