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I realize the article was supposed to be humorous (it's in the humor section), but the amusing thing is that I'm seeing declining use of Word. Communication has

I realize the article was supposed to be humorous (it's in the humor section), but the amusing thing is that I'm seeing declining use of Word. Communication has gotten a lot more formal. People are happy to edit a report in the e-mail editor, using a screen capture utility to copy and paste bitmap graphics when needed. Or they use the editor in the cloud version and don't bother to learn where all of its features are. Or PowerPoint. Of course the programmers have switched to Markdown or comment-free code. The main remaining uses for Word seem to be documents that nobody reads.

usrusr 5y ago
The amusing thing I am seeing is how much the decline of a tool aimed squarely at paper-based communication can still surprise me given the extent to which paper based communication has basically ceased to exist. The part of me that didn't expect the decline and the part that didn't expect Word to stick around so long don't even shout at each other, it's as if there wasn't any contradiction at all.
- analog31 5y ago
  An amusing anecdote is that when my kids were in school, they were supposed to word process their written assignments according to formatting standards that included things like margins, for documents that would never be printed. And the standards came from a group that was ironically named "Modern Language Association." Today kids just do everything in the cloud and don't think twice about it.
egypturnash 5y ago
The publishing industry runs on Word, according to my writer acquaintances. You may write your book in something better designed for big complex text projects such as Scrivener, but it’s gotta turn into Word when it goes to them, and stays Word through all the editing process.
- unixhero 5y ago
  What about LaTeX?
  - mabub24 5y ago
    If you think about how LaTeX has little to no use outside of certain sciences and maths in largely academic settings, then it's pretty obvious to understand that most people in publishing have very little interest in learning something entirely new when Word, which they've probably used for decades now, gets the job done just fine until they slap all of it into InDesign for the final typesetting anyway. Besides, typed manuscripts often have little to no formatting anyway. They are essentially using Word as a "plain" text editor with red-lining built in.
    - eyeundersand 5y ago
      > has little to no use outside of certain sciences and maths in largely academic settings This is just incorrect. TeX is typesetting software so it's extremely versatile and allows you to do a wide range of things that are not possible with WYSIWYG editors and Markdown. Consider: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-professions-use-tex-latex-besides-cs https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-professions...

usrusr 5y ago

The amusing thing I am seeing is how much the decline of a tool aimed squarely at paper-based communication can still surprise me given the extent to which paper based communication has basically ceased to exist. The part of me that didn't expect the decline and the part that didn't expect Word to stick around so long don't even shout at each other, it's as if there wasn't any contradiction at all.

analog31 5y ago
An amusing anecdote is that when my kids were in school, they were supposed to word process their written assignments according to formatting standards that included things like margins, for documents that would never be printed. And the standards came from a group that was ironically named "Modern Language Association." Today kids just do everything in the cloud and don't think twice about it.

egypturnash 5y ago

The publishing industry runs on Word, according to my writer acquaintances. You may write your book in something better designed for big complex text projects such as Scrivener, but it’s gotta turn into Word when it goes to them, and stays Word through all the editing process.

unixhero 5y ago
What about LaTeX?
- mabub24 5y ago
  If you think about how LaTeX has little to no use outside of certain sciences and maths in largely academic settings, then it's pretty obvious to understand that most people in publishing have very little interest in learning something entirely new when Word, which they've probably used for decades now, gets the job done just fine until they slap all of it into InDesign for the final typesetting anyway. Besides, typed manuscripts often have little to no formatting anyway. They are essentially using Word as a "plain" text editor with red-lining built in.
  - eyeundersand 5y ago
    > has little to no use outside of certain sciences and maths in largely academic settings This is just incorrect. TeX is typesetting software so it's extremely versatile and allows you to do a wide range of things that are not possible with WYSIWYG editors and Markdown. Consider: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-professions-use-tex-latex-besides-cs https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-professions...