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

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

#91

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

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.

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

#92

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #89
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" is inane? You'd be surprised. My partner's father has probably never used a traditional computer in his entire life, let alone Microsoft Word.

But, would your father be applying for a computer centric job? That's where the insanity comes from. You get places adding these types of requirements to computer-centric jobs like programming, software design, analytics, etc. Many of them are simply placeholders.

No, he wouldn't be. You make a good point but even still, I have seen software engineers struggle to do anything outside of the well-worn groove that they've been riding in for the last 20 years.

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

#93

Post by Consultant32452 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #21
version_five wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

I spent an hour with a coworker last week trying to figure out how to remove the change history from a Word doc. We're both highly technical.

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

#94

Post by dhosek »

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.)

If you set the keymap in IntelliJ to MacOS you get many of the Emacs keybindings including ctrl-a/e.

I also make these shortcuts for beginning/end of line in Word (although the ability to add custom keyboard shortcuts seems to randomly disappear in my copy of Word).

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

#95

Post by bashinator »

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.

Now I'm curious about what software is used in actual ink-on-dead-trees book publishing.

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

#96

Post by pram »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #33
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…

You think "must be proficient in Microsoft Word" is inane? You'd be surprised. My partner's father has probably never used a traditional computer in his entire life, let alone Microsoft Word.

Yeah I've never used it, I was taught in school to make documents in ClarisWorks lol. I've only ever used AbiWord and Pages after that.

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

#97

Post by agumonkey »

hyperman1 wrote: post #53

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 o…

don't ever step in any office you will evaporate

every job I had was filled with endless streams of redundancy of this kind

I even consider the public sector a state wide incarnation of this principle

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

#98

Post by AlexCoventry »

bambax wrote: post #56
snowwrestler wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are a lot of things you can do with a car which I am unqualified to do, yet I still consider myself a proficient driver. Maybe you're mixing up "proficient" and "expert"?

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

#99

Post by bashinator »

jamesliudotcc wrote: post #55
3pt14159 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What is it about doctors, lawyers, and really really basic computer proficiency?

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

#100

Post by frosted-flakes »

mauvehaus wrote: post #69
lapsed_pacifist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh man, if you haven't seen "Reality Contains a Surprising Amount of Detail", prepare to be delighted. Also: I thought there were framing nailers that fire larger coated sinkers like you'd drive with a hammer? When are those appropriate, and when should nailing framing be done by hand?

No one hammers framing nails by hand anymore, except occasionally. The framing nailer has completely taken over. There are even very good cordless framing nailers now, so no dragging an air hose behind you everywhere you go.
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