system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Microsoft Word is brutally bad

Microsoft Word has been around for what now, decades? And yet, getting some of the most basic functionality to work, such as putting bullet points in the right spot, can be brutally frustrating and time-consuming. What gives? How can such an established product still be so bad at the basics?

Let me be clear - I'm not a Microsoft hater (in fact, I love Windows 10), and other products such as Excel do a great job for what I need. But MS Word has a special place in my heart in terms of products whose very existence seems questionable.
gpt
Please don't make me defend word.

> And yet, getting some of the most basic functionality to work, such as putting bullet points in the right spot, can be brutally frustrating and time-consuming. What gives? How can such an established product still be so bad at the basics?

Word is a WYSIWYG program. Which means it's attempting to give you an exact version of the document that will be displayed when PDF'd or printed out. The flipside to this is that it's a graphical user interface built over a program that tells things like a printer or a PDF converter what to do and where to put everything. And not only that, but it has to be comfortable for an inexperienced user. Most people don't need bullets in an exact location, and thanks to tools like the format painter it's pretty easy to set it right once and then carry that over to whatever other bullets you want.

Word is an excellent tool for what it is (word processing), and frankly a rather okay tool for what it isn't (a layout and design program). Sure, you could spring the cash for InDesign and get much better, more consistent results (after you take what's basically a college course in how to use it) for the layout and design of your document but...Becky this is a bake sale for the local elementary school, some clip art and words that have a drop shadow are all we're looking for.

If you're fretting about layout and don't want to pay out the ass for InDesign, then use PowerPoint. PowerPoint: It's not just for presentations!