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18 Aug 15
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25 Nov 14
Trent M KaysThe word processor that most of the world uses every day, Microsoft Word, is a work of genius that’s almost always wrong as an instrument for writing prose.
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02 Nov 14
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29 Oct 14
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28 Oct 14
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26 Oct 14
starrieidgirlThe word processor that most of the world uses every day, Microsoft Word, is a work of genius that’s almost always wrong as an instrument for writing prose.
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25 Oct 14
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mathew lowryYou have to hand it to an article which manages to bring Ancient Greek philosophy to bear on why MSWord is both simultaneously high-powered and utterly useless for productive, creative work, while providing practical help on some if its most intractable problems.
"Word, it seems, obeys the following rule: when a “style” is applied to text that is more than 50 percent “direct-formatted” (like the italics I applied to the magazine titles), then the “style” removes the direct formatting. So The New York Review of Books (with the three-letter month May) lost its italics. When less than 50 percent of the text is “direct-formatted,” as in the example with The New Yorker (with the nine-letter month September), the direct-formatting is retained.
No writer has ever thought about the exact percentage of italics in a line of type, but Word is reduced to this kind of arbitrary principle because its Platonic model—like all Platonic models—is magnificent in its inner coherence but mostly irrelevant to the real world. "
- Escape from Microsoft Word by Edward Mendelson | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books -
23 Oct 14
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ty who’s usually right whereas Plato is a man of genius who’s always wrong.” Only a genius could have devised Plato’s theory of the forms—the invisible, intangible “ideas” that give shape to every visible, tangible thing. But the theory of forms is always wrong when applied to political thinking, as every experiment in ideal, utopian politics has proved.
Auden’s contrast between mediocrity that gets th
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r that most of the world uses every day, Microsoft Word, is a work of genius that’s almost always wrong as an instrument for writing prose. Almost-forgotten WordPerfect—once the most popular word-processing program, still used in a few law offices and government agencies, and here and there by some writers who remain loyal to it—is a mediocrity that’s almost always right. I submitted this post in a file created by the latest version of Word because
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madludwigMicrosoft Word, is a work of genius that’s almost always wrong as an instrument for writing prose. Almost-forgotten WordPerfect. . .is a mediocrity that’s almost always right.
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“Isocrates reminds me of John Dewey,” Auden said. “He’s a mediocrity who’s usually right whereas Plato is a man of genius who’s always wrong.”
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WordPerfect’s is active and progressive: you change a setting, continue typing, and then change some other setting.
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Auden’s word “mediocrity” seems too strong to apply to WordPerfect, as it was too strong to apply to Isocrates or John Dewey, both of whom had something very like genius in their clear-sighted, unprejudiced perception of the world as it is.
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Karl Popper famously denounced Platonic politics, and the resulting fantasies of a closed, unchanging society, in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945).
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When I work in Word, for all its luxuriant menus and dazzling prowess, I can’t escape a faint sense of having entered a closed, rule-bound society.
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When I write in WordPerfect, with all its scruffy, low-tech simplicity, the world seems more open, a place where endings can’t be predicted, where freedom might be real.
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22 Oct 14
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brucespearEscape from Microsoft Word by Edward Mendelson | The New York Review of Books http://t.co/imKiNKCFal
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nat bas"Word’s 50-percent rule for applying styles is a descendent of the Demiurge, and just as much of a kludge" http://t.co/gwUXrz3apc
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Joel BirchEscape From Microsoft Word by Edward Mendelson http://t.co/lQryGdxVbs
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21 Oct 14
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No writer has ever thought about the exact percentage of italics in a line of type, but Word is reduced to this kind of arbitrary principle because its Platonic model—like all Platonic models—is magnificent in its inner coherence but mostly irrelevant to the real world
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So, when you want to change the margin in WordPerfect, you press a few keys to perform the computer equivalent of pushing the lever on a typewriter.
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fraser smithA friend at Microsoft, speaking not for attribution, solved the mystery. Escape from Microsoft Word by Edward Mendelson | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
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