On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Andy Kent wrote:

From: Shunsuke <shunsuke@mailcity.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 25, 1998 4:52 AM

I wholeheartedly disagree and see it exactly the
opposite.  For writing fanfics, you should use a non-
formatting, 7-bit ASCII text editor.  Be it Notepad,
VI, or edlin (I'm kidding), stick to a text only
program.

And here, I disagree.  For the past year and a half, I have written 
all of my fanfics in Microsoft Word.  There are a few caveats, of 
course:  you have to turn off "smart quotes", you have to disable >much 

of Word's "auto-format as you type" features, and you must save >the 
first time as "Text Only".  It helps if you choose a mono-spaced >font, 
too, such as Courier.  If you take those elementary >precautions, Word 
makes an excellent text editor. Spell-checking on >the fly is 
particularly valuable.  I very much appreciate that all I >have to do is 
type in an approxiamation of how a word should be

spelled, and up pops a list of alternatives if I've guessed wrong.

Heck, the university here where I'm at just signed a deal with the devil, I mean
Bill Gates, to provide everyone with Microsoft Outlook. But I agree with you, it
doesn't take much to use anyway. Heck, even Netscapes or Microsoft Explorer will
automatically format a word file through its mail window options.

<g> If you spend a bit of time working with it, it can be even better. 
It's three in the morning, I type in "Ramna" for the umpteenth time, it 
fixes it. Heck, my prereaders haven't had to correct a spelling mistake 
in... oh, I dunno, 200k of text or so.

For text wrapping, I depend on Microsoft Outlook.  I've told Outlook 
that any outgoing email message should be wrapped to 70 characters.  
So when emailing a fanfic, I open it in word, copy the text, paste it 
into an Outlook email message, and send.  Outlook does the 
line-wrapping for me, and I've never had a problem.  It helps that I 
write "block" paragraphs, with no indentations and a blank line 
between paragraphs.

Actually, Outlook could also use Word for you to send e-mail, and it'll change
it into Courier font, although I prefer New Courier, either 9 or 15 point size
depending on which dpi your computer is.

Or, you can pick a monospace font, like Courier, and save "Text Only 
with Line Breaks". (Well, it works on Office 97, anyway. ;p)

I myself do NOT turn off the autoformatting; I do print my fic out on 
occasion, for people in the local club and such, and it does look a lot 
better in Word. When I'm done, I save as text (with line breaks) and 
open the text file up in Write; replace the smart quotes with normal 
ones, and fix the ellipses (I use a lot of ... in my writing) and you 
have a good text file.

In word, there's an "AutoCorrect" button that you should turn off. It's also a
good idea to go to the options and change the option that makes backspaces and
tabs act like first line indents, because they don't transfer well to program
such as Eudora or any web e-mail sights. Probably a good idea for Outlook as
well.

I agree that you shouldn't send a ".doc" file to the FFML, but you >can 

still use an advanced word processor to create simple text files.

Save your prereaders time and hassle. <g> Of course, this assumes you 
already have a copy; I certainly wouldn't plunk down the cash for one 
just for fanfic writing.

Andy

And neither would I.