Indie Formatting - 2011 to 2021

 

Posted by someone in my daughter's subdivision in Sanford (FL)

 

A "hot topic" discussion on one of my email loops inspired this week's Mosaic Moments. During a discussion of the relative merits of MS Word vs Scrivener, I mentioned my devotion to Word Perfect, and a topic meant for one day's debate escalated to a nearly a week! All this led to a wail about formatting from a newbie - and to my topics for this week's blog:  1) Why I write in Word Perfect; 2) How to access my blog posts on Formatting for Indie Pub (2011-2021).

 

WHY WORD PERFECT?

 Where to begin? Let me count the ways . . .

 I began word processing on the IBM Displaywriter in August 1981. I loved it, 250K and all. When PCs came along shortly after, I laughed at my son and his 16K! And when Microsoft came out with a word processing program, I laughed at that as well. It was the equivalent of a child's pedal car compared to a Maserati. And then a company in Canada, whose name escapes me (Lotus?), created the first serious word processing program for PCs. It came out in the early 80s, and I was introduced to it when I went to work for the Episcopal Church in Venice, Florida, where I was hired to create the Sunday bulletins because of my word processing experience. Lotus was an absolutely fabulous program, but who can compete with Microsoft, which was including MS Word with each PC purchase? 

As far as I've ever been able to figure out, Corel based Word Perfect on that Canadian program and continued to provide a vastly superior word processing program to MS Word for more than a decade. Although more recent versions of Word are far more professional than earlier versions, they still lack many details I love about Word Perfect, so I never made the switch, even though many authors felt obliged to do so when Microsoft captured the market. (And yes, I explored Scrivener a few years back, but decided not to switch.) After writing 50 books in Word Perfect, I can't imagine using anything else.

A few of many things offered by Word Perfect besides simple word processing:

1. A Dictionary in the Menu Bar

2.  A Thesaurus in the Menu Bar

3.  Avery label formatting by number 

4.  Automatic envelope formatting for every letter

5.  Easy Graphics insertion

6.  Easy column formatting (both column width & distance between)

7.  Easy exotic font formatting in Text Boxes (just about any shape you might want)

8.  Reveal codes - all codes, not just the few in Word

 

Grace note:  Using Word Perfect is, of course, a personal choice, and there's no doubt we're all attached to what we know. Nonetheless, I feel strongly that Microsoft's stranglehold on the computer industry has kept people from discovering the superior worth of Word Perfect.

FORMATTING FOR INDIE PUB

To access the following articles, click on "Blog Archive," or consult the compilation of all my blogs on Writing & Editing, organized by topic - Making Magic With Words, available on Amazon Kindle.

 

Formatting for Indie Pub (November 2, 2019) &

Formatting for Indie Pub (June 5, 2021)

Formatting Finishers (June 12, 2021)

Word Perfect to Indie Pub (November 17, 2013)

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A Regency Gothic - coming soon

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For Blair's Facebook Author Page, click here. 

  For Blair's website, click here.

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Grace/Blair Bancroft