It means (according to one definition) “easy to understand or operate without explicit instructions.” “Intuitive” does not mean you find something easier. For a profession that prides itself on its exacting use of language, this is laughable. Word wars mean by “intuitive” is that they find it easier to work in WordPerfect than in Word. In my experience, what most people in the WordPerfect vs. But I will take issue with the argument that one choice is more “intuitive” than another. WordPerfect is THE lawyer’s word processor.įar be it from me to get in the middle of someone else’s preference (as the saying goes, “De gustibus non est disputandum”).
Here in the legal profession, it’s practically gospel: “WordPerfect is more ‘intuitive’ than Word” Skeptical? Let’s talk about some specific beliefs that are keeping you stuck. I had to get my mindset right.Īnd here’s where I’m going to invite the ire of many: 90% of this transition is in your attitude. If I was going to remain productive, I had to learn … and fast. And I was definitely in a “no turning back” situation. If you’re in an environment where you can’t revert back to your native language to make yourself understood, you’ll learn faster.
This is the theory behind total immersion language learning. I had to make the best of it, regardless of my feelings. I remember little about specific frustrations, but one thing I remember well: I had no choice. I made my transition from WordPerfect to Word quite a few years back, thanks to a professional detour outside the legal profession. Word make your transition harder than it has to be "I don't like Word because it won't do 'X'"."I don't like Word because it's just completely illogical"."As long as I get the document to print/PDF right and on time, it doesn't matter how I got there"."WordPerfect is more 'intuitive' than Word".One of the most infamous examples was a comment left on a post (expletives blurred below): And it’s definitely not the first time I’ve been on the receiving end of “Word rage”. This isn’t the first time I’ve answered a “why does Word do that?” query and gotten no response after. I sent her a fairly lengthy reply with my own screenshots, asked a few questions about her setup (yes, that matters), gave her a few things to check, and offered to jump on a video call to go over the problem with her to see if I could figure out why she was having such difficulties. My outraged correspondent described a feature that wasn’t working consistently as expected (complete with screenshots, which were helpful), and then continued pouring out her frustrations about how five years into using Word it still “eats lunch at least once every #$%^ day.” Why doesn’t Word do the same thing twice? It happened again just recently: the bursting-with-frustration email from a former WordPerfect user.