We live in the modern world of editors now. Everyone wants a minimal no frills text editor. Mentioning Word will probably make the community cringe online. But there are some things that make it just a little bit special. Having garnered the reputation that it has over the last decade it might surprise some that there is something redemptive about it yet. At least in my humble opinion.
This one is a very recent change but the default font for a new document has been updated to something called Aptos. For the first time in decades the first thing I don’t do when I start a new document is change the default font. It’s no Inter by any means, but it also doesn’t feel like you are now starting a document from the 2000s.
Full screen is all the rage with editors and Microsoft Word does a reasonably good job with this. I am writing this document in Focus Mode. It still doesn’t hide away everything that it should but it works well enough to offer you a focused writing environment.
The third one is the one I value the most but its also the hardest one to articulate in words. By default Word has something called cursor smoothing. Every time you type a character the way the character slides to the next position is something I have only seen in Word and Visual Studio Code. It is immensely satisfying to experience and the thing that keeps bringing me back to Word the most.
So, there you have it. My attempt to put in a few good words for my old friend Word. You deserve a second chance.