Microsoft Word
No written verdict yet. Here is what commenters said.
Why people recommend it
“Microsoft Word 2024, part of Office 2024.”
“it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats”
Show 3 more
“I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better.”
“There was a port of MS Word, and it worked well.”
“MS word also has character styles”
Caveats and dissent
“Microsoft's license [0] gives you at most one of the four essential freedoms”
Show 2 more
“More 'office productivity' has probably been lost to Microsoft Word than any other text-processing software on the planet.”
“You won't get far using the latest version of MS Word on a desktop with specs from 1999”
Often compared with
1 moved from Microsoft Word to LibreOffice
1 moved from LaTeX to Microsoft WordApple Pages6 comments mention both
2 moved from Microsoft Word to Apple Pages
1 moved from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word
1 moved from WordStar to Microsoft Word
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- The immortality of Microsoft Word 8 mentions
- Vim-pencil: Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing 4 mentions
- I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline 3 mentions
- Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python 3 mentions
- Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products 2 mentions
- Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor 2 mentions
Also written as Word. Data: microsoft-word.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 40
“Today's browser-based MS Word consumes less (relative) RAM than the C++ version did in 1998”
“and no, Word is not good for it”
“it didn't crash on windows 3.1x”
“I see Word and VS Code.”
“a business that depends on Word to the point they pay Microsoft for it”
“I use Microsoft Word.”
“On the rare occasions I used Word to write things in the past”
“MS Word uses ML in grammar and spell checking.”
“Microsoft Word 2024, part of Office 2024.”
“Microsoft's license [0] gives you at most one of the four essential freedoms”
“More 'office productivity' has probably been lost to Microsoft Word than any other text-processing software on the planet.”
“i make the microsoft word but less sucks”
“You won't get far using the latest version of MS Word on a desktop with specs from 1999”
“I have been using MS word my entire life it seems, still don't know what the rules are lol.”
“When MS Word screws your entire document's formatting by typing a single letter”
“I tried it in Word on macOS but didn't get it to work.”
“had a real time spell checker before Word did.”
“better than InDesign or Word where changing the page size will probably break the layout.”
“I've seen ms word cludge up machines that should have plenty of power to run a word processor.”
“Word not WordPerfect.”
“never have to touch Word again”
“As a word processor, I like Writer even more than MS Word”
“I used to like Word”
There is a bit of manual tweaking required in LaTeX that I haven't figured out how to automate yet. It's mainly related to chapter endings: if there are only 2 or 3 lines on the last page, I can subtly tighten the tracking from a paragraph on the second to last page and eliminate an almost-empty page. Also, I have PNG maps that currently need some one-off LaTeX directives to lay them out how I want. I could probably
“it will be a mess (as usual with Word)”
“the Word to PDF X-1/a to epub/kindle pipeline is painful”
“It makes my life so much easier compared to badsoft and its not-word-ing”
“Frankly, I think it was much more stable then than it is now.”
“rather than Microsoft Word”
“They were struggling with Microsoft Word and Excel”
“when our company switched from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word that's what everyone had to learn to use”
“I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer”
“In contrast, Word uses the "nested containers" model”
“Word kept deleting my last 1-2 sentences for some reason”
“Word does it to an extent, but I don't use Word nearly enough for it to be meaningful.”
“it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats”
“I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better.”
“when the alternative was a hacked together Word document”
“as long as Word and Excel is starting on a business guy machine the day is saved”
“There was a port of MS Word, and it worked well.”