Separating content from format

The barriers to making Microsoft Office leave my life

Git, a free management system for programs and code, intrigues me. It is a very powerful document management system, tracking and merging changes and controlling and archiving versions, all in an easy to use format for coders. As someone who is currently trying to think through managing documents better this functionality is tempting.

However, I recently read a Medium article ‘Git for Non-Programmers’ and it got me thinking. The article, which attempted to outline a process to enable Microsoft users a way to use Git, highlighted some very real limitations for Git and the management of Microsoft documents. Microsoft office manages the content and document formatting together or as one. This makes managing Microsoft documents extremely cumbersome for a Git system to handle, really for any system to handle. This is why sometimes, Word does not implement the changes to the formatting that you try to make, and also the reason why you have to change every individual line manually when you want to change the style or formatting of the document.

This combining of content and document formatting is leading to much formatting frustration in my life. I spend many hours at work formatting Microsoft Word documents, and the end result is often basic, un-engaging documents. This is frustrating, and made more frustrating looking around at other text editors, type setter programs out there, that I could be using.

Responding to this frustration, I have decided to try to learn to use other text editors and type setting systems. So far, I have used:

• Latex, a type setting system, which is used extensively in the university system and has been around for over 20 years.
• Text Wrangler, with MarkDown, to format some basic letters and documents.

These systems come with many benefits. The formatting within Latex is fantastic. Documents can be simply designed, and most importantly, overcome that ‘formatted in Word’ look. The formats and styles of documents from all systems can be easily updated by changing the formatting elements of the documents, without requiring any change to the content components.

The separation of focus between formatting and content is potentially more useful. The use of these types of systems, forces you to consider the content and formatting separately. There is power in this, a bit like writing a Medium blog — you only have to worry about the content not the design. But as a long time Microsoft Office user, this change has been really difficult to implement.

When first using Latex, I was constantly checking the formatting and shaping the content based on the formatting. Slowly, I am getting more disciplined. Today I wrote a letter in Text Wrangler, and focused on the content. This was refreshing and I think much more productive.

But while I am slowly learning to separate content from formatting during the development my documents, there are still other challenges limiting my ability to really force Microsoft Office out of my life.

The first one is the learning curve. Learning is required to really use the other tools effectively. As I have worked with Word for so long I have learnt many shortcuts and functions, which enable me to produce a reasonably formatted document. To get to the same level of proficiency in Latex will take time. I have only used other people’s templates, and am yet to build my own template or even modify another template.

The second one is the pervasiveness of Microsoft Office in my life. At work, with other groups I work with. Microsoft office is used by everyone and this makes it difficult to move away from. When working on documents that will be developed collaboratively, to use Latex or even to eventually use something like Git, others must be comfortable with the tools. This is difficult, does that mean I must encourage and even help teach others to use these technologies. Maybe, because without that, I may be stuck formatting in Word for the rest of my life.