Microsoft Word gives another ‘What the …?’
Many people know I believe Microsoft Word to have been concocted by skinheads, the writers of the Michael Fish hurricane gag and William Shatner’s toupée.
I am one of the last remaining people using WordPerfect because on WordPerfect, I can set the typeface and point size (i.e. font) and margins, and type away. Miracle of miracles: the text stays in that font and with those margins until I tell it otherwise!
Every time I use Word the margins can change, the font can change, even the entire formatting (I will be doing a bulleted list, for example, and it decides for me that I no longer am doing one) will change.
Sometimes I want to enter my own paragraph indents but Word adds them for me, which I can see would be helpful to some—but not when that text gets imported into InDesign or some other program. It totally warps the layout. And if it adds indents, why doesn’t it add one to the paragraph before? No: it leaves that one with the manually inserted indent so you can’t do a global search-and-replace.
Of course, since people send me Word files I have no choice but to do the odd piece of work on the Microsoft program.
MS Word trainers look at me like I am a completely helpless incompetent and swear black and blue this never happens to them, but I think this is part of the skinhead–Fish–Shatner conspiracy.
I can show any of these experts that this crap happens to me every time I use the program. Set typeface. Set point size. Set margins. Type. Word decides after one or two paragraphs that it does not approve of my style and that Times New Roman 12 pt with one-inch margins is superior.
There is no freaking way on God’s great earth that Microsoft Word is the most efficient way to word-process (we used to say compose or type).
And answer me this, Word-trainers, what heck is going on here?
And no, I did not feed in an automatic replace setting. There is nothing in there (that I can see) that would suggest that the word magazine should be replaced by magazIne. Yes, Word buffs, I have gone in to the Autocorrect menus.
I am going to import this text into WordPerfect, answering it, then exporting it back into Word format.
I guess no one has ever had to type the word magazine in Word in the history of word processing for this not to be picked up.
For all those pedants (like me) complaining about young people and all their weird capitalization, trying to make things look “trendy”, don’t blame them. It’s the software doing it.
Comments
I also found the interview questions interesting in that you were obviously sent a whole list of things rather than a face-to-face interview. Is that a regular thing in New Zealand?
As a journalist myself, I'd be pretty uncomfortable with sending a list of questions and definitely prefer face-to-face interviews. For one thing, I like to be in control the interview. For another, an answer to one question may lead to another question I would never have thought to ask. Also, I like to build a rapport with the person I am interviewing, and, furthermore, communication is better in person, given that we also use non-verbal communication. I have so many more reasons, but I'm not going to list them all here.
In my experience, there are some people who have asked for email interviews here, but the one you saw is actually from France. I prefer face-to-face or telephone at the least. Sometimes email is necessary for us in Wellington as many interviewees are in Auckland, and it’s not always worth the trip up depending on whom I can assign. On average I would say email interviews are slightly more common here.
My Word is legit but that’s not saying much! I tried this again just now and it’s fine, too!
But does yours change margins and fonts on you without you asking? I have had three PCs with it on, with different versions, and they all try to preempt what I write.
Even without trying it, I recommend OpenOffice to most people now. Nothing can be worse than Word!
skinheads, the writers of the Michael Fish hurricane gag and William Shatner’s toupée..
Just superb! Or, alternatively, supErb.
As someone whose daily bread is won reformatting people's needlessly complicated CVs with word, I concur with everything you've said. It's enough to make a guy weep.
If I had my way, we'd all have Macs and Mellel in the office. Not that I know what I'm talking about.
I'm not a Word trainer, just a user, but have a look at Insert>AutoText.
It does a similar thing to auto correct but uses a separate list. If, somehow, you've added magazIne there it will be the culprit!
As for the formatting thing it's likely word reverting to the default template paragraph style. While in the auto correct/text dialog have a look at the Auto format as you type tab. Disable options (style related first) until you get the level of user control desired. Those things are trying to help novices but sometimes they are just trying!
Fact: major natural disasters happen when MS Word concentration is too high in any particular area.
It would be more worthwhile doing research into the Word–disaster connection than half (maybe more) the crap that wins the Nobel Economics Prize! The other issue that Robin does point out is that while we can turn off the styles, what of your work where documents are imported? In such cases, God only knows how many and what styles are put into the file—making your work even tougher. (While not my stock in trade, I see MS Word CVs on a weekly basis and I still get surprised at where the program decides page breaks are to be, let alone the inconsistent formatting.)
I think I started on Word Perfect, and Quattro Pro Spreadsheets!, but have been Microsoft since Word 3.0 days. It's not because I spend a huge amount of time in a word processor but mostly because it's what everyone, inc my employer!, else uses.
The thing that really bugs me is those who use Word (or PowerPoint) for complex graphics/layout tasks - posters & the like - that it really can’t do. I usually get asked to sort it out & they generally don't appreciate my comment that "Word is for words, that's why it's called Word".
Going off topic at the speed of light...
Should I mention I use Corel for graphics? Cost was the main factor there as the Corel Suite (vector & photo) was the same price as a single Adobe app. and it was my money I was spending!
I still use PhotoPaint as it does all I need - which isn't much - and ignore looks of pity from those who think you must have Photoshop to alter an image!
I still have CorelTrace 3.0 on this computer to complement Adobe Streamline for my vector work. ’Fraid I do use Photoshop now for work, but unlike the MS products it is quite good.
I just wish Word didn't try to "help" so much. Most of it's "help" is random guessing about what I'm doing and it's often wrong.
Unlike WordPefect, Word doesn't make it easy for you to find out what's really going on in the formatting. So documents go from my email, into Notepad, then into my word processor of choice.
Mari: Notepad is probably not a bad way to go. I used to design web pages using it and it certainly is a no-complaint program.
I now author nearly everything in MindManager*. It's fantastic for outlines, aggregating "stuff" then click "export" & you have a Word document. or PowerPoint, Text, HTML, image, PDF. It's the best "Microsoft Office" application but it's not from Microsoft!
* Have a gazillon posts on MindManager here:
http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/mindmanager/index.html
They have a 21 day trial - http://www.mindjet.com - and it does have a good intro/tutorial. If you've got time related planning the addon JCVGantt will display the MindManager "Map" in a Gantt format with resources and costing (kinda like Microsoft Project but a fraction of the price & much easier to use)
I'm not on commission, just couldn't function without it!
Yes, it was that one. They actually put the trial version on a DVD for me once, but I misplaced it recently.