Review Volume 2 Issue 1 August-September 2022

A Review on Word

How many times in a typical school week do you use Word? Does your teacher in ELA allow you or require you to use Word for your writing assignments? I know I do and my ELA teacher gives us the option to use Word, and most of the time, they require us to use Word for our paragraphs and essays.

One cool feature of Word that I love is the Editing tool. The Editing tool allows me to (a) edit or amend a document, (b) review a document, and/or (c) view a document. I use this tool all the time. When using the Editing tool, I can also find appropriate and precise words that reflect my thoughts and replace words through the recommendations list.

Another useful tool of Word that I rely on when reviewing my writing assignment is the Editor. The Editor tool of Word is similar to Grammarly. The Editor tool provides a score to a document based on three types of writing – formal writing, professional, and casual. For academic purposes, I always choose formal and/or professional writing to check on my Editor Score. The Editor tool also provides spelling and grammar corrections. Under the Refinements category, the Editor tool will suggest feedback on the following – clarity, conciseness, formality, inclusiveness, punctuation conventions, resume, sensitive geopolitical references, and vocabulary. Sometimes, when my teacher tells us not to plagiarize, I use the Editor’s Similarity tool to check for similarity to online sources. The Editor tool is also intuitive because it imparts document statistics.

Photo by Pexels

In addition to the Editing and Editors tools, Word enables you to use speech-to-text via its Dictation tool. There are times when I am just brainstorming with what I am going to write, and the Dictation tool comes in handy. The Dictation tool allows me to just transfer my thoughts into a document, produce my first draft, and edit my work later. In the classroom, I have witnessed first hand where I noticed my ELA teacher encourage some of my classmates to use the Dictation tool. If you are going to use the Dictation tool in the classroom, I suggest you ask the permission of your teacher if you could go into the hallway where it is quieter. The Dictation tool is hypersensitive to sound. It picks up what other people are saying while you are dictating.

The other new tool in Word that I am excited about and which I have just recently discovered is the Researcher tool. This tool is under the References. Although I have not started doing heavy research work in any of my classes, I chanced upon this tool one day when I was learning about Roald Dahl. I accidentally clicked on References, and there was a plethora of tools under References. I read the word Researcher and clicked on it. I discovered that I could type people, events, concepts, and places I want to investigate, add sources to my document, and sources are automatically cited! 

I know that Word has many new tools waiting to be unearthed, but the tools I discussed here prove to be the most useful ones that I know I will be utilizing a lot for my writing assignments. I hope that these tools piqued your curiosity about Word and that someday you will also start using the Editing, Editor, Dictation, and Researcher tools.