Why Writers Need Microsoft Word

Written by Heather von Doehren

Monday, 31 March 2008

Today's Blog brought to you by Heather von Doehren, Assistant Editor-Who's-Doing-Cool-Stuff, and by small cute puppies, because everybody loves them. "Why Writers Need Microsoft Word" is an introductory blog to our "Tech for Writers" series that we'll be running concurrently with other serials we're starting up. Enjoy!

Why Writers Need Microsoft Word

Whether you like to admit it or not, Microsoft Word is the choice for many businesses. This cannot be truer for many literary journals and presses. The truth of the matter is, many literary journals accepting work electronically recommend submitting work in the Word format (.doc), and some just flat out require you use MS Word. So if you are using the free software that came with your computer (probably Microsoft Works if you are a PC user) you might find yourself in a difficult position when it comes to submitting your work to journals and presses. For this reason, you might want to consider investing in MS Word.

Where to Find Microsoft Word

For Students:

If you are a student and thinking, “Hey, I’m broke; I can’t afford to buy a new software suite!” then my answer to you is that you should check to see if your college or university will supply this software at a discounted price or through a discount vendor. This is usually for the student version of the Microsoft Office Suite (which always contains Word, by the way). Your school will probably have an entire department dedicated to answering questions regarding technology and software and might even offer training for Microsoft Word to help you navigate the program. That department is usually labeled IS, or IT, or ITD, or IRT or any other acronym that really stands for “Ha! You used to make fun of me in junior high for being in the audiovisual club, now who’s laughing!” Or simply it will just be called a “technology help desk.” Either way, go to them …they are your friends.

For Non-Students:

Well, I think you are stuck paying full-price or something pretty close to it (correct me if I’m wrong by leaving a comment to this blog below). My advice to you is to register for a couple of classes, thereby becoming a student again. Take advance of these discounts and then have fun at tax time deducting all of your student expenses! Admittedly, it might just be cheaper in the long run to pay full-price (Relief does not condone software piracy! And no, we are not endorsed by Microsoft…but we would gladly take their money if they’d like to give us some :) ).

The Reason Why We Like Word:

We find Word very user-friendly (though this opinion will vary depending on which of our editors you ask), easy to format, easy to recover, and easy to use for collaboration purposes. Seriously, you don’t know the half of what this program can do! It does everything short of walking on water! My favorite feature is a little something called “track changes.”

Track changes are a writer’s and editor’s best friend! And as editors we might have suggestions for you on ways to make your work better. We do this through track changes, where you can go through and review our comments/edits and then choose whether you will accept or reject them. This is the coolest feature ever! It allows you, the writer, to be a part of the conversation about your work. Without Word, we’re stuck doing all communication through email, where we have to reference page numbers, line numbers, etc. and that just takes a lot more time than doing it all in Word. We like Word!

So you really can’t afford MS Word…

There are some other free word processors to consider then. I would say a close second to Word would be OpenOffice. It won’t track changes (correct me if I’m wrong in the comments), but you can leave comments (insertànote) and do other cool things (like mail merges!) or save in MS Word format (which helps when you want to upload work for a lit journal). Plus, it’s totally free to download. Visit www.openoffice.org for more information.

If you don’t find MS Word User-Friendly

Yes, I understand there are a lot of you who were tainted by other word processors and therefore cannot make the transition easily into the wonderful world of Microsoft Word. We understand. And to help you format your manuscripts for submission, I’ve made this handy video for you that shows you how to do everything you’ll need to do to get your work ready for upload using Microsoft Word 2007. It’s really cool! And my very first training video…ever!