Microsoft Word is the de facto writing tool. I like to learn the “ins and outs” of the tools I use heavily, and wanted to share things I’ve found helpful in using Word effectively. This paper captures various thoughts, ideas, and suggestions, as well as pointers for digging much deeper than this and really becoming a Word power user, if you’re so inclined. This is presented in the spirit of “you won’t use it if you don’t know it’s there”. These ideas are applicable to all document types, but by their nature the benefit of applying them increases as document size, complexity, and editing time increase. I find it beneficial, however, to make a habit of using styles and other good formatting practices even for very short documents because it makes things very predictable.
View the full paper at https://dlemire60.github.io/
I hope someone finds this of value, and I’m happy to take suggestions for improvements that anyone may have, either via email or using GitHub mechanisms such as issues and pull requests. My thanks to a number of folks who’ve provided suggestions on previous versions of this document. It’s grown over time, but I’ve tried to keep it from turning into a book.
David Lemire
dlemire60+word @ gmail.com