The Tyranny of Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is really quite awful.

It’s bloated. It does a lot of stuff that you don’t ask of it and wouldn’t ask of it, even if you knew that you could. It does wacky things with formatting if you’re not super-careful. But those aren’t the worst things about Word.

The worst thing about Word is that (almost) everyone uses it. Even if you don’t want to use Word, by sheer weight of numbers you will inevitably be compelled to. Either someone will send you a Word document or they will ask for a Word document from you.

If you are a mathematician, a scientist or a geek, you have probably heard of LaTeX. You may even use LaTeX. But, LaTeX will do you no good if you want to submit to a conference which is requesting papers be prepared with a particular format and that format is only provided in a Word template or document.

Yes, there are free word processing programs out there. There are even entire free office suites. They are adequate replacements. Until they aren’t. Only Word is 100% Word. Everything else is Not Quite Word and it is inevitable that you will, one day, run up against the hard edges of Not Quite Word and be compelled to click the blue W.