Don't Say the Word!

Every so often I find myself raising a voice of protest against the almost universal use of Microsoft Word. It is not that I could care less which word processor others use but I do get annoyed when people refer to it as though it's the only word processor out there. Phrases like, "just open the file in Word" or, "format the text in Word" raise my hackles.

Word is not the only word processor in the world and, in my humble opinion, it's not even the best. I know that our preferences in software are often set by whatever we happen to have learned first and this is certainly true of the word processor of my choice, WordPerfect. It has been a good friend to me over the years and works the way I expect it to work. It calls things what I would call them and so I can find anything in the Help files in seconds. Compare this to Word's childish paper clip assistant; it's just insulting to anyone of intelligence. Yes, I know you can switch the stupid thing off but why should I be expected to turn things off before an application becomes remotely usable?

So, even before I mention aspects of WordPerfect that Word cannot dream of, I am already disposed to hate the Microsoft offering. If I mention just two facilities in WordPerfect, you may begin to understand why I get so irritated when people assume that I use Word. Take Reveal Codes for instance. WordPerfect has had this facility from the days when nobody had even heard of Word and it has never been successfully copied. Ever had the experience of formatting some text and it refuses to do what you want? In WordPerfect, all you have to do is hit the Reveal Codes button and all the secret instructions behind the text appear. It then becomes a simple matter to find which instruction is causing the problem and remove it. Believe it or not, this ability makes life much easier if you often format large amounts of text.

Then there is the business of file formats. Every time a new version of Word is released, a new file format is produced so that earlier versions cannot read files saved in the latest format. This is clearly a blatant ploy to make all the poor Word users upgrade to the latest version, even though they will probably never use any of the new bells and whistles that occasion the new release. WordPerfect keeps its file format through its new versions, thereby allowing the users to upgrade only if they want to.

I have given up trying to convert people to WordPerfect; Word users seem happy in their delusions and I cannot fight the whole world. But please, please, stop referring to Word as if everyone uses it. Without me, it ain't "everyone". And don't say, "just open Word" when what you mean is, "open any word processor".

Although I concede that the battle for WordPerfect is lost, there are other options anyway. The most famous is OpenOffice, which is free and capable of anything Word can do. Personally, I don't like it, mainly because it mimics Word and saves in its file format. But it is very capable and includes spreadsheet, database and drawing applications. It's worth a try, at least.

There are shareware word processors available too. Ability Office is one that bows to Word in importing and saving to its file format. Like OpenOffice, it includes spreadsheets and database and graphic applications. And all for a fraction of the price of Word or Office.

My favorite shareware offering is WordExpress, however. This is a word processor only so you don't get loads of stuff you'll never use; and it takes up very little room as a result and loads incredibly quickly. It can do anything you're ever likely to want it to and, most importantly, completely ignores Word's way of doing things. It's usable and intuitive, folks! Naturally, it knows it's fighting against a world bewitched by Microsoft so it will read and save to Word formats (but only if you insist). I first tried WordExpress about ten years ago and it's still going strong, so someone must be using it.

And that brings me back to my main point. These are just a few of the options available when it comes to word processors. And, as I've mentioned, it matters not to me which you choose. But please, Word users, have a little sensitivity to us minorities and don't speak of your (rather poor) word processor as if it were the only one in the world!

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