Speaker 1: Recently, I was speaking with a number of my students about what word processing software they use because right now, many people just use Google Docs. It's easily accessible across devices, across networks and things like that. Very convenient for brainstorming and whatnot. However, it's not quite as helpful when it comes to writing scholarly work. Just give me a minute. Let me explain this a little bit. Research writing is the cornerstone of scholarly work. If you are going to be doing graduate or doctoral studies or formal research, you're likely going to be using Microsoft Word. To be fair, I'm not compensated by Microsoft. I don't work for Microsoft. I don't think I own stock in Microsoft. But more from the perspective of how do I, as an instructor of research process and methodology, when I teach my students, what do I tell them to use and why do I tell them to use it? Not just what, but why? So I tell them to use Microsoft Word and there are a number of different reasons for it. The first is Microsoft Word is pretty much the standard. It's the cornerstone of scholarly work. It's what the industry, if you will, the research industry itself uses. That's one reason. Now, there are some other reasons that are equally, if not even more important for graduate students. Let's face it. If you are trying to format text, because whatever scholarly style manual you use, whether it's APA, which I use with my students, MLA, Terabian, Harvard, whatever one you use, it's going to be very precise with spacing, with margins, with font, with styles, et cetera. So it's going to be really important that there's a level of precision that Google Docs just doesn't have. I use Google Docs for a number of things, but Google Docs doesn't have precision when it comes to getting everything across the whole document formatted correctly. Now there are some ways to get around it, but in general, Microsoft Word is a little bit more consistent if you are using styles for the various formatting that you would do throughout the document. Another reason why you might want to use Word is because of track changes. I know that Google Docs and even Word Perfect or other tools have things like that, but what's really important is not only that we see what's been crossed out with what's been replaced, but we're able to accept or not accept. In other words, to use the whole approach to collaboration specifically with accepting or declining or rejecting changes. Once again, I know that other tools have this, but Microsoft Word is the default that's been used, chances are, by your professors, whoever you are studying with. Chances are they learned with Microsoft Word. And you are going to want to work with them with a tool that they're familiar with. So sometimes it's not just based on, well, this tool is the best for me, because there are lots of tools out there and there are lots of really good tools for all sorts of different reasons. Ultimately, you want to use whatever tool, whatever word processing tool is going to be most acceptable, most understandable, most usable by the people who need to also see your work, because a cornerstone of all scholarly effort is peer review. Other people see it and comment on it. So let's make it easy for them to do it, because chances are your professor and any other person who has done research for some time has done it using track changes, which is built into Microsoft Word. They don't know how to use that. Now, one other reason why you may want to really focus on this, because you are going to want to have tables and figures that have consistent formatting throughout, including the table of contents. And the table of contents in a Microsoft Word document is automatically generated, insert table of contents, automatically generated depending on the format and the styles you use throughout your document. So if you are regularly bringing your document across various programs, input, output, etc., there's a good chance that it's going to lose some of the styles that are going to be necessary in order for insert table of contents to really work, including having all of those dots and having the correct page number depending on what level of heading, 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever you're using, whatever that is actually, whatever those things actually are. So you can get around this once again, but notice I keep on mentioning you can get around it by doing this or get around it by doing that. How about just using the program that really has excelled and has developed along with the style manuals themselves? So I hope that some of this might be useful. Something in here might be useful. If nothing else, it at least will give some more maybe background information as why people often recommend using Microsoft Word, not to mention many universities and colleges give away copies of this through enterprise licenses that they have for their students. So this is something that might not even have an additional cost because Microsoft Word in general doesn't come default in many programs, in many computer, new computer purchases right now. So to really engage in the scholarly endeavor, use the tools that other scholars use. I hope this was helpful. Thank you very much. Good research to you.