I made an investment in my writing career this week and bought Microsoft Word. (Of course, in order to do that I had to buy the whole Office package ... really, Microsoft? Why is Office Home & Student $117 on Amazon, and Word by itself is never cheaper than $230? I just don't understand.)
Open Office has been a great program, especially for freeware, but it was almost worth buying Word just to have curved single quotes that don't have to be added by means of regular expressions and don't break words. All over my manuscript file, "I'm" and "don't" and all other contractions and possessives have a curvy red underline. Maybe I should send their development team a suggestion.
The thing I miss most about Open Office is that it isn't quite so jumpy with the auto-correct. Also, I wish Google Docs worked with the .docx files.
Anyway, I've heard that Word is necessary for going back and forth with agents and editors, so I have it now--not that I used it today. We had warmth and sunshine, and I spent the day in a friend's garden. Sometimes the mind just needs a holiday.
Have you heard of Docs.com? It's Microsoft's late to arrive Office-lite in the cloud. I haven't tried it myself, but I'll bet there is better compatibility for .docx files.
ReplyDeleteSee you tomorrow!
I hadn't, Andrew, and just looked it up. That's a Facebook thing? Interesting. Will have to look further into it.
ReplyDeleteSee you shortly. :)
I've used Word as long as I've written anything (after I got off the AppleII E, that is). It really is the best word processing software out there, I'd say. Open Office is good, at a basic level and ideologically, but Word can just do more. You made a good choice.
ReplyDeleteGood timing, too, with the Office 2010 release this week.