The Word became flesh and made its dwelling among us

March 8, 2025 6:53 PM

The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

Word 1.0 for DOS was fairly innovative in that it was one of the first word processors, at the time, to make full use of a computer mouse, which was timed nicely as Microsoft had launched its first mouse around then too. The mouse naturally offered more intuitive input in some cases. Word also supported both text and graphical modes with a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) interface, which attempted to accurately reproduce the final result of a typed document with support for things like italic, bold, and underlined text.

posted by Lemkin (36 comments total)

The article touches on “Americanization” via -ize spellings in spellcheck, but I’ve actually heard that for the longest time, in the UK, both -ize and -ise spellings were considered acceptable variants, but someone in charge of Word’s spellcheck decided that they would only accept -ise spellings, possibly as a way to assert a difference from Americans. As a direct consequence, a generation of Brits has now grown up thinking that only -ise spellings are “correct” in the UK.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:58 PM on March 8 [8 favorites]

The Baron Harkonnen of word processor programs.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:41 PM on March 8 [13 favorites]

Its "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) design philosophy is now commonplace in software …

Word as an example of WYSIWYG? The author must have a different version than I do.
posted by TedW at 8:58 PM on March 8 [16 favorites]

Word tried to correct a word in one of my documents earlier this week.

The word was intermingled.

It wasn't happy with that.

It suggested intertwingled.

It's not... Wrong, exactly. But it definitely was not right.
posted by foxtongue at 10:08 PM on March 8 [22 favorites]

Well. You know. EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:51 PM on March 8 [12 favorites]

Microsoft Word has had a significant effect on poetry, at least outside English. In most languages, capitalizing the first letter of a line isn’t a convention. However, when you press ‘return’ while typing, autocorrect will capitalize the first letter, unless you turn it off. Starting in the nineties, you started to see poems in these languages, with the first letter of each line capitalized. I haven’t come across a book published by a traditional publisher that does this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, after a couple of generations, this will have become an accepted convention.
posted by Kattullus at 11:34 PM on March 8 [13 favorites]

A rather rigid pal of mine from England wrote a textbook for/with a US publisher. She got into an -ise/-ize war with her copy-editor. Of course the editor had the last word and the printed book included the neatly self-referential sentence "It is easy to be wize after the event."
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:11 AM on March 9 [18 favorites]

Related: because internet by Gretchen McCulloch looks at how being online has shaped language for different subcultures.
posted by autopilot at 12:22 AM on March 9 [8 favorites]

Me again, different hat. there's a specific way reports are expected to be laid out. Letters follow a set pattern, memos are largely formatted in the same way. "Users know where to find information in these standardised documents; they don’t need to spend time trying to find what they need."
Part of my last job was teaching biology and chemistry labs in college. Each laboratory was required to have present in the room [Material] Safety Data Sheets SDS for every chemical in the cupboard. The technical staff were responsible for keeping these up to date and in a known place. Kinda useless in en emergency, so I devised a MSDS quiz for everyone [staff students techs] to take so that they actually used the folder to find things out. In a flap it may save seconds if everyone knows that Benzene's SECTION 5 Firefighting comes immediately after SECTION 4 First Aid but before SECTION 6: Accidental release.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:30 AM on March 9 [6 favorites]

Today, when typing on Word, the software can automatically correct your spelling, and make suggestions for what to write next. [...] Again, this may feel innocuous but it's another example of how Word standardises language by loosely guiding everyone down the same path.

I'm firmly in the camp of "it doesn't feel innocuous, and if I could set that particular feature on fire I would." My work gmail does this too, tries to finish my sentences, and it's exactly as obnoxious as having a person do it for/to you. No, more so, as the ease with which it predicts my next words shows the paucity and soullessness of business communication, and enforces it. Ugh! No! Don't force me to ask someone to let me know if they have any questions! We're all grown-ups, they know they're allowed to ask!

(also, 20 years of using Word and I still don't know what a 'style' is or why I would use one or why they always crop up and destroy things when I'm trying to format a document.)
posted by mittens at 3:09 AM on March 9 [8 favorites]

in the UK, both -ize and -ise spellings were considered acceptable variants

This varies quite a bit, some words we use -ise, some we will use -ize, some we use either spelling equally and some have drifted in popularity over time.

Word is actually pretty good at tracking this, for example British English will use both 'emphasize' and 'emphasise' and Word does not flag either variant as a spelling error. With the language set to US then it will flag 'emphasise' as mis-spelled.
posted by Lanark at 4:11 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]

20 years of using Word and I still don't know what a 'style' is or why I would use one

How to use Styles in Microsoft Word - Kevin Stratvert
posted by Lanark at 4:21 AM on March 9 [8 favorites]

Up until we bought a new computer for work last year, we were still getting a lot of use out of Microsoft Word 2003. I hate hate hate how they rolled out new versions every other year or so that made no real improvements and just shifted things around so you didn't know how things worked anymore. It was telling that old Word03 still worked pretty much the same 20 years later. I noticed in the last couple of years placed jpgs often were cropped wrong unless you resaved them in a photo editor first, unclear why.

Now we just use OpenOffice. I understand that in order for corporations to make money they need to sell product: thus light bulbs can't last too long or the factories will go bankrupt and you won't be able to buy a new light bulb should you need one. But software development cycles seem to involve x number of years working to make the program better, followed by all subsequent years actively making the program worse.
posted by rikschell at 5:03 AM on March 9 [7 favorites]

You can and should turn off autocomplete and autocorrect in Word. You can also turn off the grammar checker completely. It is also quite easy to set the default language to your language, not US English. But then this author wouldn't have stuff to complain about.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:07 AM on March 9 [6 favorites]

The Office Assistant formerly known as "Clippy" Clippit is undergoing litigation and now goes by unicode symbol U+1F4CE: 📎.
posted by k3ninho at 7:01 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]

Getting the autocorrect and autofill out of Word is pretty easy, and every time my institution forces a new version down our throats, I have to go back through the preferences and change them back to Fuck Off Autofill. But this only happens like once every 2 years, so it's not a big deal.

Fucking Outlook, though. JFC. It pushes some auto-update every couple of weeks and turns that shit back on, without warning, and one day I'll sit down and resignedly decide to answer all the backed-up work email, and suddenly it's filling in my sentences again and FUCK OFF. Thanks for listening.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:17 AM on March 9 [8 favorites]

The first things I do when opening a new copy of Word:

• Turn off autocorrect and grammar check
• Google how to turn off spicy autocomplete
• Set the base font back to Times New Roman 12pt single line spacing

Yes I do own more than one typewriter, why do you ask?
posted by thecaddy at 7:54 AM on March 9 [6 favorites]

____. __. -----
| LEAVE.
| MICROSOFT |
|WORD. |
|____ALONE -----_|
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:10 AM on March 9 [8 favorites]

A couple of years ago the BBC ran a great miniseries on the history of writing. This article touches on many of the same topics they discussed w/r/t the printing press; the parallels are kind of interesting.

Also, as a secretly pedantic grammar nerd, I LOVE styles. They help maintain consistency during group writing assignments with colleagues who are less inclined to think about document structure. Super helpful for both long documents and formatting things destined for a webpage.
posted by MeadowlarkDoctrine at 8:22 AM on March 9 [4 favorites]

But then this author wouldn't have stuff to complain about.

Yeah, TFA is just a bunch of pearl-clutching, to me. Of course my auto-complete is turned off (I guess - does Libre Office even have that 'feature'?) Seems to me a widely-used program which assists with the English language's wildly differing spellings is a good thing. And what does Clippy have do with anything anymore?
posted by Rash at 8:27 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]

I hate most of it, but will confess to using the grammar checker on my second drafts to catch passive sentence constructions (I don't let it fix anything, I do it all manually, and it hates me because I use sentence fragments all the time in my fiction). I really hate the automatic capitalization after a hard return, but have found if I tell it no (CTRL-Z) then after a few lines it stops doing it, so somebody has explained to it about poetry at some point.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:06 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]

Two things not too germaine to the article, but interesting things about Word...

First, when it was launched, whoever was picked to review it for one of the PC magazines -- which in the early 80s weighed in around 600 pages every month, mostly ads, but the ads were useful -- was utterly confused by the cursor between two letters, instead of a cursor reverse-printing the current character. He, I'm sure it was a guy, also had trouble figuring out what was with the selection. We now know early Word was most likely the work of Charles Simonyi (inventor of Hungarian notation), taking what he had seen at Xerox Parc and showhorning it into a 2nd-generation PC with a 10 MB hard disk and a toy operating system.

Secondly, I heard that maybe around 2000 some Program Manager at Microsoft gave a presentation on the ultimate word processor. It was basically Word 5.1, which originally only shipped for the Mac, and had all the features 95% of the population needed, and basically no features that that same 95% never needed. When I wasn't using emacs, vi, or cat, I wrote a lot of documents with that version on an SE. The only feature I missed was auto-save.
posted by morspin at 4:44 PM on March 9 [4 favorites]

germaine
^^^^^^^^

Hmm, Word could have been of use here
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:50 PM on March 9

It's tables. Organising information into tables and matrices is something that *should* take some forethought because there should be a direct x/y relationship of the text matter being assembled into them. Word makes tables far too easy, and the formatting of information in a table creates the impression of analytical order when there may not be any. Word tables are the enemy.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:04 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]

Word makes tables far too easy

This is emphatically not a problem with LaTeX
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:09 PM on March 9 [10 favorites]

some Program Manager at Microsoft gave a presentation on the ultimate word processor. It was basically Word 5.1, which originally only shipped for the Mac, and had all the features 95% of the population needed, and basically no features that that same 95% never needed

Word Refuseniks: Never Upgrade
posted by Lemkin at 6:29 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]

>Hmm, Word could have been of use here

Miss Greer has entered the chat.

>Well. You know. EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED.

Though Computer Lib/Dream Machines was originally published in 1974, Microsoft Press republished it (not came out with a new edition) in 1987, which may be how the "Intertwingled" made its way into the Word dictionary. My copy of the 1987 version is slowly falling apart on a bookshelf, the binding wasn't great.

Finally, I dislike Word, but I like its styles, if only because styles are the only way of staying sane while using it. To those who ignore them, I admire and pity you in equal measure.
posted by lhauser at 6:36 PM on March 9 [4 favorites]

I don't think it's fair to blame the illiteracy of today on Word alone - it's just as much because of declining care about writing in general as a form of expression in favour of 'anything goes as long as you get your message across'. But lots of things about Word drive me nuts, most of which are the things I use the most.

Tables, yes, perhaps people should have to think more about what they put in them and how, but I do not miss having to draw tables out on paper to work out the spacings and the symbols to create each corner and line. I do hate how sometimes columns refuse to line up when you add or subtract rows and have to use alt-drag to get them aligned and if you use that once, every table from then on in the document doesn't line up. I developed a hate for capitalisation of first letters in a line when working for an organisation that had a style guide including a lower case first letter for dot point or numbered lists and having to go back and replace the first letter of every line and always missing one or accidentally re-creating it when adding or editing content.

The absolute worst, though, is that, despite claiming to offer a gazillion different spellcheck languages, it insists on reverting to US 'English' at the drop of a hat. If I had a dollar for every time I've had to correct all the blocks of US English-corrected text in a UK or Australian English (ie actual correct English) document, I'd be able to pay someone to do that for the rest of my life.

The absolute best is styles. For many years, I hated it and didn't understand how or why it worked. But, once I figured it out, the scales fell from my eyes and I was convinced. It saves so much time by ensuring consistent formatting (as long as you use the styles religiously) and especially in editing formatting. Want to change every sub-heading to a different font or make them italic? Edit the style once and it's done! They are particularly helpful when multiple people are editing a document over time, but do require that everyone understands and uses them properly. They also work well in 'locked' templates where the template can dictate use of styles. Did I mention I love styles?

Of course, nothing will match WordPerfect 5.1, but that was pried from my still-alive warm hands so long ago that it's now just a distant memory of a better time.
posted by dg at 7:33 PM on March 9 [3 favorites]

I don't use Word's grammar check very often, though I do occasionally remember the time when it asked me if I was sure that I'd wanted to type "religious," rather than — I swear to you this is true — "religiou's"

thank's
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:42 PM on March 9 [3 favorites]

I loved Word 5 which I continued to use until OSX forced an upgrade to bloated Word 6. Every update has made it more complex and less useful. Always turn off Autospell and Grammar and fuck off to hell with Autocomplete.

I did like it in the early days when I discovered I was more likely to write a book on the computer instead of on the typewriter or longhand. I could never type for shit so being able to correct was a game changer. Being able to use a mouse made editing so much easier. Although I am an American, I mostly read British books in my youth and my spelling habits were formed by them. Autocorrect infuriates me! I mostly write in TextEdit now which has almost no "features" and that is how I like it.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:54 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]

Word also supported both text and graphical modes with a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) interface

Was Word for DOS truly WYSIWYG? I seem to remember editing in text mode and every so often doing a print preview which gave a static rendering of the document in graphics mode. I might be splitting hairs, but I always thought WYSIWYG referred to editing in graphics mode...
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:27 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

I remember my "Come to Microsoft" moment in 1997. This book explained in great detail just what a flaming pile of garbage Word is. And the animal cover is my all time favorite among the O'Reilly collection. I was going to link to O'Reilly, but it seems they have moved to a post-book environment.
posted by MrNoodlePants at 10:27 AM on March 10 [3 favorites]

Word stands out because it is almost an adequate publishing platform, clearly fails at that task, and yet is still widely used. I attribute that to its ability to get you started quickly. Certainly compared to a word processor or typewriter, it was loads easier and the result was more professional. For a single-page memo, it's great!

When you go to make a larger document, with slightly more complicated structure, slightly more complicated design and text flow, things get a little tricky. But you can draw deeply from your well-honed skills making memos to wrangle everything into a presentable whole, with some manual re-work to get the table of contents to look almost right.

So when you get to the point of making a whole book, you feel like you're ready, that you know the quirks of the tool. And everything goes to hell. Look, I have actually written book software, for the format that eventually evolved into ePub and Kindle. Figuring out what's going to be on the page versus flowing to the next, and updating the styles and graphics to follow what they're supposed to follow is extremely challenging, technically. I'm not saying Microsoft has lazy programmers or did any of this deliberately. Nothing works the way you hope it would. Graphics interact with page breaks in ways that bring you to tears. The table of contents gets out of sync with the section headings for no apparent reason. All tools have their problems, but Word is a trap.
posted by wnissen at 9:47 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

So when you get to the point of making a whole book, you feel like you're ready, that you know the quirks of the tool. And everything goes to hell.

As someone who has written a 6 chapter dissertation in Word, yes. I can't even explain that last week of hell that is trying to get your dissertation to match the university's formatting requirements and having one small change break the entire document irreparably and irreversibly. Thank goodness for Apple Time Machine.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:05 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]

God, I think a lot about how Excel is basically the only part of Office that's legitimately the best at what it does. Word is so bad for page layout that it's fairly common, in Japan at least, to use Powerpoint for page layout work (because, let's face it, no one has ever used Publisher). Powerpoint is still bad for page layout work, but it's at least less bad than Word.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:08 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]

Word processing is not page layout. Using a word processor for page layout is always going to be like using the back end of a screwdriver to hammer in a nail. There is no one program that can or should do everything: raster graphics editing, vector graphics editing, word processing, page flow/typesetting, placing type on a curve, creating an index, creating web content & hyperlinks, making dynamic tables, handling mailmerge, etc.

It's much better to collect a suite of tools that are good at what they do and make them at least semi-interoperable than to create one Frankenstein program that tries to do everything.
posted by rikschell at 6:47 AM on March 14