I do all my writing in Win32pad, a bare-bones, lightning-fast editor. Why? I can’t stand “features,” and Microsoft Word is loaded with ‘em. NOW HEAR THIS: the day I need a damn machine to anticipate what I might type next or second-guess me after I type it, is the day you can toss in the dirt because that will mean that I am dead.
So it was with particular delight that I ran across this little aside about Microsoft Word, on the science-blog, Pharyngula…
It’s not so much a rule as it is a peeve, but one thing I’d add to that list is “I HATE MICROSOFT WORD.” It’s a bulky, clumsy, ugly program that lards files with so much crap and distracts writers with so many useless geegaws that I think it actively conspires to diminish people’s writing ability. When I ask for papers to be submitted electronically, I do not mean that I want a Word file as an attachment: I want plain text. Don’t fuss over fonts or paragraph formats or borders or margins, just type the words, then copy and paste into an e-mail document.
To do on Saturday: move Pharyngula from my weekly favorites to my daily favorites. (He posts often enough to be worth checking daily. My “Weekly favorites” links are blogs I like that don’t post as often as I’d like.)
I actually kind of like word…. However, that might be because I grew up using it to do all my word processing. I think I’ve used word since I was 14 or 15 (back when word first came out).