I’ve begun to realize that there isn’t much point in trying to write in Microsoft Word. It is a nice tool, but I wonder if it is really necessary for what I want to do with it. I can’t really make templates or work with multiple versions of the same document.
There are two things that Microsoft Word does extremely well – create a simple document that might require small changes and provide some basic spelling and grammar checks. In practical terms, it is the epitome of “what you see is what you get”. Likewise, this means that there isn’t really any way to deal with templates, version control, structured data – why would there be?
Word at it’s core is a simplified document writing tool. It has neither the capability or the proper tooling to deal with raw text and has no consistent formatting tools or automatic syntax highlighting. Dedicated code editors shine in this realm, and often are better for note-taking and (obviously) writing code. As a tool, it sits in between the dedicated publishing tools and raw text editors.
LaTeX (I am not being sarcastic, this is the proper spelling) is something else that sits a little closer to the publishing tool than Word. You define the document settings in text at the top of a .tex file, and the settings generally apply globally for a consistent theming. Consequently, it is immediately better for template forms that need to be consistently updated or fit style guidelines. The addition of variables allows you to generate letterheads and documents with significantly less work than copy pasting parts of names into different parts of a template document. Additionally, the plain text nature of the .tex document itself and the rendering engine allows you to integrate Git into your workflow for managing and editing multiple versions of the same document. (There is a “versions” package if Git isn’t your cup of tea.)
It generally won’t be something that you use in everyday writing, but I’ve warmed up to the idea. Microsoft Word is an recently all rounder, but each tool serves a purpose – LaTeX is really good at making template forms.