7 ms·

In fact, the one place you should never try to do any more substantial writing than designing the poster for your niece's 4th birthday part is a word processor.

In fact, the one place you should never try to do any more substantial writing than designing the poster for your niece's 4th birthday part is a word processor. Word processors are one of the worst environments I can imagine for actually writing. Lots of people surely write in LaTeX in part because they can use a reasonable environment for writing (i.e. a decent text editor). Also, if you're in a decent text editor, writing LaTeX can be pretty easy (though for lots of things Org mode or markdown etc. may be more appropriate), and you can set up macros to auto-fill in things like the preamble etc. I essentially write for a living, and I would not have survived had I not adopted LaTeX.

pjc50 8y ago
People who need to produce Word documents and are writing things like books or scripts may find Scrivener very useful. It's a lot more stable on very large documents.
- kstrauser 8y ago
  I. Love. Scrivener. My workflow is to sketch out ideas in MindNode, drag the outlines into Scrivener, and work in their to flesh them out. I find this infinitely easier and more flexible than outlining and editing in a word processor. I've heard good things about Ulysses, too, but haven't tried it. I think that whole class of application is inherently better for editing large documents.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    Ulysses was fantastic when I last used it to do a multi-chapter document. I separated the chapters into their own files, it remembered each chapter's scroll position so it was easy to look things up in each, and the default templates looked superb. I stopped using it when it went to a subscription, though. I can't accuse a company that lets you write in Markdown, basically plain text, as rent-seeking, but I dislike my workflow being held hostage like that. Haven't really found a suitable, multi-document replacement yet.
    - kstrauser 8y ago
      I'd definitely heard good things, but the subscription was a dealbreaker for me, too. Scrivener has much the same document model, but it's pay-once. That by itself made it much more attractive to me.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  There are actually a number of options - given tools like pandoc and org-mode conversion inside of Emacs, there are lots of choices of sane working environments even if you ultimately have to have a Word doc at the end.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  Scrivener's great right up until the moment when you need to collaborate with someone else, at which point it falls over completely. The usual practice in these scenarios is to write in Scrivener and then when finished export the document to Word format to send to these other parties, but then if they come back to you with edits/feedback/etc. you're stuck with the problem of getting those changes merged back into your original Scrivener document, which is no fun -- especially if you've got multiple rounds of revisions among multiple collaborators to deal with. Don't get me wrong, I like Scrivener a lot, but in lots of scenarios it just doesn't work as a drop-in replacement for a more general word processor.
paultopia 8y ago
In my experience the worst part about Word is collaboration. Have you ever seen the track changes interface? It's a sea of incomprehensible, badly segmented, changes where every switch from bold to italics is counted as a separate change mixed in with actual substantive changes and has some little red line among thousands of indistinguishable little red lines pointing to some unclear place in the document. It's a totally unusable interface, and yet some highly collaborative industries (ahem, law) are stuck with it. It's horrifying. I have seriously considered offering to pay people with whom I'm forced to exchange documents (especially academic law review articles which tend to have thousands of edits) to learn markdown and git just so I don't have to eyestrain my way through that track changes screen
- objplant 8y ago
  How well does git perform for usual text (not code)? I only use git for code and as far as I know it compare only whole lines, which is not very useful in a text where a paragraph has no line brakes and is about half a page long. I write in Word as well and merging edits from collaborators with my in-the-meantime-updated document is really anoying and error-prone. I found https://www.simuldocs.com/ https://www.simuldocs.com/, but haven't tried it yet.
  - fwip 8y ago
    There are a few tweaks you can make to gits diff so it shows changes in a line better, but it's not great. You can also write each sentence on its own line - output will still put them in the same paragraph. But it's not as nice a reading experience of the markdown.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - pronoiac 8y ago
    markdown and git can work together. I've set that each sentence gets its own line, and configured git to use wdiff instead, highlighting the changed words instead of lines.
yreg 8y ago
I write in http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ then style it in LaTeX later. And I love it.
- haldora 8y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion! I'm now evaluating a bunch of my prior writing.... Eh that's a lot of red!
ModernMech 8y ago
I wrote my dissertation in Word. 200+ pages, dozens of captioned and numbered figures and tables, over 100 equations all numbered and referenced, table of contents, cross references, works cited. I found it quite pleasant.
- paultopia 8y ago
  I wrote a book in Word. It was a nightmare, but a useful one: a version conflict across users or something in the copyediting phase glitch-deleted all the math from a chapter ... but in laboriously reconstructing them I found and fixed an error in the original. So thanks Microsoft?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  I'm glad it worked out for you. I would have gone mad if I'd tried to write my dissertation in Word. (As it is, I'm, nearly a decade later, still a bit touched after trying to do much minor work involving lambda calculus in Word.)
- megous 8y ago
  On my old 486, I wrote about 80 page document about signal processing in Word, full of painstakingly created equations, until one day, all equations basically disappeared or became uneditable. I learned my lesson there about wysiwyg.
  - ModernMech 8y ago
    Things have improved since 1989. Give it a shot again, you might be surprised!
    - megous 8y ago
      1999 and it doesn't seem like, from other answers. The thing is that time invested in learning superior alternatives is already spent, and there's no point taking the risks just to try for no reason. Just like I will not create another website in FrontPage.
chipotle_coyote 8y ago
I'm going to make a contrarian argument, so I should preface it by noting that I write technical documentation in Markdown for a living, write an awful lot of fiction in Markdown as well, and write the rest of my fiction in Scrivener, which only superficially resembles a word processor. Furthermore, I've typeset several books with LaTeX. Having said that, an awful lot of tech nerds (arguably like myself) seem to seriously underestimate what word processors can do. Back when I did write fiction in a word processor, and even now when I have to send fiction to editors who expect things in Word format because that is the lingua franca of the non-technical publishing world, I don't have to spend an awful lot of time formatting manuscripts. Word processors have templates, and hierarchical styles. I wouldn't need a macro to auto-fill in the preamble because I'd have a template that included that. But if I did want a macro, I could have it! A lot of word processors do have macro languages! Many of them also have search-and-replace capability which is basically regular expressions with an easier syntax. For all the crap Word gets, much of it well-deserved, it's actually pretty good at editing prose. It's almost like they've been developing it for over thirty years or something. If you're in a position -- which I am -- to use a plain text editor for all your prose writing, and you prefer it, that's terrific. And you could totally make the argument that if your final copy is going to be LaTeX, you should start in plain text, whether or not you're using LaTeX markup from the beginning. But the notion that Word is some kind of underpowered little toy no real author should ever possibly use is just, well, wrong.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > But the notion that Word is some kind of underpowered little toy no real author should ever possibly use is just, well, wrong. I wouldn't characterise it as underpowered so much as wrongly-powered. Just the ability to use macros etc. is not the same as being a real text editor. I actually started out using word processors, and really wish I had discovered proper text editors sooner. For me, word processors are just miserable working environments.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    This isn't me trying to convince you of anything, just adding some anecdata. I find Word a miserable working environment. On the other hand, I find Pages a delight to work in. It's one of those "it just works" programs for me, and I find documenting editing so easy and intuitive. It reminds me of those who swear by WordPerfect and wouldn't dream of using Word unless forced to; it's not the class of application they care about it; it's the specific set of tools, their presentation, and how the app matches their work habits. (Same reason that I just can't use Google Docs, no matter how many workplaces make its use a soft requirement)
com2kid 8y ago
Counterpoint: I wrote a 200 page technical book in Word. After a couple days of customizing Word (few macros, hotkeys, customizing the styles to my liking), everything went well and I was able to do everything I wanted w/o trouble. Word does have a learning curve (e.g. put all pictures inside a text box, it makes layout 10x easier), but once learned it is quite nice for a lot of purposes.
- porker 8y ago
  > Word does have a learning curve (e.g. put all pictures inside a text box, it makes layout 10x easier) Woah, good tip! As I write more specifications and reports for management I'm using Word more, and there's a dearth of good advice online for getting decent results (it's drowned in Google by the "how to type a document" kind of guides). Many times I've wished to write HTML and have it formatted like Word, as my styles go haywire. Talking of styles, I'm surprised there's not a Syle interchange format for Style Sets - Microsoft's online resources don't have any to download. I was looking for a Latex-equivalent default template.
  - com2kid 8y ago
    The closest you can get is templates. A blank document template with just styles setup does the job. The text box thing is huge. I wouldn't be able to work in Word without knowing that. Edit: Link! https://templates.office.com/en-US/Blank-and-General https://templates.office.com/en-US/Blank-and-General

pjc50 8y ago

People who need to produce Word documents and are writing things like books or scripts may find Scrivener very useful. It's a lot more stable on very large documents.

kstrauser 8y ago
I. Love. Scrivener. My workflow is to sketch out ideas in MindNode, drag the outlines into Scrivener, and work in their to flesh them out. I find this infinitely easier and more flexible than outlining and editing in a word processor. I've heard good things about Ulysses, too, but haven't tried it. I think that whole class of application is inherently better for editing large documents.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Ulysses was fantastic when I last used it to do a multi-chapter document. I separated the chapters into their own files, it remembered each chapter's scroll position so it was easy to look things up in each, and the default templates looked superb. I stopped using it when it went to a subscription, though. I can't accuse a company that lets you write in Markdown, basically plain text, as rent-seeking, but I dislike my workflow being held hostage like that. Haven't really found a suitable, multi-document replacement yet.
  - kstrauser 8y ago
    I'd definitely heard good things, but the subscription was a dealbreaker for me, too. Scrivener has much the same document model, but it's pay-once. That by itself made it much more attractive to me.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
There are actually a number of options - given tools like pandoc and org-mode conversion inside of Emacs, there are lots of choices of sane working environments even if you ultimately have to have a Word doc at the end.
smacktoward 8y ago
Scrivener's great right up until the moment when you need to collaborate with someone else, at which point it falls over completely. The usual practice in these scenarios is to write in Scrivener and then when finished export the document to Word format to send to these other parties, but then if they come back to you with edits/feedback/etc. you're stuck with the problem of getting those changes merged back into your original Scrivener document, which is no fun -- especially if you've got multiple rounds of revisions among multiple collaborators to deal with. Don't get me wrong, I like Scrivener a lot, but in lots of scenarios it just doesn't work as a drop-in replacement for a more general word processor.

paultopia 8y ago

In my experience the worst part about Word is collaboration. Have you ever seen the track changes interface? It's a sea of incomprehensible, badly segmented, changes where every switch from bold to italics is counted as a separate change mixed in with actual substantive changes and has some little red line among thousands of indistinguishable little red lines pointing to some unclear place in the document. It's a totally unusable interface, and yet some highly collaborative industries (ahem, law) are stuck with it. It's horrifying. I have seriously considered offering to pay people with whom I'm forced to exchange documents (especially academic law review articles which tend to have thousands of edits) to learn markdown and git just so I don't have to eyestrain my way through that track changes screen

objplant 8y ago
How well does git perform for usual text (not code)? I only use git for code and as far as I know it compare only whole lines, which is not very useful in a text where a paragraph has no line brakes and is about half a page long. I write in Word as well and merging edits from collaborators with my in-the-meantime-updated document is really anoying and error-prone. I found https://www.simuldocs.com/ https://www.simuldocs.com/, but haven't tried it yet.
- fwip 8y ago
  There are a few tweaks you can make to gits diff so it shows changes in a line better, but it's not great. You can also write each sentence on its own line - output will still put them in the same paragraph. But it's not as nice a reading experience of the markdown.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- pronoiac 8y ago
  markdown and git can work together. I've set that each sentence gets its own line, and configured git to use wdiff instead, highlighting the changed words instead of lines.

yreg 8y ago

I write in http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ then style it in LaTeX later. And I love it.

haldora 8y ago
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm now evaluating a bunch of my prior writing.... Eh that's a lot of red!

ModernMech 8y ago

I wrote my dissertation in Word. 200+ pages, dozens of captioned and numbered figures and tables, over 100 equations all numbered and referenced, table of contents, cross references, works cited. I found it quite pleasant.

paultopia 8y ago
I wrote a book in Word. It was a nightmare, but a useful one: a version conflict across users or something in the copyediting phase glitch-deleted all the math from a chapter ... but in laboriously reconstructing them I found and fixed an error in the original. So thanks Microsoft?
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I'm glad it worked out for you. I would have gone mad if I'd tried to write my dissertation in Word. (As it is, I'm, nearly a decade later, still a bit touched after trying to do much minor work involving lambda calculus in Word.)
megous 8y ago
On my old 486, I wrote about 80 page document about signal processing in Word, full of painstakingly created equations, until one day, all equations basically disappeared or became uneditable. I learned my lesson there about wysiwyg.
- ModernMech 8y ago
  Things have improved since 1989. Give it a shot again, you might be surprised!
  - megous 8y ago
    1999 and it doesn't seem like, from other answers. The thing is that time invested in learning superior alternatives is already spent, and there's no point taking the risks just to try for no reason. Just like I will not create another website in FrontPage.

chipotle_coyote 8y ago

I'm going to make a contrarian argument, so I should preface it by noting that I write technical documentation in Markdown for a living, write an awful lot of fiction in Markdown as well, and write the rest of my fiction in Scrivener, which only superficially resembles a word processor. Furthermore, I've typeset several books with LaTeX. Having said that, an awful lot of tech nerds (arguably like myself) seem to seriously underestimate what word processors can do. Back when I did write fiction in a word processor, and even now when I have to send fiction to editors who expect things in Word format because that is the lingua franca of the non-technical publishing world, I don't have to spend an awful lot of time formatting manuscripts. Word processors have templates, and hierarchical styles. I wouldn't need a macro to auto-fill in the preamble because I'd have a template that included that. But if I did want a macro, I could have it! A lot of word processors do have macro languages! Many of them also have search-and-replace capability which is basically regular expressions with an easier syntax. For all the crap Word gets, much of it well-deserved, it's actually pretty good at editing prose. It's almost like they've been developing it for over thirty years or something. If you're in a position -- which I am -- to use a plain text editor for all your prose writing, and you prefer it, that's terrific. And you could totally make the argument that if your final copy is going to be LaTeX, you should start in plain text, whether or not you're using LaTeX markup from the beginning. But the notion that Word is some kind of underpowered little toy no real author should ever possibly use is just, well, wrong.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> But the notion that Word is some kind of underpowered little toy no real author should ever possibly use is just, well, wrong. I wouldn't characterise it as underpowered so much as wrongly-powered. Just the ability to use macros etc. is not the same as being a real text editor. I actually started out using word processors, and really wish I had discovered proper text editors sooner. For me, word processors are just miserable working environments.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  This isn't me trying to convince you of anything, just adding some anecdata. I find Word a miserable working environment. On the other hand, I find Pages a delight to work in. It's one of those "it just works" programs for me, and I find documenting editing so easy and intuitive. It reminds me of those who swear by WordPerfect and wouldn't dream of using Word unless forced to; it's not the class of application they care about it; it's the specific set of tools, their presentation, and how the app matches their work habits. (Same reason that I just can't use Google Docs, no matter how many workplaces make its use a soft requirement)

com2kid 8y ago

Counterpoint: I wrote a 200 page technical book in Word. After a couple days of customizing Word (few macros, hotkeys, customizing the styles to my liking), everything went well and I was able to do everything I wanted w/o trouble. Word does have a learning curve (e.g. put all pictures inside a text box, it makes layout 10x easier), but once learned it is quite nice for a lot of purposes.

porker 8y ago
> Word does have a learning curve (e.g. put all pictures inside a text box, it makes layout 10x easier) Woah, good tip! As I write more specifications and reports for management I'm using Word more, and there's a dearth of good advice online for getting decent results (it's drowned in Google by the "how to type a document" kind of guides). Many times I've wished to write HTML and have it formatted like Word, as my styles go haywire. Talking of styles, I'm surprised there's not a Syle interchange format for Style Sets - Microsoft's online resources don't have any to download. I was looking for a Latex-equivalent default template.
- com2kid 8y ago
  The closest you can get is templates. A blank document template with just styles setup does the job. The text box thing is huge. I wouldn't be able to work in Word without knowing that. Edit: Link! https://templates.office.com/en-US/Blank-and-General https://templates.office.com/en-US/Blank-and-General