Why Microsoft Word Does
Not Work for Novice Writers
Joohee Huh
North Carolina State University | jhhuh@ncsu.edu
Have you ever written five paragraphs, without any tool, all in one
draft? I raise this question to think
about the relationship between the
function of tools and thought in
writing. Since writing activity, as
one of the external symbolic forms,
is based on visual representation, it
necessarily involves tools. The tools
have material properties, and our
bodies work with the tools. During
the writing process, the materiality of any tool is important in that
it determines the ways in which
we interact with written words.
At the same time, tools mediate
and enable certain thoughts and
the physical reality of language
as written form. Therefore, bodily
movement matters both in the use
of the tool and in the development
and representation of thought.
Let’s narrow down this writing-
tool analysis to one software pro-
gram, Microsoft Word (MS Word).
If we open MS Word, a white back-
ground appears. We find dozens
of fonts as options waiting for our
selection. Other menu options,
such as left or right paragraph
arrangement, are easy to see. If
we type a sentence longer than
the page width, the cursor goes
one step down, as if there were an
invisible staircase. But can we eas-
ily represent Mallarmé’s concrete
poetry using MS Word? Probably
not. What Microsoft not so subtly
implies is the space of typewrit-
ing and the printed-book model
of linear writing. Currently this is
the software that many schools
and institutions adopt as the pri-
mary tool for writing. Can we say
that this choice of writing tool is
satisfactory in all respects? I don’t
think so. We even describe this
program as “word processing,” not
“writing” or “thought processing.”
Here, I will argue why MS Word
does not work as an effective writ-
ing tool for novice writers.
March + April 2013
interactions
Beyond Words and Keystrokes
I observed five graduate students
over a two-month period while
they were writing their theses in
a studio on campus. During this
observation, I stopped taking for
granted bodily movement—human
bodies moving voluntarily between
the fixed environment of the
screen and the movement of the
mouse. In doing so I found that
the relationship between the stu-
dents’ bodily movements and their
tools was problematic, because
the expansion of thought seems
tied to the process through which
thought in writing interacts with
spatial arrangement in addition to
written words. But the functions
of MS Word do not presume such a
process. There seemed to be a gap
between the way the students ori-
ented their attention when writing
and the functions of the tool on
the computer.
