please, add a space between "i" and "the" and an "s" after hates.

really. i speak good english.

If you were using Word to write that, maybe it would have been corrected?

For real though, go through the menus and turn off everything that says 'autoformat' or 'autocorrect', and voila, you're typing without a net.

word works fine for specs, you just have to figure out how to use it

if for some reason you're typing from scratch here's my suggestion...

type everything in a list, w/ no bullets, numbering, indentation, etc....

"select all" (Ctrl+A) and make sure your font is the the same throughout (you will know this b/c up in the menu you will see let's say "times new roman" and "12" or whatever, if you do NOT see this, then click on the little arrow and a drop down of the fonts will allow you to choose, choose your font...

same for font size....

next, go to the "bullets and numbering" option under the "format", a dialogue box will pop up which allows you to control how your numbering system will work, choose your format and font...

now, item by item go down your file and hit the indent icon, the trick here is that you need to hit it one time per layer of indent, ie, if it's "A" you hit it once, if it's "1." you hit it twice, "a." 3 times, "1)" 4 times, etc. word should automatically number down the document...

you may have to occasionally select part of the text, go back up to the bullets and numbers option and tell the dialogue box to begin new or something like that

there are easier ways to do this, but you've got to know word pretty well and it's just way to annoying to explain via written word.

if you get stuck, help can be pretty usefull, you just have to learn how to ask the question, which if you ask enough, you'll begin to learn how to do that

try asking it about styles, those came in extremely handy once i discovered them

I am sure MS Word hates you too.

You have not experienced true pain until you have either (1) tried to add images to a MS Word document or (2) save a MS Word document as a .pdf file.

go OSS

chaos - you sure you don't work for billy gates??

don't get me wrong, i use word all the time. i understand that i can ctrl+a and globally change font size.

i appreciate the tutoring session, and the check's in the mail.

but the truth is...as far as apps go, word sucks. end of story.

you just said so yourself...

"now, item by item go down your file and hit the indent icon, the trick here is that you need to hit it one time per layer of indent, ie, if it's "A" you hit it once, if it's "1." you hit it twice, "a." 3 times, "1)" 4 times, etc. word should automatically number down the document...

you may have to occasionally select part of the text, go back up to the bullets and numbers option and tell the dialogue box to begin new or something like that"

that's a completely f'ed up way to run a program.


it's like saying that in order to choose everything on your drawing board that's magenta, you'll have to carefully, layer by layer, go in and select them one by one, and then carefully add one indent per line to change them to green, and then two indents per line to change them to yellow, and blah blah blah.

quality software is intuitive. word is a piece of crap.

no one here has changed my mind.

thanks for listening though.

and thanks for the tip oldfogey...i'll look in to that. all of my equipment, lighting and hardware schedules are based on database anyways...no reason the written spec can't be either i guess.


and hey smoke - what's the problem making a pdf?? that seems to be no problem? you run mac or windows? you have acrobat pro? distiller?

MS bashing is so entertaining :-)

Word (on mac) can't keep up with my typing. My typing.

BSDSpeclink - wicked! thanks OldFogey...I'm downloading the free trial. At first glance it looks spec-tacular!

Word DOES suck. It won't render fonts correctly on the screen, the GUI is retarded--it was obviously designed by a) people with absolutely zero design training and sense, and no understanding of the importance of hierarchy and b) people who apparently don't write the same kinds of documents the rest of us do and therefore believe we need a completely different set of icons and tools than we really do, burying the tools we DO use EVERY DAY in arcane sub-menus that are difficult to find.

I HATE Word. since high school I have used InDesign (well, originally Aldus PageMaker) to lay out every document in my life. In the office I just have to fight the machine and force my way through the stupid program. I have every auto-thingy turned off and STILL they sometimes pop up, or reformat things, no matter what I do.

Specs are indeed the worst. My last boss spent a grueling week or so trying to set up a beautiful master spec and even after all that time it still didn't work quite right. And he's a computer whiz.

i guess you guys never had to fill out forms with a freakin typewriter and white out.

i have a friend who refuses to use MS Word. He types everything in AutoCAD then copies and pastes

YES!

Corroboration from the masses.

I agree with vado. word sucks until you have had the displeasure of using a typewriter. until then, it exists as merely the lesser of all evils.

in my experience as a technology consultant, I find that most people regard the computer as they would an automobile - as long as it gets you from point A to point B, then no further understanding of the "tool" is required. with so little understanding of the technology, frustration is bound to surface. you just need to be more introspective to understand and solve the root issues of the frustration. generally, the frustration is not with the dumb tool.

I don't know, tools are made by people, and the people who make the tools should make them with some understanding of the expectations and needs of the people who use them. We're designers, right? Is there any excuse for bad design?

'It was even worse in the olden days' is definitely not an excuse.

Thanks for putting this all into perspective Vado – SO TRUE!!! We are so spoiled:)

nope, never worked for bill gates, actually hate microsoft programs and operating system, but have found it to be a necessary evil. i was a secretary for 9 years so have learned how to make the programs work for me and attempt to find the program that works best for what i'm trying to get done, although i hate access and still use excel for database items, but i know that's in part b/c i know excel and am too lazy to learn access. if my boss would buy better programs to accomplish what needs to be done perhaps i could dump microsoft in whole.

wasn't trying to school, just trying to help. word can be extremely infuriating, particularly when you have the settings set to "auto" for things. like i said, it's not the easiest way to do the specs in word but it is a pretty clean way to do it, meaning, you don't have the formatting issues being talked about (different fonts and sizes).

i figured i picked up a few autocad tips from the forum so thought i'd share a little bit of the little i know. apparently even though help was being asked for it was unwanted so i've learned my lesson and will keep the ways i've learned to get around the program flaws to myself.

good luck with your specs.

For overpriced, creaky software, I have two pet hates:
Microsoft's Word, for the reasons you mention (and for its annoying habit of interpreting spirited, modernistic prose as one long grammatical error and, yes, formatting-wise it's over-complicated and a total nightmare) and Autodesk's AutoCAD.
See, this is the modern capitalist dream-world: corporations fight, one wins industry-standard monopoly status and, hey presto, they extort more than the going rate forever after with you, the consumer, shackled, screaming, to the shit.

Don't take it personal, ChAOS, we just like to complain! I'm gonna remember your trick for the next time I'm stuck in bullet-point hell on Word.

I think when I was writing specs we had some software called SpecWriter or something which helped with formatting and language even. Wacky. What did they need me for?

There is always the open source option:

http://www.openoffice.org/

It's free, it's constantly updated for free. Nice. I don't write specs anymore, but I use Open Office for inserting images, making pdfs of large documents, and it's delightful. It doesn't crash like word. It's nice to have your tools made by someone who actually cares if they work. You can turn off all the auto-correct things if you don't want them, but I think you can turn that off in word also?

The best part of Open Office for me is the way that you can mark text as part of a heading, and then it calls those headings out in a tree structure. Like a little clickable table of contents. It also goes into the sidebar of the pdf. Again, very helpful for 80 page documents. It's helpful for moving around the document, and for evaluating the structure of the document at a glance. Word might do that also, but I don't use word.

I don't really understand why some shitty piece of software has to be a "necessary evil". Why would anything so portable, so easily changed, so easily fixed, etc. be necessarily evil? Why take bad products and bad design in stride, pay for it, and just let it continue? Why not take your money elsewhere and allow for some competition in the marketplace to make better software?

I guess I don't believe in necessary evils. Snow in Chicago, sure, necessary evil. Some piece of shit software?? Nope.

i loathe word. loathe it.

in fact, i get worked up just typing about it. i'm out.

hate Word.
i like Corel Wordperfect.
no one uses it. no idea why.