World Wide Webbing. How to enjoy Word 2003!

Yesterday, July 27, Monday Manila time, my thoughts of how to teach online what is supposed to be hands-on using the personal computer (so, help yourself), all gelled into a simple sentence of 3 simple words: How 2 enjoy. At 0400 hours today, I thought of what was common in my own writing, editing and publishing, and now I have it in 5 words: How 2 enjoy Word 2003. And much of the tips, tricks, traps, techniques and tools I am going to tell you will be free, as in gratis et amore. Why? The pleasure´s mine.

And so I have yet another acronym, another word in fact, and it is webbing: writing, editing, blogging, book publishing. That is to say, Word 2003 is for webbing; I am advocating Word 2003 for world wide webbing.

If you´re looking for instructions and insights in the use of Word 2007, I´m sorry but you will have to look somewhere else, because I´m not about to master a new program that makes me look like an idiot – Microsoft changed all the rules! Same story with OpenOffice Writer – it´s very good but not as good as Word 2003 when it comes to, say, shortcuts. Who doesn´t love shortcuts? Today, I can do many of the Word 2003 shortcuts without looking at the keyboard at all. In fact, I can add shortcut icons to the Word 2003 menu, or change the menu entirely. Software creators follow the path of (customer) least resistance – like Henry Ford of years past, they practice planned obsolescence, coming up with something different every year, to entice most users to shift to the new release. But you cannot do that to gurus, who know that computer programs are not like cars; you have to learn to drive new software all the time. To be a guru is to be creative; the car is not for creative work, while the software is.

Writing with Word 2003 – I´m referring to creative writing as well as technical writing, both of which I can do with equal ease, and enjoy doing – starting 1975 BC (Before Computers), I´ve had 34 years practice, for goodness sake! With Word 2003, I´m referring to outlining, organizing, reorganizing, grammar check, autocorrect, and on-the-fly formatting of words, lines, and pages. I began writing for pay in 1975, when the personal computer was still 10 years away from the Philippines. I have since been writing with Microsoft Word starting 1987 (Word 1, I guess), and I never left. Offhand, I can tell you that technical writing is no easier than creative writing – in the first place, the experts have to struggle with writer´s block too. I know of a few tricks using Word 2003 that can help you get rid of writer´s block, not to mention using Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Editing with Word 2003 – I´ll show you how you can review, critique, correct, revise a manuscript using Word 2003 features for outlining-organizing, track changes, comments, and footnotes, among others. There are tricks in searching and replacing fonts, font sizes, font formats, line alignments, line spacings, line indents and so on. I´ve been doing these since Word 1, if I remember right. Can you reformat a 500-page manuscript in 50 minutes? I can do it in 5 minutes. The secret lies in the use of the Word 2003 stylesheet.

Blogging with Word 2003 – I never leave home without it. I began blogging in 2005, earnestly in 2006, and I have never blogged without first using Word 2003. I always have bolds and italics in my essays (posts). I also use Word 2003 to insert a hyperlink to refer to a source on the Web, like my essay on ´The Catholic´s Way´ (americanchronicle.com), my ´Yellow ribbons´ (franciscohilario.blogspot.com), and my ´Bill Gates, Nobel Prize for Economics 2008!´ (frankahilario.blogspot.com). I watch the number of words in each essay using the automatic Word count. I also assign an automatic space before a paragraph as well as a line break with Word 2003.

Book publishing with Word 2003 – Junking WordStar 4 sometime in 1986, I have since then been a Microsoft Word user. Believe it or not, I desktop-published my first book (actually, somebody else´s college textbook in horticulture) using Word 5.5 sometime in the mid-90s (not using Windows): font formats, line & paragraph formats and page layouts, the works. Nobody said I couldn´t do it, so I went ahead and did it. What I didn´t know didn´t hurt me. I remember even using Word 5.5´s automatic indexing feature.

Newslettering with Word 2003 – I have produced quite a few newsletters starting with Word 97. You have to learn about creating single columns on top of double or triple columns. You have to learn to embed images, sometimes tables of text or number. You have to learn to use both the text box and the drawing canvas; and you have to learn to group images so that your layout does not self-destruct.

Journal publishing with Word 2003 – I resigned last year from being Editor in Chief of the private Philippine Journal of Crop Science based in Los Baños, Laguna south of Manila. Years before that, starting early 2003, for the backlog issues for 2001 & 2002, as my desktop publisher I used Word XP; starting late 2003, I used Word 2003. I was serious. And yes, with me as editor and publisher, I made that 2-year late journal up-to-date in May 2006. I did the desktop-publishing work myself up to camera-ready pages, 100% me and 90% Word XP / Word 2003 – PhotoShop, Picture Manager and Paint did the remaining 10%. I learned to align the lines column to column precisely – the secret lies in fixing the line spacing.

So, how you do enjoy software?

(1) First, find out what you can do with it. Need is first. If you don´t find a need for it in your life, you´ll never learn to enjoy it no matter how much you try.

(2) Second, go ahead and master it. Any skill has to be mastered; otherwise, you are always the skill´s slave and will never be happy.

(3) Third, learn good English. With Word 2003, as in any version of Microsoft Word, you can learn to write correct English and spell correct English. You can even build your own dictionary of quaint or technical terms such as families, genus, and species.

(4) Fourth, learn to think creatively. Brainstorming is another way you can enjoy using Word 2003. I´ll show you how to manipulate this program to subtly encourage your mind to open to new possibilities. Another technique of course is to surf the World Wide Web and jot down notes on Word 2003. In this case, reading doesn´t make an exact man – reading makes an inspired one.

Enjoy!