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[Leon]

I use notepad and wordpad and openoffice to write / edit stories.  All members - Please let me know your favorite text editor.

[B L McAllister]

I use notepad and wordpad and openoffice to write / edit stories.  All members - Please let me know your favorite text editor.

I used WordPerfect when my department was using it and when you had to do quite bit of easy memorizing to make it work, and then some more when it began catering to people who objected to the process just indicated. Both forms of WordPerfect were easy to use. When I replaced my home computer, it came with Word, and WordPerfect would have cost me money, so I learned Word, and it is also easy to use, although its successive "improvements" had to be gotten used to. Word, for a while, could read my WordPerfect files, but then an improvement couldn't, so I downloaded a file (free, but now forgotten) that would enable W to read WP, and went blithely along. Then something I don't recall happened to spoil that, but, meantime I'd added Open Office, just to see how it went, and though I stuck with Word, just because I happened to be accustomed to it, Open Office appeared to be satisfactory, and it would read my WP files. But then an update to Open Office seemed to have lost this capability, so, since there were still a few WP's kicking around, I sought and found an older version of OO, replaced my updated version with it, and obtained the lost capability.  If there's a moral in all this, it's probably this: the  people who make this stuff, the expensive kinds and the free kinds, do not know about people like me, and may or may  not care. At present, I convert to rich text format as soon as feasible, and hope that it will continue to be readable by whatever comes along. Pretty slender advice, but it's all I have.

[Dave Freas]

I used WordPerfect for a long time.  It was simple and easy to use, almost as if the guys who wrote it thought like I thought.

Eventually, I had to go to Word and found that version (don't ask me which one) almost as easy as WP.

The two 'improved' versions I've had to adapt to since then have been more complex.  I'm still adapting to the newest one.  I will say I've never had a problem converting from WP to Word or one version of Word to another. 

I think sometimes that the people who write these programs make them more complex than they need to be just because they can without taking what the average user wants from the program into consideration.  It definitely seems to me that each new version is less user friendly than the last one.

Dave

[B L McAllister]

I use notepad and wordpad and openoffice to write / edit stories.  All members - Please let me know your favorite text editor.

Since writing my first reply to this request, I've had a bit of bad luck with Word: It quit working. That's Word 2007, and I suppose it's possible that Microsoft is trying to push us all into buying a newer version, but I hope not. Nevertheless, I'm no longer using Word. (Yes, I've tried everything available to us nobodies to try to make it work, including reinstalling, asking Windows to repair it, exploring Microsoft's web-pages, etc. and nothing helped. So I'm now a full-time Open Office user.)

[B L McAllister]

Hmmm. I'm ten years off. It's Word 97. Maybe they really are trying to persuade me to update?

[rontegen]

Scrivener hands down. Nothing else comes close for writing novels.
http://literatureandlatte.com

[Licorice]

another vote for Scrivener. other than that, a simple and lightweight freeware app called Bean. (not sure if they make Bean for OS'es other than Mac.) you can write in Bean and save your document in Word or practically any other format.

[tracy18]

I use this online tool for editing my write up. It is pretty cool as it not only underlines the errors but also offers suggestions to correct those errors.

[Antha]

I'm on the trial of Scrivener. It seems pretty cool. Do I want to fork over $45 ... we shall see? I really like that it is 30 non-consecutive days trial. Meaning, I "use up" a day when I actually open the program. If I opened it on the first of the month and didn't touch it until the 18th of the next month, the 18th would could as "day 2".

I also like how you don't have to write chronologically. If you have an idea for a scene and want to write it now, you can just create the scene, name it, and write it. Then later, you can move it into the appropriate place in the story.

I use MS Word for writing in general, if I'm going chronologically.

[tracy18]

I use the writing tool editor from 123HelpMe to write my work. It help's me fix my grammar errors then and there as I write.