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I’m a journalist. I’ve been one for 30 years. When I started it was a world of manual typewriters and hot metal print. Long before typing was mainstream I could touch type at secretary-like speeds. I’ve spent most of the last 20 years tapping away at a word processor.

So I know a thing or two about the subject. For the last decade or so I’ve used Microsoft Word. Before it either MacWord or WordPerfect. That’s not WordPerfect on Windows – we’re talking about WordPerfect 5.1 – an MS-Dos application.

From my point of view as a professional word processor user, WordPerfect 5.1 represented the high water mark in PC word processing. I’d still use it today if it were a practical option.

In fact, I’d probably use a manual typewriter if I could hook it up to the net. No. Scrub that. Manual typewriters are hopeless when it comes to edits and rewrites.

Microsoft Word is the industry standard. Every editor I’ve dealt with in the past 10 years requires journalists to file copy in Word format. Or at least they did until recently.

Word has its advantages, but from my point of view, it simply never was as good as WordPerfect 5.1 and isn’t likely to be so in the future. It’s bloated. Not just in terms of the weight of resources required to run Word, but in terms of features.

I really don’t need fancy layout, outlining and many, many other tools. In fact I don’t need 90 percent of the features in Word. Most of them are distractions from the task at hand – which is converting ideas into words.

And using a mouse is a pain in the bum. Or, more accurately, a pain in the carpel tunnel.

Distraction free word processor

WordPerfect 5.1 did everything I wanted, well, perfectly. It was distraction free. That’s something Word isn’t, but a number of modern applications aim for. I’ve written about them before. WordPerfect 5.1 is the closest computers ever came to reproducing the good aspects of typewriters without chucking in the kitchen sink.

It had all the features I needed and they were all just a keystroke away. My fingers could find every command without engaging the brain. While this keyboard control is technically true of Word – the complexity overwhelms me and I often find myself reaching for the mouse.

The fact someone even thought of adding a talking paper clip is a sign there’s some badly screwed thinking behind Word. The truth is, Word is a word processor designed for people who are not professional writers by people who are not professional writers.

In a perfect world, someone would take WordPerfect 5.1 and turn it into a software-as-a-service application. It’s about the only Saas application I would happily pay money for.

On a good day Google Docs gets close to the WordPerfect 5.1 ideal. I can hit Ctrl-Shift-F for full screen mode then hit F11 to get rid of Firefox’s browser distractions. This is almost like typing on a clean sheet of paper.

Google Docs has been around for some time, but recently it has matured to the point where it is now a serious alternative to applications like Microsoft Word. I’m not sure when this happened. It snuck up on me. A year ago the program wasn’t up to scratch. Today it is.

Google Docs’ weak points

One niggle is the lack of a zoom facility. If I’m typing in Google Docs using, say, 10 point Verdana, the onscreen text appears small. After 30 years as a journalist my eyes find that hard going. I can change the font size or even use Firefox’s zoom feature, but a quick, single key zoom-unzoom command would be better.

The only other shortcoming in the software is the lack of a British English option in the spell checker. I’m a professional writer, so I don’t use a spell checker while I’m writing, but it’s a handy tool later when I’m proofing my copy. It’s irritating to be told my spellings are incorrect when they are fine.

There is an elephant in the room. Google Docs is an online application. It’s only useful when I’m connected to the Internet – which isn’t 100 percent of the time. In theory Google Gears works around this roadblock, but in practice I’ve found it difficult to use the Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers when there’s no connection – maybe the experience is better with Google’s own Chrome browser, I haven’t tested it yet.

Google Docs has one clear advantage over WordPerfect – you can share documents. This is not just a piece of bloated feature inflation. It’s useful, elegant and to use a software industry cliche; powerful.

Word has a whole raft of features for tracking changes and commenting on documents. I’m sure some people find them useful. I’ve only ever used them once – in a job where the client insisted on marking changes this way. And as a journalist I’ve occasionally been amazed at the information left by people who don’t know how to use Word’s collaboration features properly.

Conclusion: Google Docs

When I set out to write this piece my original thoughts were Google Docs is useful but it doesn’t cut the mustard for a journalist’s writing needs. By going through the points logically for this story I’ve changed my opinion. Google Docs appears to do everything I need and, for now at least, seems to be a worthy successor to WordPerfect 5.1.

As an experiment I’m going to stop using all other writing tools for a few weeks to test this theory to breaking point. At some point I’ll report back on the experience.

Updated: September 5

It’s only 48 hours into the experiment and I’m throwing in the towel and returning to Microsoft Word. Soon I’ll write a fresh post explaining why Google Docs doesn’t work for me.

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There are many low distraction writing tools. I’ve used Q10 and Darkroom on my PC. Both are good. I’m told Mac users have something called Bean. I can’t comment, I’ve not had a Mac in five years. And there are web-based alternatives.

But what I’d like to see is Microsoft Word 2007 tweaked for distraction free writing. Like it not, Word is the industry standard. As a professional writer I’m usually expected to turn in copy as Word files. I’m often expected to use Word’s abysmal review and comparison features (don’t get me started).

My problem with Word is that it is massively overpowered for everyday writing. And massively overpowering to look at.

How can we fix it?

Get rid of those ribbon bars, the menu bar and the never-required left-right scroll bar. In fact get rid of almost everything. Default to the draft view with standard fonts and a handful of standard styles. Allow for all the Word keyboard commands. Can you see where I’m coming from here?

Whisper this, Microsoft’s Live Writer is almost what I’m after. At least it would be without the screen clutter. I’m writing this with Live Writer now and it’s functionally all I need.

See

Back-to-basics text processing: Where less can be more

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Some knowledge workers are dumping heavy duty word processors like Microsoft Word and switching to plain text file editors and other simple editing tools instead.

Plain text appeals to geeky types partly because it is a lowest common denominator. It always travels smoothly between applications, operating systems and devices. The same can’t always be said for Word documents. For example, large numbers of Word 2003 users still struggle to read the docx files created by Word 2007 despite MIcrosoft’s free conversion tools.

Text is compact, efficient, quicker to search and easier to manage than word processor documents — geeks often write small programs to merge, sort and otherwise process text files.

It helps that they often already spend large parts of their working life manipulating plain text files — the format is widely used for many of the settings and configuration files.

Text-editing programs are far simpler than word processors. Many have been around for 30 years or more with roots in the pre-graphical-user-interface computing world. They often use esoteric keyboard commands — writing memos and other notes this way may look scary to non-technical types, but it isn’t much of a stretch if you’ve used the same tools to handle your everyday technical tasks for a decade or more.

There’s an added bonus to simple text editing; the applications often bypass the computer mouse. Given that mouse movements are one of the most troublesome sources of strain injury, switching to more keyboard-oriented writing tools can make a lot of sense for those technical types who spend hours hunched over their machines.

Ergonomics

Similar ergonomic concerns go some way towards explaining why some professional writers are also turning their back on conventional word processors. However, this group has another concern: modern word processors are often  busy-looking. It can be hard to concentrate on writing the words when there are so many distractions.

It’s tricky, but the old Dos favourite WordPerfect 5.1 can be shoehorned into working with Windows XP. Making it work with Vista is more of a challenge. A small but vibrant user community at WP Universe provides tips and even drivers to make the software work with modern operating systems and hardware.

You’d need to buy WordPerfect. Two recently developed applications channel its spirit for free. Darkroom and Q10 are both stripped down text editors designed to provide distraction-free writing.

Darkroom fussily requires Microsoft .Net 2.0, which may be a dealbreaker for some, while Q10 mainly gets on with the job, but I did detect some beta-software strangeness with both programs. Perhaps for now, this is a trend to watch rather than follow.

There’s a useful review of Darkroom, Q10 and a number of similar programs at bweaver.net.