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Bill Gates,
The Future Is Now

If you haven't seen it yet, I will let you peek into the power of Bill Gates' Word by showing you a glimpse of Word 2003 (but also true of Word XP and Word 97) auto-format feature. Open your (or somebody else's) BG’s Word. Do this: Open a new (blank) document. Note the cursor at the leftmost of the first line. Now, press Enter – but do NOT press Tab after Enter. Type this paragraph:

BILL GATES, THE FUTURE IS NOW. I’M TRYING TO MAKE IT ALL MAKE SENSE. YOUR POTENTIAL INSPIRES ME TO CREATE A WEBLOG TO HELP YOU REACH IT. WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO TODAY? DID YOU CHECK OUT THE LATEST WINDOWS XP PATCH LIKE YOU SHOULD? IT JUST WORKS. CLEAR, CONFIDENT, CONNECTED: BRINGING CLARITY TO YOUR WORLD. EASY AS THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG!

Don't press Enter yet; instead, after typing DOG!, press Space, then press F4 repeatedly. See what happens? The sentences jump quickly onto the space one after another. That's auto-type. BG's Word isn't a lazy dog.

Now, position your cursor anywhere on the BILL GATES paragraph, click the right button of your mouse, click Format, Paragraph, Special, First line, OK. Magic! That gives you an indented first line. Now, with your cursor after the exclamation mark (!), press Enter. Do you notice what happens? The format called 'First line' is repeated automatically for the next paragraph. That's auto-format.

Next, type this sentence:

FIVE PUZZLED BOYS WATCHED SIX QUIET GIRLS KISS JUST ME, FRANK.

(That's Frank Hilario's version of the sentence that has all the letters of the alphabet in it, a pangram, for practice typing. According to Wikipedia, the THE QUICK BROWN FOX pangram is used to test typewriter and computer keyboards because 'it is coherent and short' and is favored because 'it describes a neutral, bland event which is unlikely to offend anyone.' Me, I don't want to be neutral; I don't want to be bland; sometimes I don't want to be short. So, I offer my FIVE PUZZLED BOYS pangram instead – while mine is much longer, it's more earthy, more exciting, more ridiculous and therefore more fun. Also, my pangram has my name on it. I invented that before the Age of the Dinosaurs (Typewriters) disappeared from view. Please note that it has NO DOG in it. I'm not that fond of dogs. At home, I walk the dog once in a while, but I'd rather walk an extra mile – I need the exercise.)

The first line format is still there, right? Press Enter at the end of the PUZZLED BOYS sentence paragraph. What happens? The paragraph format is repeated.

Go back to the BILL GATES paragraph. Now, select the words BILL GATES and click the icon B to make it bold. (Bill Gates makes bold moves too.) Then move your cursor to any letter of the word POTENTIAL and click the icon I to make it italic. (Bill Gates is always looking for potential business.) Move your cursor to anywhere on the word QUICK and click the icon U to make it underlined. (Bill Gates is sometimes quick to grab an opportunity.) So you have BILL GATES, POTENTIAL, QUICK in enhanced font formats. Bill Gates should be pleased.

Then, move your cursor to my PUZZLED BOYS sentence. With your cursor anywhere on the sentence, click Format, Paragraph, Spacing Before, type the number 12, OK. What happens? That's a magic double Enter. After the period in the sentence, press Enter. The spacing before is repeated.

Now, anywhere on the page, press Ctrl+A (Select All), then press Ctrl+C (Copy), then press Ctrl+V (Paste). Repeat Ctrl+V several times until you have several pages of text. Click View, Normal. Scroll to the first page and position your cursor on the first letter of the paragraph where you can see an automatic line breaking it or lying below it, then press Ctrl+Enter on that beginning letter (either a B or an F). That's a Manual Page Break.

Did you know that the first line indent, the spacing before and the manual line break are THREE OF THE MOST IGNORED COMMANDS IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORD? Everyone I know is guilty of this, including my children. (A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.) People don't ask what they can do to make things easier for them. I always say: 'If it's difficult, you're doing it wrong.' What people do when they want a first line indent is press Tab; what they do to create a spacing before is press two Enters at the end of a paragraph, line or sentence; what people do when they want a page break is press Enter, Enter, Enter, Enter, Enter!

You think that's no bother? Think of typing 100 pages; you have 1000 paragraphs all beginning with an Enter and all ending with two Enters. That's extra 1000 Tabs and 1000 Enters. That's a lot of time and effort wasted. Then, when you revise, as you will, you will Tab every paragraph you add and delete an extra Enter for every paragraph you delete. Not only that, you will either delete all those extra Enters to create another 'automatic' page break, or add extra Enters to create such a break. If in one revision you need 10 Enters per page to add or subtract, then for 100 pages, you will need to make an additional 1,000 Enters or 1,000 Deletes. And that's only for the first revision. And I'm giving you just a few examples of the unknown travails of working with a word processor without knowing the basics of it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing most people are not aware of.

Suppose you want to change the basefont and the font size of all the paragraphs in that 100-page book and the boss wants it done in 30 minutes, new page breaks included? You will do it in 3 hours at a hurried pace with a harried look if you don't know Templates and Manual Page Break. Since I have mastered both, I can do it in 3 minutes flat.

My BILL GATES and PUZZLED BOYS examples are just a few little illustrations of the power of BG's Word. Now you have a good idea why as a writer (not to mention an editor and desktop publisher), I so love the word 'Word' because it reminds me of BG's Word, which is my favorite power tool, even if Bill Gates is NOT my favorite genius (Steve Jobs is). What you don't know until now is that in turn, BG's Word reminds me of the Bible. I'm a Christian; BG's Word is powerful in its own right, but that's two words, and it's of this world; you can imagine the power that comes with a single word, out of this world: BIBLE, which in turn reminds me of the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us: GOD. With God, His will is our command; with BG's Word, my will is its command. All's right with the world.

With one BILL GATES pondering the future, one DOG jumping and five BOYS puzzling, welcome to my Word-Wide World!