It’s for 30 days and only counts the days you actually use it! 2. If you want to try out Scrivener, there is a free trial available. But I will say that it has been worth every penny. Compared with free, this can also be a significant financial burden for the chronically underpaid grad student. That’s a steep price to pay for a word processor if you don’t have institutional affiliation. Microsoft Word is free for students and educators, but for everyone else, it is $159.99/year or $6.99/month. I’ve set up a daily target of 500 words and it really has improved my progress over the last few months. This can be done for either: 1) the entire project 2) sections within the project or 3) the current writing session. Project targetsĪnother Scrivener feature I love is the ability to set word or character targets. It honestly seems like more of a hassle than just writing a chapter continuously in a single document. This could only be achieved in Google Docs or Microsoft Word if you were writing sections of a chapter in different documents from the beginning. When I get stuck or want to reference something from another section, I can open up another section and see what I’ve already written as I’m working on a different section. Each section of, say, a chapter, is written in a separate document. Scrivener makes it easy to switch between editing a manuscript – like a thesis – one section at a time and together as a whole. It’s true that you could just as easily arrange the window’s on your computer or set up a second monitor to achieve the same end.īut you can’t do that with a single chapter. This capability makes Scrivener unique as a word-processing program. This makes it that much easier to pick up where you left off, no matter how much time you spend away from the project. When you open a Google Doc or Word document that you were working on the previous day, the cursor is usually placed at the beginning of the document.Įach time I reopen my project in Scrivener, it opens not just in the document I was working on last, but in the very place where I was last writing. Like Google Docs, Scrivener automatically saves while you work and can automatically back up your projects. It also backs up your saved files to Google Drive instead of your local hard drive. Google Docs automatically saves your work as you’re working. When accessing a document you’ve shared with a collaborator (or multiple), you can see who is currently in the document and where they are in the doc in real time. ![]() Ease of CollaborationĪs others have noted, “while you can download your Word doc and email to others for collaboration, you can invite collaborators directly from your Google doc or send them a link to access your document.” You don’t need to install it on your computer, but you do need a Google or Gmail account to use it. Don’t worry about those times when you don’t have access to WiFi – Google Docs works offline, too. Google Docs is the most accessible of the three programs considered here. Once embedded, any updates you make to the charts in Excel will be reflected in you Word document. If you want to embed charts from Excel into your Word document, it’s totally possible to do so. ![]() This can be particularly useful for research projects that involve lots of data. Microsoft Word has been adding features since its inception in 1989.Īs one website noted, “it’s the most reliable word processor for long documents or manuscripts that have several chapters, a dynamic table of contents, and indexing.” As such, it should come as no surprise that it is frequently the preferred choice for composing dissertations. Microsoft Word is perhaps the most familiar word processing application out there. Microsoft Office can be found in most workplaces and is a skill that is valued by most employers. After that, your thesis writing process will (hopefully) be smooth sailing. We’ll go over the strengths and weaknesses of each, so that you can make the best choice for you. In this post, we’ll compare Scrivener, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs. How you decide which application to use depends primarily on your budget, your writing style, and what features you need. However, there are no rules about what word processing application you can use during the writing process. Institutions are pretty strict about the format in which a thesis should be submitted. ![]() Given the choice between Scrivener, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs, which would you choose?
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