8   Writing and Production Software

Using Your Word Processor Effectively

Use your word processor when you write. Writing by hand is slow and inefficient—and when you finish drafting, someone will have to decipher your handwriting and type it. Some people still use a dictaphone, preferring to dictate the text into a tape recorder. While this is faster than writing by hand, someone still has to listen to the tape and transcribe it. And unless you think and speak in plain English, you’ll probably have to spend a lot of time editing.

Word processors provide writers great flexibility. Before the word processor, writers had to write in a basically linear flow, completing one idea or sentence before beginning the next one. After all, it wasn’t easy to rearrange sentences. With a word processor, you can write as you please. You can leave an idea unfinished and go on to another idea. Or you can skip around, writing different ideas as thoughts occur to you. You can write the concluding paragraph first and the introductory paragraph last. And when you’re finished, you can shuffle the paragraphs around. Take advantage of this flexibility when you write.

While writing with a word processor is easy, page layout and formatting can be trickier. If you find yourself spending a lot of time trying to get the page to look right, consider having someone else format it. If you’ve got someone with strong word processing skills, that person can probably lay out the pages faster and with fewer mistakes than you can. Most manual development teams benefit from having such a person.

Touch Typing

Another skill essential to writers is touch typing. If you were taught to type using all of your fingers and without looking at the keys, you’ll know how important it is to writing quickly. If you’re still hunting and pecking with your index fingers, chances are you can’t keep up with your thoughts and you’re losing good ideas. It’s never too late to take a night school course in touch typing.

Dvorak Keyboard

If you do decide to learn touch typing, you might consider learning the ‘Dvorak’ keyboard instead of the standard ‘Qwerty’ keyboard. While the vast majority of typists use the Qwerty keyboard, the layout of the letters does not relate to the keys that are struck most frequently. In fact, the layout, which was established in the early days of typewriters, was actually intended to slow down typists so that the typewriter’s keys wouldn’t strike each other. Few of the most frequently used keys are on the home row. Dvorak, which was more recently designed, maximizes typing speed by placing the most frequently used keys on the home row in the easiest-to-strike places. Once you get used to this superior layout, you’ll type faster and with less effort.