Journals typically do the final typesetting though, so it seems like a premature and irrelevant optimization. Although, I do see the point for preprint. My exp

Journals typically do the final typesetting though, so it seems like a premature and irrelevant optimization. Although, I do see the point for preprint. My experience with LaTeX is that it enables and encourages my OCD behavior and it is very easy to be sucked into an enormous game of package dependency hell and whack-a-mole to achieve some desired aesthetic result. Whereas with Word I already expect an inferior result so I'm somehow more easily happy getting 95% of the way there and calling it a day. It's not too hard to learn "what not to do" in Word and how to use counters and references. Certainly if you've got the capacity to learn LaTeX, you can learn how to markup Word properly and use styles etc.