Hi Guessed,

Thank you for your input.

First, I do not show all changes or the reviewer would go nuts (even in the manuscripts that are in good condition).

Second, I always send two files: one with all tracking and comments, the other with changes accepted but essential comments (that need to be addressed) remaining. The reviewer needs to look at the tracked file only in case of doubt.

Third, this is the weirdest document I have had to look at; it is chock-full of comma splices, run-ons, short sentences, and fragments that can be fixed in multiple ways.

Plus, the work is rather creative in terms of font sizes (mixed up) and hundreds of movie, album, book names etc. I keep different styles for simple italics (for names of books, movies, etc.), thoughts, messages, etc. so that changes can be made globally instantly to each category (as has happened more than once).

Also, during copyediting, I use different colors for different types of italicized text. This helps me keep track of the different functions. And really, it is not the number of styles but the number of application of the character styles that seem to create the problem.

Note that almost all of the text is set using just two paragraph styles.

Finally, I refrain very strongly from direct formatting; every word in the document should be based on a style. And I do not let any style be based on the normal template; that can cause problems, as you well know.

Getting to the possible cause of the problem: “I would think it is just an obscure bug in Word caused by the need to turn on and off large numbers of tags when tracked revisions overlap.”

I wrote in my previous message:

“Finally, a word of caution: As you can see in the attached file Sample_tracked_4.docx, any changes (overtyping or addition [words or punctuation]) made in a sentence that has already been formatted with a character style leads to that sentence being fragmented in the balloon.

“Further, rejecting the changes will only undo the character styling of parts of the sentence.

“The only way out of this situation that I could think of is to first reject the character style for each fragment, apply the paragraph style to the whole sentence (which includes the changes), and then reapply the character style.”

This does not have to do with the number of custom styles in the file; not even on the number of different character styles in a single sentence,

A sentence with just ONE single character style gets messed up if any editing is done to the part on which the character style has been applied.

Cheers!