Written by: Takehiko Umeshita. Translation: Nadia Melikhova.
There are a lot of books and publications about writing skills and know-how for writing. For example, some books and magazines specifically teach how to master writing press releases, other explore features on copywriting and improvement of writing skills in general.
In today`s business world, writing skills have equal if not higher value than verbal communication in many industries and professions.
People have many ways to express thoughts, but using words is the most basic and universal means of communication. Often, in today’s digital society, “writing” means “typing”.
This article elaborates on using digital writing tools.
Writing is Thinking
This article is the result of observations and insights into modern global business and marketing. Therefore, the topics covered here are very diverse, and the content does not necessarily apply to immediate daily business practices.
Yet, some information can be useful in day-to-day work to many business professionals. All content here is created driven by personal motivation and professional experience.
Furthermore, publications mentioned here are not necessarily from the list of the top-ranking bestsellers or most popular books in the media. Some of the books are already out of print, for example, the book “Principals of Strategy”.
Topics and issues that few others would cover add more uniqueness and diversity to the content. In a way, for some readers, it may seem like a very untraditional and even self-serving way of writing.
However, it is our hope that you will enjoy reading this article and find it useful for some matters in writing. It is the main idea to keep running this blog.
Essential Personal Text Editing Tools
The article “Biscuit is the best choice for social media and community managers”… “Another page in browser history…”. was inspired by a strong interest in internet browsers.
Specifically, the main incentive for that article is the diversity of browsers: domestic, developed by an individual, or UX that suitable for modern social media.
One more important and essential application to speed up a workflow is a text editing tool.
Even native Mac users usually prefer other text editing tools over those from Apple’s stock. For example, one of the most popular text editors is iText Express.
There is a broad market of writing tools, techniques, and know-how, but a limited choice of writing applications.
These days, among a range of applications for creating texts, editing tools are more popular than word processors.
For example, in this blog, about 80% of the text is processed by an editing tool and then transferred the remaining 20% to MS Word to get it ready for handing over to the recipient. Also, Evernote is used often.
The idea to start this blog came up from exchanging messages with Kazuki Ichida, a writer of “Fake News: A New Strategic Weapon of War” (Kadokawa Shinsho), living in Canada.
Connection with Mr.Kazuki began through Twitter, where we got to know his book`s review written by the author of this blog. As it turned out, Mr. Kazuki is also using one of the writing editing software, called Nola.
Besides iText Pro, some other already well-known editors are OmmWriter (currently only paid version in App Store) and Mi.
As for new editing tools in the market, CotEditor, TATEditor, and Jedit Ω are good to try. Other than that, Simplenote (UI in English, available in Japanese) by Automattic (famous for WordPress) instead of the standard Mac Notes.
These applications are often free of charge, except for Ommwriter.
Anyway, there are so many different editing tools out there that anyone, especially those whose main job is to write, should try them all out.
Also, from personal experience, multiple files in different texts formats (memos, notes, internal and external documents, etc.) are easier to manage by dividing them into categories for each application.
Two Groups of Text Editor Users
There are two categories of editing software users: the first is for writers of blogs, essays, novels, diaries, and the other one is for programming and code professionals. The latter group seems to be steadily growing in recent years.
A simple editing software is the best choice for general writing. For example, for the users of the classic Mac environment (up to OS 9), Jedit was of few well-known at a time. Besides ORGA, iText Express would be another good discovery.
Specifically for Japanese culture, unique vertical writing is standard. Most people in Japan are used to writing sentences by filling in the squares of a paper. Books are still often written vertically. Since the invention of a dedicated word processor, horizontal writing has been taking over. So, web-based news and blogs appear written horizontally.
The writer – Mr. Ichida uses an editor for his novels, and he too writes horizontally. Incidentally, he uses Mi, which is convenient even for professional writers.
“Editing Tools”
Whether it’s typing a sentence, entering code, or another programming, the keyboard is plays a vital role in our life nowadays. It is one of the most used gadgets today.
Thereby, editing software is necessary as a simple and most handy tool. There is no single editing tool that is the best, and it is surprising how many different editing tools exist, both domestic and foreign, from the most sophisticated to the simplest. In the end, it all depends on the user’s preferences, the purpose of use, usage style, functions required from the application, the operating environment, and the overall usability (UX). In this regard, editing applications are very diverse.
Editing software introduced in this article are generally for Mac users. However, there are many types of editors with different features for Windows, Unix, or Linux.
Editing tools are also often used by engineers for programming and writing code, and of course, there are many other excellent applications for that.
In addition, there are many apps to help concentrate during writing (also available in Google Chrome). For example, Relaxing Sounds – Giovesoft has a range of 30 different sounds of nature, like chirping birds, drizzling rain, and the relaxing sound of waves.
Hopefully, the information introduced in this article has conveyed the usefulness that editing tools can be for any sorts of writers.
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