Editing individual Headwords

Editing individual Headwords

You can edit individual headwords in the Wordlist View, but you should use this ability with caution! This refers to in-place editing of the actual characters of the word, not deleting the word altogether or moving it elsewhere in the list, both of which are quite safe.

Here's why:

This ability is provided for making minor alterations, such as changing the capitalisation of a proper name before printing. If you make more radical changes to a headword, you're likely to encounter problems. Since changing a headword does not change its contexts, you will end up with a headword which no longer appears in its own contexts - a situation which makes no sense.

If you also change the length of the headword, context displays will be even more incorrect. Finally, if you save and reload a concordance after making such changes, the results are undefined. In other words, anything may happen.

Still want to go ahead? Here's how:

To edit an individual word, first untick the Read-only item on the Headwords menu. When this is ticked, it prevents individual headwords from accidental changes. (It stops in-place editing of the actual characters of the headword, but doesn't prevent the headword being moved or deleted altogether). Then double-click the headword. An editor dialog will open to allow you to change the word.

In versions of Concordance before 2.0.0, this function used the Windows in-place editor (similar to that in Windows Explorer where you can rename a file or folder by doing a very slow double-click). This does not handle international characters properly. Version 2.0.0 uses an editor which should be language-aware.

Setting the Wordlist View from read-only to editable or back again causes Windows to do lots of housekeeping which can take quite a while.