After a year of online teaching, it gets increasingly embarrassing to own up to having problems, still, with some of the absolute basics. In my case, the issue has been over how, when, on my laptop, I can tick students’ work. 

There, it’s out there. 

While other colleagues are now advancing to second screens, breakout rooms and making names for themselves as YouTube teacher-presenters, it doesn’t get any easier to own up to these local difficulties.

At least my illiterate ancestors of yesteryear could put a cross next to their name; in my case, I can’t even manage the humble tick - an even simpler mark to make, you’d think. 

But now I’ve ’fessed up, I think I should share my journey, in the hope that it might alleviate any sense of shame that others might be feeling. My story also has a happy (and maybe helpful to some) ending, as I am now ticking away very nicely.  

Online teaching: tracking down the elusive tick

When I first began marking submitted work on Word last year, I just assumed that there would be some obvious “tick” symbol that I could easily turn to. Surely there would be one lurking there, after clicking on “Insert” and then looking under “Symbols”, if not under “Shapes”? 

But no, the tick is not obviously there - not if you are a normal person who lives your life in sensible shoes and in a suitably sensible typeface, such as Arial or Times New Roman. 

If I wanted to track down the elusive tick symbol on Word (as I only recently learned), I would have to depart briefly from the security of the great Times New Roman empire and head down to that obscure, seemingly LSD-fuelled font world that is “Wingdings”. 

In the bewildering land of Wingdings, you’ll find the tick sign hidden away under rows of weird and random depictions and distortions, including pairs of scissors, religious symbols, clock faces, possible sexual positions and what have you.

Yet even after I had finally unearthed the tick and whisked it away from the evil forces at work in Wingdings, the use of it began to seem more effort than it was worth. 

Ticking along nicely

I could, of course, make it my special copy-and-paste adopted child. In fact I tried this. The problem was that this prevented me from using copy-and-paste for other time-saving tricks when marking, such as pasting inserted points from my “common comments bank” for that piece of work.  

So, instead of ticking, I decided in the last lockdown to write a supportive “yes” after relevant, mark-scoring sentences. In the best pieces of work, however, the appearance of “yes”, “yes”, “yes”, throughout the answer started to suggest something else altogether.  

So I looked again at the possibility of ticking. And, as always when in doubt, I turned to the internet.

Thank you to the person on the web who has now given me a way of ticking without any pain or pasting. I can now do a “tick” mark just by typing “tick” (which makes the symbol appear) and so I am absolutely loving marking again. 

Here’s how I now do it, with apologies to those for whom this is all very rudimentary. 

First, while on Word, hold your nose and go into that Wingdings font world, and hunt for the aforementioned tick sign. Click to copy it. 

Next, open any student’s Word document and click on “File” in the top left corner of the screen. Then click on “Options”, now found in the bottom left corner. Then click on “Proofing” in the mini-screen that appears, then on the “Autocorrect options” box. 

In the blank box underneath “Replace”, put the word “tick” (or some briefer word-letter combination that you’re never likely to use) and, in the blank box underneath “With”, you now paste that copied Wingdings tick symbol. 

My tick is available to me all the time now. It’s that easy. 

It has indeed been a journey for me. One in which I now never have to visit Wingdings again. If my story is of comfort (or even of use) to others, then perhaps it has been worth it.

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire