# A terrible article about word processing **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 5, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814 "2010-02-05T17:48:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/1 "2010-02-05T17:48:57Z")
So, [this](http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html) eleven-year-old rant against Word 97 is making the rounds again for some reason. What a giant piece of Linux-nerd garbage! Apparently, the author and his fans believe that: 1. Only “professional typesetters” should dare to get close to such dangerous choices as “font size.” The unwashed masses might cause some sort of nuclear meltdown if allowed to decide on the appearances of their documents. 2. Unless you bother to learn a markup language for displaying mathematical formulae that, unless you are a publishing academic mathematician or scientist, you will never, ever have occasion to use, you should not be allowed to use any text ouptut format besides ASCII. 3. Issues from a version of Word released in 1997 that have since been corrected, such as lack of free backwards compatibility, are somehow still worth raising. 4. It’s OK to waste everyone’s time by making them read a poorly thought out rant against the existence of the subhuman class known as “people who do not work in computer science professionally” and then spill, at the end, that this actually isn’t about the ease of use of a program at all, but is another ideological anti-Microsoft rant from doctrinaire open-source zealots who are angry at something being successful. Shame on anyone who pollutes my inbox with this nonsense. Go play with your hacky-sack, hippie. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/2 "2010-02-05T18:13:41Z")
_“Word processors do to words what food processors do to food.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/3 "2010-02-05T18:19:00Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > 1. Unless you bother to learn a markup language for displaying mathematical formulae that, unless you are a publishing academic mathematician or scientist, you will never, ever have occasion to use, you should not be allowed to use any text ouptut format besides ASCII. 7 bit or 8 bit? because I’ve actually had occasion to to use the special characters above 0X80. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/4 "2010-02-05T18:21:31Z")
You don’t really need to read past the second line, where the author spells his own name wrong. Fool. ETA: Then very quickly you discover the author doesn’t know how to use “quotes,” either, so you can just disregard everything he’s “saying.” ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/5 "2010-02-05T18:22:33Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > 7 bit or 8 bit? because I’ve actually had occasion to to use the special characters above 0X80. I suspect that the article predates the wide adoption of Unicode. The idea of people using a word processor like Word to create documents in Chinese or Japanese would probably blow the author’s few brain cells. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/6 "2010-02-05T18:58:59Z")
The worst thing about Linux is the people who proselytize for it. Not so different from any other religion. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/7 "2010-02-05T21:06:02Z")
> [@PatriotGrrrl](#): > > The worst thing about Linux is the people who proselytize for it. Huh. I’d say the same about Apple zealots. But I’d most assuredly **not** say that about Windows, for there is much that is far, far worse in Windows-land. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Torpor\_Beast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/71e660/32.png) [@Torpor\_Beast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torpor_Beast)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/8 "2010-02-05T21:24:08Z")
I don’t think you have that much to worry about from the guy’s One-man Campaign For The Destruction of WYSIWYG. Judging from his homepage, he’s a hobbyist TeX freak. TeX people tend to fall in love with their Chosen Tool and consider using anything else as blasphemous. I’d just shrug and move on if I were you. The funny thing is that the term “Linux-nerd” is as ancient and outdated as the TeX guy’s rant. Linux has broken through to the server and embedded systems markets ages ago, and is considered a mainstream operating system. In fact, it’s extremely likely that The SDMB runs on a Linux machine, given that it uses the vBulletin software, written in PHP. The days of “pocket protector-adorned neckbeards” fighting holy war to get recognition for a niche OS are long over. Of course, every operating system has people that love it _Far Too Much_… ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/9 "2010-02-05T22:02:05Z")
Condescension and rational critique apparently don’t go well together. To respond to your points in order: 1. _Only “professional typesetters” should dare to get close to such dangerous choices as “font size.”_ That’s not even close to what he said; what he said, **after acknowledging the need for people to do their own typesetting these days** , is that the WYSIWYG word processing model encourages people to fuck around with fonts and type size and other formatting when they should be concentrating on content. 1. _Unless you bother to learn a markup language for displaying mathematical formulae that, unless you are a publishing academic mathematician or scientist, you will never, ever have occasion to use, you should not be allowed to use any text ouptut format besides ASCII._ Again, not even close to what he said. What he said is that ASCII is better for composing and transmitting digital text, being portable, compact, and less prone to corruption than, say, .doc files. 1. _Issues from a version of Word released in 1997 that have since been corrected, such as lack of free backwards compatibility, are somehow still worth raising._ As you said, it’s an 11-year-old article. Besides, switching versions of Word still fucks up formatting, and since Word 2007, .docx files have been a pain in the ass for users of earlier versions. 1. _It’s OK to waste everyone’s time by making them read a poorly thought out rant against the existence of the subhuman class known as “people who do not work in computer science professionally” and then spill, at the end, that this actually isn’t about the ease of use of a program at all, but is another ideological anti-Microsoft rant from doctrinaire open-source zealots who are angry at something being successful._ Don’t know where you got this; Cottrell, while acknowledging his bias, clearly feels that Word isn’t good at what it does, but is succeeding despite its faults because of Microsoft’s market power. And Cottrell isn’t in computer science, he’s an economics professor, albeit a major geek. I don’t agree with him about all this; I think that Word sucks for entirely different reasons. A two-step process of writing and formatting is perfectly feasible in WYSIYG; although Word does make this difficult with its automated style-based formatting, it can be set up for plain text entry, and I refuse to believe that marking up with TeX is easier than doing it with Word styles. Nonetheless, I do agree with his main point: Word, regardless of its virtues, does not serve well in providing a standard text format, and it’s entirely due to Microsoft’s leverage with Windows that it has been adopted as such. If you need to transmit text alone, plain text is better. If you need to transmit formatting, an immutable format like PDF is better. When transmitting my résumé to a potential employer, for example, I am usually required to send it as a .doc file. I have a meticulously formatted résumé, and it’s usually fucked up by the version of Word on the receiving end. If they’d let me upload a PDF, they’d see it as it’s meant to be seen. Also, I’d rather use WordPerfect. But that’s another thing entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/10 "2010-02-05T22:49:10Z")
Moved from The BBQ Pit to Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share. **Gfactor** Pit Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/11 "2010-02-06T00:53:12Z")
For what it’s worth, I found Word somewhat intimidating- my first impression was “more buttons than the control panel on the Space Shuttle”. I had to invest in a Word for Dummies book to get really comfortable with it. It is extremely versitile, but probably 95%+ of what I type could be handled by WordPad (you know, that program buried in Programs/Acessories?). There are features of Word I’ve never used, such as automatic Styling of headings, etc. and other features that are counter-intuitive enough (page numbering is part of Headings and Footings?) that since I don’t use them frequently I find myself refreshing my memory from the Help feature when I do need them. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/12 "2010-02-06T01:15:28Z")
I’m just old enough to have used a non-WYSIWYG word processor. I’d rather have every hair on my body individually ripped out by a rabid aardvark than use one again. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/13 "2010-02-06T01:35:52Z")
Wait, are they saying that something like the blue screen and having to know what all the function keys are WordPerfect was the ideal in word-processing? Cause if they’re saying that, they’re stupid. Put me in line for the rabid aardvark. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/14 "2010-02-06T04:13:38Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > _“Word processors do to words what food processors do to food.”_ Reminds me of Roy Blount, Jr., writing in 1985, when a WP was hardware, not software… > [@](#): > > There is a word processor in my home. > > ‘‘Word processor,’’ indeed! That thing doesn’t know what words are. A word, to that thing, is whatever comes between spaces. That thing would just as soon process _tbldgk_ as it would _mellifluous_. Unless it has some kind of correct-spelling program in it, in which case it would probably refuse to process _tbldgk_ on the ground that there is no such entity that fits between spaces. [Source](http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/14/magazine/high-tech-trauma.html) ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/15 "2010-02-06T06:26:10Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > page numbering is part of Headings and Footings? “Heading” != “header”. A heading is the visually distinctive text used to demarcate sections of your document. A header is the text at the very top of a page that often contains information such as page numbers, author names, and the like. A “footer” is the similar text at the bottom of a page. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/16 "2010-02-06T11:21:06Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > I’m just old enough to have used a non-WYSIWYG word processor. I’d rather have every hair on my body individually ripped out by a rabid aardvark than use one again. When I had to write my master’s thesis there were a ton of rules about formatting, all of which the author had to take care of. I did it all in Word, but I did wonder from time to time if it would have been easier in LaTex. Now, this was chemistry and not physics or math, so while I had to embed a lot of graphics they were all coming out of ChemDraw and I wasn’t putting in mathematical formulas where something like LaTex excels. Organic Letters is kind of the same way. They give you a template and you must fit everything in the template. I’ve known people who wrote an article for Organic Letters that spent more time fighting the formatting than they did writing the actual article. It makes me wonder what the editor actually does. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/17 "2010-02-06T19:04:10Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > Apparently, the author and his fans believe that: > > 1. Only “professional typesetters” should dare to get close to such dangerous choices as “font size.” The unwashed masses might cause some sort of nuclear meltdown if allowed to decide on the appearances of their documents. I’m not sure you read the article very carefully. Like **Nametag** said, you pretty much missed his point entirely. And fundamentally, his point is a very good one, and one that is every bit as valid today as it was in 1999: conflating the process of content creation with the process of typesetting is an ineffective way to get work done. It makes future maintenance far more difficult than it has to be, it can give inconsistent results, and while the typesetting is distracting you from the important business of _writing_ a structured and coherent document, the writing is distracting you from the important business of creating an effective and attractive presentation. Now, obviously it would be silly to suggest that tools like MS Word are bad for _everything_. There are cases where pure WYSIWYG editing may indeed save you time – for example, if you’re just whipping up a poster for a neighborhood bake sale that’s happening tomorrow and that you just learned of five minutes ago, or something else of the sort. Quality is not really important and you know you will never have to maintain this document, so taking three minutes to fling it from fingers to word processor to printer is an efficient way to accomplish your goal. Modern word processors have, of course, become much better at enabling the effective separation of the writing and typesetting tasks. Unfortunately, almost nobody uses these capabilities, because barfing both content and form out at once with WYSIWYG is far too easy. And it _does_ seem easier at first, so why not, right? The problem is that for anything much more serious, complex, or needful of future maintenance than a bake sale flier, WYSIWYG editing is seriously counterproductive. In that case, doing it properly (whether you’re using a text editor and LaTeX or making appropriate use of MS Word’s styles) will make your job easier and save you time in the long run. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/18 "2010-02-06T20:23:31Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > _“Word processors do to words what food processors do to food.”_ Make it delicious? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/19 "2010-02-07T07:07:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Make it delicious? Turn a steak into shit on a shingle. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814/20 "2010-02-07T10:38:53Z")
> [@Torpor\_Beast](#): > > In fact, it’s extremely likely that The SDMB runs on a Linux machine, given that it uses the vBulletin software, written in PHP. According to [Netcraft](http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://boards.straightdope.com) it’s FreeBSD. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-terrible-article-about-word-processing/527814.md?page=2)