Being a programmer, and having used both, neither exclusively, I think I offer an unbiased viewpoint. LaTeX makes me feel like I'm in control of my document. I

Being a programmer, and having used both, neither exclusively, I think I offer an unbiased viewpoint. LaTeX makes me feel like I'm in control of my document. I've had word processors do really weird things that I could never explain. In LaTeX, I can always get an explanation. Thanks to programs like LyX, http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/, one can have the power of both understanding the underlying and the high level startup speed of WYSIWYG{M}, and one doesn't need to make a billion trips to TeX StackExchange. If you need a quick throwaway document that doesn't need to be maintained, and you don't care if it looks professionally typeset, Word is ideal, just type (although arguably LyX offers the same). If you need a document that will receive a lot of scrutiny, and you're going to maintain it again and again (like a resume, CV, business card (yeah, I did it), academic paper, etc...) you should go with LaTeX. Get the look right, and don't worry about it any more. We use HTML for web, which is very public and maintained. We need a markup language for printed text that has the same expectations. LaTeX is that.