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

51–60 of 159 posts

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

#51

Post by bambax »

3pt14159 wrote: post #41
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…

> Alignments. Bullets, bullet types. Margins. Sections. I mean, for white collar work this is the equivalent of making sure someone knows how to use a semi-colon. It's a "skill" in scarequotes because basic proficiency is assumed and 99% of the time you don't need things to be pixel perfect and if you do you can figure it out on the fly. Compare these things to, say, knowing when and how to use Excel Solver to give a…

I have seen people spend (waste) an incredible amount of time readjusting page breaks because they modify something at the start of a document and all the manual empty paragraphs they put here or there don't do what they want anymore. In fact it then becomes an infinite task because every little change breaks everything else.

But yes, sure, most Excel users also have no clue you can import data using SQL or that you can set calculation to manual and calculate with F9.

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

#52

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

This is all true, but it’s also true that most job postings that list “proficient with Microsoft Word” don’t usually require using any of these features.

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

#53

Post by hyperman1 »

A contractor billed us for some work. He opened the laptop, filled in item prices and item counts as we requested. All of this in a very nice excel template.

Then he took his cellphone calculator app, multiplied counts with prices, filling in the subtotals in the excel sheet. Another round of the calculator summed these to a grand total, and a final round calculated taxes. Both were dutifully typed in at the bottom of the excel sheet.

I died a little that day.

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

#54

Post by lapsed_pacifist »

scollet wrote: post #42
dzdt wrote: post #14

Inside humor is a kernel of truth, and in the subtle washed-out humor of this article I think the kernel of truth is that people WANT tools that they can use from childhood to old age. Tools that will remain constant. Tools that can serve a variety of purposes. Tools that will be familiar even as the world changes. This is a challenge for software development. We are reaching the point now where there are tools like…

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 surfaces you go back to the hammer because it reduces the chance of scuffing or marking on the surface.

"Binding wood" is much more nuanced than you make it seem.

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

#55

Post by jamesliudotcc »

3pt14159 wrote: post #41
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…

> Alignments. Bullets, bullet types. Margins. Sections. I mean, for white collar work this is the equivalent of making sure someone knows how to use a semi-colon. It's a "skill" in scarequotes because basic proficiency is assumed and 99% of the time you don't need things to be pixel perfect and if you do you can figure it out on the fly. Compare these things to, say, knowing when and how to use Excel Solver to give a…

You say this. But 99% of lawyers do not know how to do these things.

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

#56

Post by bambax »

snowwrestler wrote: post #52
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…

This is all true, but it’s also true that most job postings that list “proficient with Microsoft Word” don’t usually require using any of these features.

My point is that they should -- not that everybody needs to be proficient with Word, but that "proficiency" should mean, one knows all or most of these inside and out.

Also, using styles and knowing about "keep with next" are really important for any job that involves producing documents.

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

#57

Post by thomascgalvin »

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…

> Most people don't use styles, or use them improperly, or modify every instance randomly.

This is (one of the reasons) why I write everything in Markdown and export it to Word or PDF with Pandoc. There's no temptation to "fix" the formatting as I go along; it's just text, and I can apply a style sheet after the fact.

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

#58

Post by azalemeth »

I cannot tell you how unproductive I am in Microsoft Word. I use LaTeX, often in overleaf, often natively in linux, often on MacOS. Naturally, the latter has a Word version available in it and as a scientist at the interface of physics and biology/medicine I (un)fortunately have plenty of experience in both. Some of my colleagues carte-blanch refuse to try TeX (interestingly, I've never had a doctor refuse to write in Overleaf with me -- only biochemists).

Writing a paper in Word is like pulling nasal hair out through the back of my throat.

It's eminently possible to do it. Millions of people around the world do. Yet it is death by a thousand tiny, frustrating cuts. From the fact that the keyboard shortcuts are not those of the rest of the operating system (on MacOS or Linux on the online app -- e.g. ctrl+shift+arrow keys to highlight text works differently in Word to every other OS) to the fact that opening the paper, writing something, closing it, and re-opening it doesn't necessarily get you the same bloody document. I was editing something last night (from a biologist -- who had done MRI on Burmese pythons – alas the reconstruction was done in matlab and not python!) and each time I saved, my "tracked changes" went from displaying my name to "Author". I forget the number of times I've seen "Unknown field code changed" on the right hand side. If you want to work with references from many people, forget about it. LaTeX has literally none of these problems. Sure, it has a lot of other problems, but none of these ones. I just can't stand using Word; it is inconsistent, slow, and incorrectly second-guesses you. I'm not saying that everyone and their grandparents should use LaTeX, but the disparity -- and the comparative rareness of alternatives, outside of inDesign and Quark in the professional publishing scene -- does deeply worry me. Office is one of those areas where the Microsoft strangehold is strongest. And it's objectively a bad experience!

Seeing "Proficient with Microsoft Office" on a CV for me is a bit of a red flag; highlighting another job skill is probably a better use of space, at the very least.

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

#59

Post by wlesieutre »

3pt14159 wrote: post #41
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…

> Alignments. Bullets, bullet types. Margins. Sections. I mean, for white collar work this is the equivalent of making sure someone knows how to use a semi-colon. It's a "skill" in scarequotes because basic proficiency is assumed and 99% of the time you don't need things to be pixel perfect and if you do you can figure it out on the fly. Compare these things to, say, knowing when and how to use Excel Solver to give a…

> 99% of the time you don't need things to be pixel perfect and if you do you can figure it out on the fly

You can figure it out on the fly, not everyone has that reaction to unfamiliar software

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

#60

Post by catach »

tentacleuno wrote: post #30
modernpink wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No self respecting 'nerd' would be using Word.

Isn't this comment nerd-shaming? I use LibreOffice Writer (and sometimes Word) quite frequently, and I consider myself somewhat of a nerd.

Is nerd-gatekeeping the same thing as nerd-shaming?
Post reply on HN