A method of putting pinyin in word

[Rowley]

Hi,

Sometimes I come in here and read through some of the posts. Now I want to give you a method of putting pinyin above characters in word (assuming you are using a Chinese version of word).

1. Search on the internet for an engaging piece of Chinese text - now I am reading "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".

2. Copy and paste it in word.

3. Now something you might not know: to put pinyin directly above single characters -- and not as much as 5 centimeters to the right -- you need to put spaces between each and every character.

Here’s how to do that:

In word click Alt+F8 to go to the macro screen under tools. Write a name for your macro and click on ©. Now you see a Visual Basic Editor where you can input some text. The default text might look like this:

Sub fgfgfgg()

'

' Your_Macro_Name Macro

' 宏在 2007-6-7 由 user 创建

'

End Sub

Delete that and replace it with:

Sub Space()

'

' Test Macro

' Macro created 11-3-2007 by Jos

Selection.HomeKey wdStory

For i = 0 To ActiveDocument. ComputeStatistics(wdStatisticCharacters)

Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

Selection.TypeText Text:=" "

Next

End Sub

Now you have created a macro for putting spaces between every single one of your characters.

4. Now click on Alt+F8 and run your macro. The macro will probably work, but a few pages before the end of the document stop. Simply copy and paste the remainder of the document in a new word document and run the macro again, until your document is finished.

5. After you have put pinyin above your characters you might want to print the document and trace the characters to learn how to write them. If you should want to that, now you can make the characters bigger (say size “26”) and select a “handwritten” style for the characters.

6. Make another macro, now one for quickly selecting text – the pinyinisation window will only open if you have selected some text. Go to the macro window by clicking Alt+F8, write a name for your macro, and click on ©. Delete the default text and replace it with:

Sub Selection()

'

' a Macro

' 宏在 2007-4-4 由 user 录制

'

Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdWord, Count:=30

Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdWord, Count:=30, Extend:=wdExtend

End Sub

7. It is a bit of a fuss to every time you want to select some text to go to the macro window, so make a shortcut-key for this macro and one for opening the pinyinisation-window.

In the tools (T) menu select ©, and in that window, at the bottom, click on (K) – for keyboard. Find your macro (宏) and make “Alt+J” your shortcut for it. Make “Alt+K” your shortcut for the pinyinisation program – now I’m using too old a version of word so I can’t be exact, but in all “things” choose “phonetic guide?”.

8. Now you can start putting pinyin above your characters! Click “Alt+J”, “Alt+K”, “Alt+J”, put your mouse over the “put pinyin in the center” option, “Enter”, “Enter”.

“Alt+J”, “Alt+K”, “Alt+J”, , “Enter”, “Enter”

“Alt+J”, “Alt+K”, “Alt+J”, , “Enter”, “Enter”

“Alt+J”, “Alt+K”, “Alt+J”, , “Enter”, “Enter”

9. Now you have put pinyin above your characters. To delete the spaces between the characters, in (E)dit select ®eplace and replace " " (one space) with "" (nothing)

10. If you should want to print and trace your characters, now you can select a color for your text (say light gray). And make a pdf document out of it – if you don’t make a pdf-document out of it, a black- and-white printer will still print the text black. You can download a free pdf-document making thingy here: http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/Writer.asp#download (install both files and print your document not to your normal printer but to Cutepdf)

This is how I study Chinese! It takes a couple of hours to change an entire book, but I think it is worth it.