Word Processing

The mode of production of academia is the writing of texts. Therefore, a good word processor is an important tool. But it is also important to use the possibilities of the corresponding applications. The training period is quickly compensated for by convenient features such as automatically generated tables of contents.

Office Applications

Office word processors are the most common, especially Microsoft Word. Equal (or even superior) to this for most applications for academic work is the program Writer from the LibreOffice package. The latter is also attractive for students because it can be downloaded free of charge from the internet.

Office word processors offer a comfortable possibility to enter texts directly in the way they will (probably) look later in print. However, this tempts one to fixate on the formal appearance of one’s output. Later on, this can make corrections and formatting changes more difficult. Therefore, some details for the use of these programs must be observed.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a popular word processing program and part of the “Microsoft Office” program package. Microsoft Office is sold in different versions with different features, usually including at least Microsoft Word (word processing), Microsoft Excel (spreadsheets) and Microsoft PowerPoint (presentations). Microsoft Office is available for the Windows and MacOSX operating systems.

For more information see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365?rtc=1.

LibreOffice Writer

LibreOffice is a word processing program and part of the LibreOffice program suite. LibreOffice includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations) and other components for graphics, mathematical formulas and databases. Unlike Microsoft Office, LibreOffice is available free of charge as open source software. LibreOffice is available for the operating systems Windows, MacOSX, Linux and others.

For further information and downloads see http://www.libreoffice.org/.

Templates

The key to using word processors are the templates. These allow you to assign not only a certain formatting to text parts (e.g. font size 14pt, bold font), but also a meaning (e.g. first-order headline). This allows among other things:

• Later, you can change formatting at a stroke (e.g. all headings of the first order, font size 16pt),

• automatic table of contents,

• reference to other chapters that are automatically updated (e.g. “see Chapter 3, page 12”).

Therefore, you should immediately get into the habit of always using a template instead of setting formatting directly. This applies not only to headings, but also to block quotations, footnotes, and others.

Automatic Tables of Contents

To ensure that the information in the table of contents actually corresponds to the page numbers in the document, it is recommended to use automatic tables of contents. These can automatically create a directory of chapters based on the templates for headings. When changes are made in the document, the table of contents is also updated automatically.

It is also recommended to use so-called “fields” for references in the text (e.g. to other chapters), which are also updated automatically. And the page numbers themselves should always be updated automatically.

LaTeX

The typesetting system LaTeX is an alternative to common word processors. It can also be downloaded free of charge from the Internet. Its use takes a lot of getting used to at the beginning and requires considerably more training time than a conventional word processor. This is compensated for by a number of advantages. Some problems which cannot be solved at all in the common word processors are almost always treatable in in LaTeX. In addition, LaTeX documents look much more professional than documents from conventional word processors, even in the default settings.

The big difference between LaTeX and other word processors is that you don’t write directly in a page view, rather special formatting commands are entered. If you know HTML, you will be familiar with this. The advantage of this approach is that you always have full control over formatting, whereas with classical word processors formatting is always done in the background, which is not always traceable. The disadvantage is that you have to learn the formatting commands first.

LaTeX

Getting started with LaTeX can be a bit confusing as LaTeX consists of different, independent components. To use LaTeX you need three components first:

1. A LaTeX distribution, which includes the basic program and some helpful additional packages,

2. A text editor, which is used to write the input file with the LaTeX commands (this is basically possible with any simple text editor, but specialized LaTeX editors offer some comfort functions), and

3. An output file viewer, usually a PDF viewer.

The distribution “TeXLive” includes all necessary components and can be downloaded from http://www.tug.org/texlive/. TeXLive is available for Windows, MacOSX, Linux and other systems.

File Formats

As long as documents are only used on your own computer and only passed on in printed form, it is quite irrelevant in which format the files are stored. Every application has a preset format, which can be used for its own purposes without any problems.

However, if you pass on documents electronically, e.g. because you are sending your paper to the lecturer by e-mail, you must pay attention to the file format used. It cannot be assumed that the lecturer will use the same program as you, and not all applications can read all formats.

In order to avoid unnecessary problems, the following guidelines should therefore be followed:

• If a text does not require editing by the recipient (which is usually the case when sending papers to lecturers), PDF format is recommended. PDF files can be viewed on practically any computer and look the same everywhere. However, PDF files cannot be easily edited. In order for the lecturer to be able to make comments in the document, it can be useful to send an editable version of the document (see below).

• If a document is to be further processed by the recipient, a word processing format is recommended. However, some problems may occur:

  • Different settings may result in different page breaks than the author intended.

  • The fonts used must be available on the recipient’s computer to obtain the same display. This is not always the case, especially with foreign language characters (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.).

  • The recommended file format is currently the “doc/x” format of Microsoft Word. Due to its wide distribution, it can also be read by other word processors, such as LibreOffice. The ODT file format is also possible as an exchange format. It is already used as a standard format by LibreOffice and is also supported by Microsoft Word. In case of doubt, ask the recipient which format they prefer.