

Word Fails Me - Why doesn’t Microsoft’s writing tool actually help writers? - chwolfe
http://www.thebigmoney.com/print/6730

======
c0riander
I basically live in Word, both at work and at home, and have done so since
elementary school (well, word processors, at least) -- as a result, I probably
know how to use Word better (or I should say, more powerfully) than 98% of
users, if not more. That means I _do_ know all the obscure features and
formatting, how to fix and manipulate them, and most importantly, I have a
good sense of when something's possible within Word and when it's not. I've
also grown up with Word as an integral part of my writing process, and it's
influenced how I compose documents and communicate in general, so I'm totally
at home within it.

I'll admit most people aren't like this -- yet. I had a good teacher (my dad,
not my school), and I grew up with the software, rather than having to learn
it after my thinking and writing processes were already formed. But going
forward, more and more people will be like me. There is a lot of room for
improvement in Word, yes -- it could be more transparent, more flexible, with
more overt features -- but several of the things he was complaining about have
never been a problem for me, and I could probably figure out solutions to them
in a few minutes. (For example, why was he creating section breaks to reorder
a novel? Section breaks are more for style/formatting than for content. Why
not go for the easy solution and just copy and paste, either within the
current doc or putting it together in a new one? It may not be as flashy but
it would get the job done easily.)

If he has to use Word as much as he says he does, and he's not suggesting any
alternatives, it might be worth it to learn the program better.

------
billybob
Basically, he says the "word processor" is not geared to help the workflow of
writing. I agree.

When I was a journalist, I would take notes in one or more files. When I was
ready to write the story, I'd put the notes in one window and the story in the
another and go back and forth. Only my filename conventions told me which
notes went with which stories.

I imagine lots of people do similar things - students researching for papers,
etc. It would be nice to have a file format that encapsulates notes and
finished story/paper, and a program that easily lets you tab between notes and
work things into the finished product as you go. If you needed to share the
file, you could export just the finished thing.

In other ways, like making side notes and sharing and collaboratively editing,
Google Docs really is doing novel things with "word processing." Which is one
reason why it's putting some pressure on MS Office.

~~~
joubert
Something like Scrivener, perhaps?
<http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html>

------
freescale
The author should look into Microsoft OneNote. It's a great tool for laying
out and reorganizing documents. Tags, pictures, screen captures, internal and
external hyperlinks can easily be incorporated as well. Once the basic
structure of the document is finished, it can easily be copied and pasted into
Word. If you have a tablet PC, you can even scribble on the document using pen
input.

~~~
awa
Yup... Onenote is basically the new version of Word for me and the 2010
version is slicker than the last one.

Also, you should have a look at Canvas for Onenote if you like a higher level
view of your notebooks.
[http://www.officelabs.com/projects/canvasforonenote/Pages/de...](http://www.officelabs.com/projects/canvasforonenote/Pages/default.aspx)

------
TrevorBurnham
It's telling that the article doesn't recommend any alternatives. Building an
easy-to-use yet flexible WYSIWYG word processor is a huge challenge, and no
one has nailed it yet. I like Apple's Pages, but it's less powerful than Word
and still has a steep learning curve. What else is there? Is anyone going to
seriously suggest that OpenOffice has a way better UI than Word? Or Google
Docs, or Zoho?

It's true that Microsoft isn't innovating in the word processor market.
Neither is anyone else.

~~~
qjz
The problem is that WYSIWYG is a concept that has almost nothing to do with
writing. It's more about typesetting and layout. It's easy to write in a text
editor or even this little box on HN. Now try to just write in Word. Wait
until you're happy with what you've written before you change the way it
looks. Then try to do some editing. Then send it to someone for collaboration.
In no time at all, it turns into a big clusterf __k. You get people who do
things like PUT ALL THEIR CHANGES IN RED BOLD UPPERCASE SO THEY STAND OUT.
Gee, thanks a lot. Now I have to completely retype the section in my original
font and/or color to get it to look normal again. To make matters worse,
there's still an invisible space that's in RED BOLD UPPERCASE, waiting for
your cursor like a landmine. Typesetting should be one of the last steps of
document preparation, and the majority of writers shouldn't even be involved
in that process.

~~~
kragen
> You get people who do things like PUT ALL THEIR CHANGES IN RED BOLD
> UPPERCASE SO THEY STAND OUT.

If you get someone who doesn't know how to use Word, teach them. Say, "Can you
please turn on Track Changes and redo your changes, without the red bold
uppercase?"

> Typesetting should be one of the last steps of document preparation, and the
> majority of writers shouldn't even be involved in that process.

You get a better product when the writer is aware and competent at that. Maybe
you're saying that that's too much to ask from the majority of writers, or
maybe that extra increment of quality isn't worth it for the majority of
books.

~~~
derefr
> Maybe you're saying that that's too much to ask from the majority of writers

It's not "too much to ask," it's something that requires much training and
practice and a good sense of visual aesthetics, and writers shouldn't waste
10x the time to get half as good a result as someone who does it
professionally. Of course, you should be _aware_ of how the way in which you
do your job affects how others do theirs (i.e.
it'sveryhardtotypesetthisline,evenifit'sthewaysomeonesoundedwhentheyspoke),
but you shouldn't do [an amateur version of] their job for them.

------
bcaulf
It's funny. He bitches that MS Word has not improved since 1997. The 1997,
hell, the 1990 version, had all the features he is asking for. The features
were not hard to learn, and the thing has always come with a manual that is
not hard to follow. All they've done lately is mess with the interface and
make it so it doesn't freak out on large documents.

 _creating documents with several sections that can easily be moved around_

Outline. Learn styles.

 _just wants to type most stuff with single or double spacing and a
comfortable serif font_

Default template. Again, styles.

 _Does Word, say, have a scratchpad where you can save sections of writing to
use later?_

How about a second document?

 _mark where certain thoughts or paragraphs come from that will not turn your
text into an unreadable jumble of pink “comments”?_

Toggle View Markup to hide the comments.

What bothers most people is the behavior Word exhibits when you use it as a
WYSIWYG word processor. It is based on a stylesheet and if you learn to use it
that way it will not surprise you.

<http://achewood.com/index.php?date=05182004>

"Thank you Microsoft Word for continuing to be a good program."

------
RyanMcGreal
Granted, my print layout needs are modest, but these days I do nearly all my
writing in Markdown in a text box on a web form, and save my documents to a
database with version control.

I use python-markdown2 to convert it to HTML, and I wrote a simple library
that generates a table of contents with anchors for whatever heading levels I
want to capture.

I get spell check for free when I use Firefox, I can drop into HTML when I
need more structure than Markdown provides, and if absolutely necessary, I can
copy the formatted output and paste it into OpenOffice Writer if someone
really needs it in .doc or .docx format.

~~~
derefr
I think everyone's stabbing at strawmen here; the author's main conclusion was
"But when it comes to the main thing—figuring out what you’re going to say and
the order in which you’ll say it—it’s still only marginally better than the
back of the envelope or the notepad."

His complaint isn't about "structure", or how hard Word is to use for advanced
typesetting, or anything like that; it was simply that Word—a tool,
supposedly, specialized to "writing"—has no solutions to problems occurring
not on the page, but in the creative process.

Neither does a web browser's text editing control, of course—and neither does
any other computer program that suggests it targets "writers." The closest
I've found is Ommwriter, because it aids in removing distractions and makes
little typing noises that basically turn pumping out words into a variable-
schedule reward, like a mouse in a skinner box—but it's still not really a
tool for _writing_ , so much as it is a tool for transliterating the writing
already done in your head onto a page.

I imagine a tool for _writing_ to be able to "interpret" works with a Prolog-
like knowledge engine and check for contradictions; to be able to show a
timeline of the events portrayed both by chronology and narrative order; to be
able to take a directed graph of events (i.e. a flowchart), compile them
together using downloadable "styles" (a bit like a synthesized voice, but from
a text corpus instead of an audio one) and spit out a very boring but accurate
version of what you plan to write, that you can then set about making
interesting; and to hold together all your "this is a cool idea" notes and
suggest using them (this character could have that trait, this event could be
described using that turn of phrase, etc.)

There are so many ways in which computers _could_ be helping us write, but
instead we treat them like pieces of paper that we have to transmit full,
linearized sentences into using the keyboard before they'll deign to "process"
our words. In many roles, we accept that computers can replace people, even
performing their previous jobs so much more quickly and systematically that we
can move to new heights (e.g. punch cards vs. a REPL). Why not have the
computer replace (or more likely, augment) your alpha-readers/publishing
editor/reviewers/writing group, except right there watching you type, instead
of with a days-long feedback cycle?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I understand what you're saying. My point is that I don't even use Word for
the things Word is supposed to be good at, let alone the features that Word
doesn't even try to provide.

------
DrSprout
My favorite way to write is with Emacs running on one of the virtual terminals
under Linux. A fullscreened Putty session sshd into a Unix box will also do in
a pinch.

My co-workers, by contrast, even paste code into Word documents.

~~~
eru
I also like my Emacs in fullscreen. But I just use XMonad for that purpose. I
also get rid of the scroll-bar and the menu-bar.

------
Legion
Non-"print now" link: [http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/money-
trail/2010/05/17/w...](http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/money-
trail/2010/05/17/word-fails-me?page=full)

------
bonsaitree
Does _anyone_ who writes words (or code) for a living know _anyone_ who would
_ever_ consider using such a tool in the first place?!

Please. The _best_ writing tools are a good text editor, a simple meta/mark-up
ontology, and a focused mind.

~~~
Qz
If you're writing a 100,000 word novel, a single text file in a text editor
isn't really the optimal solution (although yes it's probably still better
than using Word).

~~~
sketerpot
I don't know what kind of books you're writing, but 100,000 pages is _too many
pages._ Did you mean 100,000 words?

I've only ever written 50,000 word NaNoWriMo stuff, but I've had a lot of
success with text files, simply marked-up, in emacs. One text file per
chapter. A short Python script converts them into LaTeX and a makefile builds
a PDF. All the notes are handled with org-mode. It's a really sweet setup.

~~~
Qz
typo - fixed :)

as for LateX/python stuff - the article is addressing the needs of the average
writer, of which those who know anything resembling python are a small small
subset.

------
jsz0
Exactly why I prefer to start with feature sparse apps like TextEdit. Even for
the small volume of writing I do I find it much easier to focus on the
substance before worrying too much about the exact layout or formatting of the
document. This usually includes multiple TextEdit windows. In the final stages
I will use Pages or Word to play with the final structure and formatting. I
would imagine for a larger document this workflow would work well also. It
almost requires multiple monitors or enough screen space in general to display
a few windows at once side-by-side. I think the author of this article is
probably looking for something like Scrivener on the Mac which I've never
tried but lots of people seem to adore it.

------
kenjackson
These posts are always interesting, but usually not all that informative. For
every one of these posts there are probably 100 writers who are fine with
Word.

There are some minor things I'd like out of Word, but the main thing is
probably to start up faster. Takes about 3s on my computer. I'd love to see
sub 1s startup.

With that said, OneNote is always running so I use that for a lot of the type
of writing that this author refers to.

~~~
adbge
Running Word 2010 off a SSD, I found startup to be near instantaneous. I was
impressed with how responsive it was for an application with such a huge
feature set.

~~~
patio11
Ditto here. I just tabbed back into Windows (had been doing some programming
in VMWared ubuntu) and fired up MS Word. Less than a second to where I could
start typing.

If there is anyone here who doesn't own a SSD yet, buy one this week. It is
the single biggest performance improvement I've ever seen on a computer. Apps
start _fast_ , VMs start _fast_ , browsers load _fast_ , your interpreted
language running in a VM that needs to load 400 files of libraries doesn't
care because its _fast_ , etc.

------
alanh
This is why <http://thebookpatch.com> just launched: To specifically address
the writing needs of (book) authors with tools and features dedicated to, for
example, character development. (IE users only. Not my product, though I did
some contract work for them.)

~~~
drats
They just launched, in 2010, and it's IE only? Plus a link to a pdf of the
DMCA in the bottom corner for no apparent reason. Wow, just wow.

~~~
aidenn0
IE has the biggest installed base by far.

~~~
alextingle
Depends where you go. I have a (fairly) general interest site that gets about
100,000 unique visitors per month, and only about 55% of them use IE. Cutting
out 45% of your potential market is quite a cost for a bit of lazy
programming.

~~~
kragen
What web site? Or, at least, how general-interest?

~~~
alextingle
<http://flood.firetree.net/usage/>

------
brisance
Has anyone taken a look at Tinderbox? <http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/>

------
smallblacksun
He is complaining that a business word processing program is not ideal for use
by a professional writer writing books/articles. That is a bit like
complaining that a minivan is not a sports car.

