As Microsoft Word turns 40, we look at the role the software has played in four decades of language and communication evolution.

The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed the way we use language::As Microsoft Word turns 40, we look at the role the software has played in four decades of language and communication evolution.

  • homoludens@feddit.deEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    “Word templates led people to use the same formatting in communications, and eventually, this has become instantiated as a norm,” says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies human-computer interaction. If you work in finance, there’s a specific way reports are expected to be laid out. Letters follow a set pattern, memos are largely formatted in the same way. “Users know where to find information in these standardised documents; they don’t need to spend time trying to find what they need.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but at least Germany seems to have standards for this since 1949, so I doubt this can be contributed to Microsoft (alone).

    • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      1 year ago

      There were books of letter and document templates, folks. Microsoft did not invent the semi-block format.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Right?

        I’d posit WWII was the single greatest influence in recent history for more extensive standardization of just about everything in the business/project management/production/transportation/logistics worlds, and guess what - they all use tools like documentation and communication documents.

        There were typing pools… And somehow Word standardized how docs are written/created??

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      And this BS from a “professor”.

      There’s a reason for the phrase “Piled higher, Deeper” and this “professor” exemplifies it.