Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Writing Apps: Keeping It Classic

 This Week's Topic: Top Tricks in my Writing Program: What Features Do I Use the Most?

Like Jeffe, I'm a die-hard Microsoft Word user. I blame my time in corporate. Once the office manager (yep, that's who dealt with IT before IT became so complicated it needed a whole department) decided WordPerfect would be replaced by Word, I've been a Word user.  I miss the early versions of white text on a blue screen because it was much easier on my eyes, but I don't miss launching the software by using the DOS Run command. (Yes, I'm old. GET OFF MY LAWN!)

These days, beyond the requisite customized Book Template format and spellcheck, the feature I use a lot is Read Aloud for editing. It's the best way for me to catch missed and repetitious words. It's also great for exposing those sentences I thought were brilliant prose but read as a chunk of WUT??? I'm not particularly in love with their Editor feature because I'm not writing a book report, I'm writing fiction and the grammar AI doesn't grasp the difference. Now, if Microsoft uses a customer-unique AI in Word to grock my writing style--especially if I can train it using my old books--then things could get useful. BUT, but, but, I want that KAK-trained AI to be available only to me, like my customized dictionary is only available to me (see Jeff'es post about the super usefulness of the customized dictionary).

The other advantage of Word is that .docx is the file type both my professional editors use, so we're not wasting time and effort with conversion problems.

Ayup, ayup ayup, nuttin' fancy here. I'm keeping it classy classic.


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