Microsoft Word

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Word processing software that never quite managed to sort out auto-paragraph numbering but nonetheless sweeps all other office word-processing software before it.

Refuseniks may prefer Microsoft PowerPoint (if trained in middle management) or even Microsoft Excel (if accountancy) as a canvass for composing documents. But the days of purpose-built alternative word-processing software packages, like Lotus Notes or WordPerfect or even the admirable but, preternaturally doomed open source application OpenOffice are long gone. Google Docs might survive, but only because it purports to fill a very different need.

Formatting

Despite its universality and longevity and their supposedly superior analytical powers, few legal eagles understand how the devil Microsoft Word formatting works. It goes without saying that the more nuanced skills — multilevel list numbering, consistently applying pre-defined paragraph and character styles and the effective manipulation of tables — are beyond all but the most space-aged legal brain. But many struggle with the idea of a page break or a tab stop, and instead lean on the space bar or return key letting it coast out randomly into the middle of the page, or down until it runs off the bottom and only a new page.

Lawyers usually are quite good at using track changes, however. Lawyers love track changes. They wish you could do track changes on emails and text messages, and will take some pains to replicate track changes by formatting in blue underlining and red strikethrough.

See also

• The lost tribes of Microsoft Office
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Word