Word 2007 is my bishie

Apologies for not finding a more suitable word than bishie. I blame the lateness of the hour. Also, I assure you that my love for Word 2007 is purely platonic and that the use of the word bishie serves here purely as hyperbole.

Anyway, Word 2007 just makes writing long-winded papers feel so much more exciting than it should be. I honestly have no idea why I've continued to work on this paper until 4 in the morning when I can certainly put it off until tomorrow or early next week. I'm hoping it isn't some new anti-procrastination feature I've never previously noticed on the product specs.

I've never felt more productive in Word than I do with the Ribbon. I've told many people (including the few I've met on the actual product teams) how much I love the Ribbon, but it just seems to continue to bear repeating.

This paper's tab of choice has been the References tab tonight. Adding citations and cross-references to headings, figures and tables are now way easier than writing them myself and I'm reaping all the benefits of them: auto-generated tables and easy refactoring (moving things around, renaming or recaptioning things). I'm doing the large majority of it entirely from the keyboard. The big sequence is Alt,SRF (References > Cross-Reference) and some very easy maneuvering through the resulting diagram. Second to that is possibly Alt,SCS (References > Citation > New Source).

I've gone ahead and included some nice formulas. I have to give huge kudos for the kinder, gentler Equation Editor. I'm one of the few people that has known about the Equation Editor for many versions now, and it's always seemed clunky. The new Ribbonified Equation Editor is gorgeous and extremely handy, and now actually findable by you mere mortals out there. Here again I love the ability to keyboard my way through just about everything I do with it. A couple of my now memorized sequences[#]_: Alt,NEI (Insert > Equation > New), Alt,JEQ (Equation Editor > Insert Math Symbol).

I can only imagine what sort of professional-looking doom this paper might become should I find a reason to include any SmartArt...

I just realized that maybe I shouldn't be posting any of this in the hopes that my secrets won't spread and people will be hugely surprised at the great polish I put into my papers, rather than expect it... (Evil laugh.)

[1]

Interestingly, to me, ribbon sequences always seem to feel a bit more like "words" than Office's older menu shortcut sequences. They feel a lot like all those magical Vim command sequences I've come to learn and love, even: dense incantations of simple letter patterns that sing entire phrases in my head. (Now I'm starting to wonder what a Ribbonified Vim might be like...)