Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 159 posts

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#111

Post by NeutralForest »

hesk wrote: post #88
bambax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There is such a thing as proficiency in word processing. Most people don't use styles, or use them improperly, or modify every instance randomly. They use forced line breaks to adjust page breaks because they don't know about forced page breaks, or the "keep with next" paragraph setting. They've never heard of non-breaking space. They align numbers with spaces. They don't know that you can (and should) have accen…

> They can't navigate a paragraph or a line using home/end buttons. One of my biggest irritations in Word is that Ctrl-A/E don't go to the beginning/end of line. These key combinations (originally from Emacs) work on almost all input boxes on macOS. (IntelliJ is also an offender in this regard. Basically, any program that implements their own text boxes.)

I constantly run into this issue when I'm not using Emacs (or Emacs compliant keybindings), it's excessively annoying.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#113

Post by SavantIdiot »

culturestate wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm the one misunderstanding this, but... This piece isn't about Word or nerd-shaming or the author's self-perceived mastery of desktop publishing. It reads like a take on the absurdity of people constantly adding inane things like "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" to job postings and, consequently, their appearance on the CV of every person who applies to be a corporate drone in the western world. On the…

Pivot tables are so 1990's. Vector functions (you have to press three keys at once!) and 2D table solvers are all the rage. Get with the hip crowd. /s

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#115

Post by rchaud »

commandlinefan wrote: post #91
bambax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There is such a thing as proficiency in word processing. Most people don't use styles, or use them improperly, or modify every instance randomly. They use forced line breaks to adjust page breaks because they don't know about forced page breaks, or the "keep with next" paragraph setting. They've never heard of non-breaking space. They align numbers with spaces. They don't know that you can (and should) have accen…

I did a master's thesis using Word, and my thesis advisor got on to me about not taking advantage of all the Word features like styling and proper page-breaking, etc. A few years later I published a book using Word and my publisher demanded that I not use any of the Word "gimmicks" like styling and page-breaking.

Sounds similar to my college professors tut-tutting writing behaviours like run-on sentences when every journal article and book in our syllabus had writers doing exactly that.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#117

Post by Semaphor »

version_five wrote: post #18
culturestate wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm the one misunderstanding this, but... This piece isn't about Word or nerd-shaming or the author's self-perceived mastery of desktop publishing. It reads like a take on the absurdity of people constantly adding inane things like "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" to job postings and, consequently, their appearance on the CV of every person who applies to be a corporate drone in the western world. On the…

I've worked adjacent to financial consultants who build excel models all day. There is such thing as an "expert" at excel. I've interviewed lots of people who say they "know" excel, but when you dig into it, it's the equivalent of saying they know a programming language because they know basic flow control syntax. With word, I'm not sure if you can go as deep expertise wise as excel, but there is still much more to i…

I once needed to pivot a table. Tried it with excel, spent an hour googling, couldn't get it to work. Then exported it into SQL server, googled how to do it in T-sql, and was done shortly after.

Respect for people who work with excel, but it's not for me.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#118

Post by bthallplz »

bambax wrote: post #31
3pt14159 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Excel its: Do you know arrays, UDFs, Solver, lookups, mastery over chart design, and cell formatting. With word it's basically: Can you do a mail merge and a table of contents? Congrats. You're an expert.

No. There is such a thing as proficiency in word processing. Most people don't use styles, or use them improperly, or modify every instance randomly. They use forced line breaks to adjust page breaks because they don't know about forced page breaks, or the "keep with next" paragraph setting. They've never heard of non-breaking space. They align numbers with spaces. They don't know that you can (and should) have accen…

> They are very surprised to learn you can type in italics directly using underscores.

What does this mean? I'm not finding it on Google.

Re: I cannot begin to tell you how proficient I am in Microsoft Word

#120

Post by ZephyrP »

lapsed_pacifist wrote: post #54
scollet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally replace "Tools" with "Cognitive models". A hammer and a nail gun really don't differ all that much when your task is binding wood.

As someone in the trades, I really disagree. Most applications that require a hammer could not be accomplished with a nail gun. Nail guns are great for attaching thin materials over thicker materials, like putting MDX onto a frame or attaching roofing materials. You don't generally frame with a nail gun because you want to use larger and heavier nails driven a lot deeper. For very light or precision work on finished…

I worked as a framer with my dad for around 4 years in the mid 2000s. We framed small residential homes in southern Colorado and although we would always carry a hammer on our belt to "align" a stud, bend flashing and drive in nails that hit a knot; nail guns hooked up to a shared compressor was how nearly everything got, well, nailed together.
Post reply on HN