I Just Want To Type a Letter!

By Wayne Maruna

    One of the earliest applications of computers for business and home use was termed ‘word processing’. It was successful enough to send typewriters, correction tape, and White-Out liquids to history’s scrap heap. At last people could type letters without worrying about typing errors, which could be fixed after the fact but before applying ink to paper.  And then there was the ability to easily change font styles, sizes, and even colors, and have the computer check for spelling errors as you type, and even suggest fixes for grammatical errors.  

Word processing may sound like a process where you throw a dictionary into a blender, mash down the pulse button a few times, then pour out a beautifully written letter, but alas it doesn’t quite work that way.  It still requires actual coherent thought and some semblance of proper sentence structure. You young folks still need to stay awake in English class.

I deal with a lot of clients with varying degrees of computer skills.  Some have come late to the technology party, so I still hear the plea: “All I want to do is type a letter.  How do I do that?”  Most say it sheepishly or with utter frustration.  Friend, you are not alone.

The Windows operating system ships with a free word processing application called WordPad. In Windows 10, you can find it by going to Start, All Apps, and scrolling down to Windows Accessories.  Open that up and you will find it listed, along with Notepad which is a bare bones program which really should be left to techies who mainly use it to edit simple text-based system files.  WordPad is designed for typing and formatting simple letters.  In computer-speak, we no longer produce letters, we produce documents. It almost makes you sound like at least a paralegal.

With WordPad, you can just start typing and then click print, or you can save the document. But if you want to get fancy, you can also choose your font style, color, and size. You can make text Bold, italicize it and underline it. You can highlight text as though you had one of those highlighters you wore out in college.  You can even insert pictures in your document.  For the simplest of needs, WordPad is sufficient.

What’s that?  You say you’re a lousy speller or prone to dyslexia?  Your grammar, she’s a not so good, to say nothing about your grampar? Then you’ll need to step up the word processing ladder.

Microsoft would just love to sell you one of their versions of Microsoft Office.  There are many versions at various price points, but they all include Microsoft Word, their business level word processing program.  Without question, Word is the de facto standard in the word processing world.  With Word, you get spell checking, suggestions for grammar improvement, and you can format headers and footers for multi-page documents, as one might need for business documents or course submissions in an educational environment.  With footers, you can get automated page numbering.  You can produce tables of contents and footnote lists with proper formatting.  Microsoft Office comes bundled with other applications varying by version, but all include Excel for spread sheeting and PowerPoint for creating slide presentations. In the right hands, PowerPoint can put more businessmen to sleep than all the sleep aids advertised on television. Versions of Office can be had for one-time purchase prices ranging from $150 to $400, or can be ‘leased’ for either $70 or $100 per year, again depending on version.

What’s that?  Oh right, you said you just wanted to type a simple letter.  OK, if you don’t care about that Microsoft brand name, let me guide you to our ‘Free Aisle’.  Here you can choose among several Microsoft Office compatible suites, including Libre Office, Apache Open Office, WPS Office (formerly Kingsoft Office), Polaris, and the Zoho Suite.  Here we will focus on Libre Office and Open Office, where the word processing application is called Writer.

There’s quite a history between Libre Office (LO) and Open Office (OO), a history that contains names like Novell, Sun MicroSystems, and Oracle.  The short version is that Libre Office was “forked” (derived) from the older Open Office in 2010 due to some spats between developers.  My preference is for Libre Office. It has received far more improvements since the split off, and I have more faith in its continued development.  But in the hands of basic users, there’s not a lot of functionality difference between LO and OO (or for that matter between either and Microsoft Office). While the default file format for both is called ODF (Open Document File) as opposed to Word’s *.DOC file format, both can use filters to import (read) and export (write) Microsoft Office documents, though some formatting may change.  Libre Office is currently provided with most versions of Linux.  There is also a version of Libre Office for Mac OS X.

If you used and liked Microsoft Office 2003, before Microsoft moved to their ‘ribbon’ interface, you will love either LO or OO.  In fact, that is one criticism of both, that their user interfaces may seem a bit dated.  If that is how you see the world, then give WPS Office a try. Personally, I still hate the ‘ribbon’.

For the person who just wants to type a letter but wants more capability that WordPad provides, the free Libre Office is definitely worth looking into.  It can be downloaded from www.libreoffice.org.  I continue to use my old copy of Microsoft Office 2007, which is still supported on Windows 10.  But when Office 2007 ceases to work on Windows, I’ll be moving to Libre Office.