Bob & Steve: Thanks so much for your help with my fade problem. And I'm now using the Applied Effects for text position, which is wonderful.
But a problem has arisen; I imported a new clip, what appears to be a standard mp4 like all the others I've been working with, and Delete and Close Gap doesn't work. Specifically, the option is grayed out. And Shift-Delete doesn't work either.
The problem was there as soon as I imported the clip -- I didn't change any settings -- and I checked to confirm that Delete and Close Gap still works fine with all my other clips.
Is it just an unfortunate idiosyncracy that Delete and Close Gap doesn't work with all clips?