Word processing no internet

Online word processors are a great alternative to traditional word processors you have to buy and install. The options below are free and easy to use, and getting started is a breeze.

We’ve gathered the best online word processors out there; some of them are sure to meet your needs, no matter what features you’re looking for.

Thanks for letting us know!

What would my or any current writer’s career have been like if there were no Internet or word processing, no eBooks or online publishers? Even if the invention of digital computing machines was inevitable, consider that there was no guarantee it would happen in this exact time frame–mainframe computers for calculating H-bomb parameters in the fifties, ARPANET in the sixties, personal computers in the seventies, the World Wide Web in the nineties, and the exponential growth of the Internet thereafter. Take away a few gifted individuals, a few insights here and there, slightly alter the history, and maybe all we take for granted now might not have gotten started until, say … 2033 … and in that case, what would you be writing now, and how? Let’s hope you wouldn’t be mimeographing little poetry chapbooks to hawk in used book stores!

That rough draft typewriting seems so ancient. But consider that typewriters only came into use after the 1860’s and that Mark Twain is said to be the first author to submit a typed manuscript. Thus all the works before that were handwritten and submitted to publishers as such, even if dictated by the author to someone else. We see the final copy of an eighteenth or nineteenth century book and note its typeset print, but it’s hard to imagine Herman Melville handwriting Moby Dick. We see a photo of the First Folio and forget that Shakespeare set it all down by hand. Victor Hugo’s wife painstakingly wrote out copy after copy of the drafts of Les Miserables and Tolstoy’s wife did the same for War and Peace. What was going on in everyone’s souls as they performed these tasks?

Time

The top value of word processing that comes to mind is the scarcely believable amount of time saved as a novel morphs from rough draft to MS. without entirely new manuscripts to retype. You could hire a typist for the final typing of a submission manuscript if you had the wherewithal–but that still might take weeks or months, and then you’d be proofing it and negotiating about errors and changes.

For me the usual practice was typed rough draft, typed second draft, then typed third and fourth drafts of individual chapters needing further work, all with scrawled corrections. The rough draft was the initial vision with all its flaws. The second version, consisting of all good Draft 2 chapters plus all further revised chapters, was, hopefully, the essential expression I’d aimed at all along. After that came the dreaded typing of the manuscript, which also happened to include some revision as I went along. Yet I knew that all subsequent revision was forever frozen with each page pulled from the typewriter.

Aside from typed story manuscripts, a few of which went to forty pages, I only attempted two novel manuscripts. The first one, which at the time I considered the final version of my first real novel, Akard Drearstone, I abandoned in 1981 after 310 typed pages. I think the fact that I still had some seven or eight hundred to go was the main factor in helping me realize that the sprawling novel just wasn’t working, that I’d outgrown the thing, and that any further effort expended on it was a waste of life energy. But a feeling of incompleteness didn’t go away until I rewrote the novel decades later. If this first novel had been done entirely on the computer I wonder whether I wouldn’t have just called it done and submitted it the way it was. In a way it was good to feel what it was like to ditch a novel I’d sunk six years of my life into.

I did finish a 320-page typescript of my next novel, The University of Mars, and though this was an extremely dense and meandering work, it was an honor to mail off not only query letters and sample chapters, but in one case a manuscript box containing the entire novel. Of course good quality photocopies substituted for that holy manuscript.

Copies

In the case of my earliest stories, I mailed the original typescript and kept a photocopy. I only lost one original in the mail. But by the time I was several hundred pages into the rough draft of Akard Drearstone, I was getting paranoid about losing all my work to fire, flood, or the truly scary concept of novel thieves, and I would find various offsite places to store the novel when my wife and I went on vacation. I never felt I had the time or money to photocopy the finished 1,587-page novel, and for some reason the concept of carbon paper never entered my mind. But typing the second draft, in addition to greatly strengthening the novel, had the secondary benefit of more or less creating a copy. As I wrote my next novels I made photocopies of even the rough draft every few chapters. All this added up to quite a stack of paper and in recent years these insurance policies against loss have been cut into quarters for scratch paper, which I have an endless supply of.

The digital age of course enables us to make numerous copies of everything we write. I generally have six digital copies of my entire literary output, and create offsite storage by rotating two flash drives between home and work. Aside from the occasional dumb error where I accidentally copy a previous version over the current version, I’m fairly secure in my copies.

I still do make some prints. When I write the rough draft of a novel, I print each day’s work upon completion, and this I call Ur-Draft 1. What if civilization DOES come to an end right after I yank the most magnificent chapter possible out of the Void, and all electricity is gone? Well, I have my print copy and if and when electricity is restored, I can scan it in again.

I’ll reread the previous printed Ur-Draft session and scrawl over it in preparation for the coming day’s writing. Cleaned up, Ur-Draft 1 eventually becomes Draft 1, which I print as well, because by now I intend to put this novel to bed for a while and I want something to review offline at leisure. And of course the printed Draft 1 is now available for the End of Civilization–a win-win scenario for me, humanity in general, and whatever alien races eventually stumble across my dusty file cabinets.

Later on, Drafts 2-3-4 may just flow together. It’s all just revision and I really stop counting drafts, and printing is more or less wasting paper at this point. I might print the “final second version” in a paper-saving, Times New Roman 10, single-space copy, or I might wait until I finish the entire novel, just so I do have an “approximate final version” in print. I no longer print a final double-spaced, perfect manuscript for submission as I did even a few years ago. There’s no point to that, as submission will be electronic and despite the fact that my novel by this time is absolutely perfect in all respects, if accepted the thing is destined to be edited. In any case, I have those six electronic copies–and any email creates two more!

Mental State

I don’t know if I can accurately compare the mental state of typing my novels to my current electronic methods. It’s tempting to assume that in the past the entire process was more relaxed and more focused, but this may just be mistaken nostalgia that the past was always slower-paced. In fact I think we have always been pressed for time. My high school journal–before PC’s, digital videos, iPhones, tablets, texting and the Internet–records my complaint that life was moving too fast! But I think the main reason I can’t compare methods is that I’ve grown so much as a writer in the past few years. There’s simply not a proper control subject for comparison.

Certainly it’s easy to take on a lot of writing projects and work on them simultaneously. The computer contains all the projects and I can flit from one to another as desired. Yet it could be argued that anyone could do the same with pencil and paper. It’s just that the final result of a submission manuscript will take longer to prepare.

One difference which is subject to proof concerns the amount of typos I’m now able to generate with electronic keyboards. In fact, one reason I’ve mistakenly assumed that my current novels are error-free is that back in the typewriter days they pretty much were error-free. The physical act of typing on a manual typewriter forced me to be a fairly good typist–slow, never properly trained, but detail-oriented and willing to slow down enough to avoid the gut-wrenching moment when you realize a manuscript page is so mangled that, three-quarters of the way in, you angrily rip it out of the carriage and start retyping the whole infinitely-cursed thing. The technical term was a “devil page.”

A few years back I decided to read the rough draft of another of my ancient, unpublishable novels from the eighties, and about three hundred pages in I was struck by a descriptive paragraph that took up three quarters of a page. It was just meandering thoughts that would certainly disappear in a rewrite, but nevertheless I was struck by some well-written psychological insight and found myself rereading that paragraph several times. Then it hit me that there was something else odd about this paragraph of some 250 words: there was not a single typo in it. On the fly, rough draft meandering thoughts, and yet the left brain was sufficiently in control to keep the fingers accurately rendering these free-form ideas. Now I find I can’t type five words on the computer keyboard without squiggly red lines sprouting beneath three of them. And one deleterious result is that some typos remain nestled in the manuscript in perpetuity, as somehow I must still think I’m so detailed-oriented I can’t be making such mistakes–mistakes which somehow become terribly obvious once I see the published eBook. Best typo of this post so far: puibskluehr for publisher. Try making that on a manual typewriter!

Typing also had this psychological lift: in working through your narrative there came the moment when you were forced to admit that you’d typed to within a quarter of an inch of the end of a page. So you had to hold the coming character interaction in mind for a few moments while you yanked out the paper, fed in a new sheet, aligned it properly by temporarily loosening the carriage, numbered it at the top, and continued on your way. Each page was a psychic marker of advancement. Of course you can see your page count mounting in Word, but there’s no corresponding physical flourish.

The accompanying photos show the 1940’s- era Royal I bought in June 1973 and which has processed in the neighborhood of twenty thousand sheets of paper. I did choose this manual typewriter in the expectation than an energy crisis would soon leave this world without electricity–while I of course survived, typing raw soul rough draft novels at some hippie commune, oblivious to the death throes of humanity. I never did warm up to electric typewriters, and I also managed to avoid even touching the plastic surface of any of the myriad “electronic typewriters,” stunted cousins of early PC’s, that appeared during the eighties. They looked simple and even seemed to be geared towards a writer like myself, but I never trusted them. But it was time to acknowledge the future in the form of our new 1989, $2,000 286 PC. Initially freaked by it, I went back to the typewriter for a sixth draft of a problematic novel chapter, but in the dawning celestial light of electronic revision and backup copies, I soon abandoned the Royal except for the occasional essay I still use it for–pages which I immediately scan and OCR.

Revision

The ease of revising a final manuscript or even a published novel seems so obvious now, but it was extremely difficult if not impossible before word processing. If you were in the cycle of mailing and remailing your typed novel manuscript in the face of rejections, and eventually realized you wanted to delete twelve paragraphs in a given chapter, which would amount to losing say three pages, well, there was a way: retype all or most of that chapter and then type at the end of the half-done page 119, “continued on page 123.” But that really did look like crap. You could also add a page 123a if you felt you had something important to say between 123 and 124. But if you realized that two characters were too similar and would really work better combined into one, your typed MS. just became Draft X and you were now sentenced to retype three hundred new pages. And as far as a published work went, there was no incentive on anybody’s part to come out with a second edition of a novel.

Submission, Publishing, Marketing

I’d read books on the publishing industry in the seventies and eighties, but I don’t remember much about the time-consuming methods of publishing before computers. I do recall being in awe of Norman Mailer’s description in Advertisements for Myself about how he felt “as if finally I was learning how to write” on the galley proofs of his third novel, The Deer Park (1955), revising the entire style to fit a new vision of the book. His original publisher’s typesetters had forged that galley proof letter by letter from his typewritten and copyedited manuscript, and the proof was apparently intended to catch occasional typos, not to function as a platform for teaching an established author how to write! (But more power to him!)

In any case, the age of mailed typewritten manuscripts with self-addressed stamped envelopes is over, along with poring through the printed Writer’s Market and Literary Market Place for publishers, standing in line at the post office, dealing with handwritten corrections with proofreader’s marks, long delays, and no changes after certain points. Word count is now just announced by Word, as opposed to estimating it by counting words on a sampling of pages and taking an average. Formerly you could spend hundreds of dollars a year sending manuscripts by mail, but the cost of submitting a novel to a publisher, or self-publishing it, has come down to zero. In addition, everything is moving faster, and we can get near-instantaneous decisions: I once got a rejection four and a half minutes after submission. Well, at least we can move on.

I did experience some of the publishing hassles of the pre-Internet age. As editor of the Wiess Crack at Rice University, I created each issue’s cover and typed the stencils for the Gestetner printing process. I had to carefully calculate the pagination on long editions. For instance on the massive finale, the Two Hundred Page Wiess Crack, the stencil required page 68 on the left and page 133 on the right, so in typing the pages in order I had to keep track of which stencil would need to become available again for its counterpart page, and make sure the stencils were in the correct order for double-sided printing. After printing I collected the immense piles of pages and folded and collated them, often by having parties where I had to carefully recheck the work of my beer-fueled assistants. Then I would “market” the two hundred or so final copies by placing them at the eight different residential colleges. Funny how the free copies were so enthusiastically received and discussed around campus. Funny how the two hundred-pager, which for reasons I can’t remember I had to price at fifty cents, only sold a hundred copies … funny how I realized I hated sitting in the Quadrangle feebly trying to interest passersby into parting with fifty cents, and wound up writing a check for $150.00 to Wiess College and retaining a huge box of useless two hundred page Wiess Cracks.

While marketing may still seem like an endless, lonely, and hopeless chore, consider that there would have been next to zero marketing from the publisher for your typed novel accepted for publication in 1983–and in fact there won’t be marketing from the publisher for your 2013 first novel either. Except for the well-established writers it’s always been do-it-yourself, and now we have all sorts of mostly free tools to accomplish it, like email, Twitter, Facebook, review sites, blogs and web pages. Just as we’ve been told to never, never give up on submitting our works–which is absolutely the only way to go on–we must never, never give up on the marketing.

Does It Make for a Higher Quantity of Novels? Quality?

Has the ease of electronic writing resulted in more novels produced? Common sense would say yes, that not having to type three or four separate three hundred page drafts of one novel means that in the same time period we ought to be able to write three or four novels. And since series fiction is becoming more and more popular, each novel can flow from the previous one. New characters don’t have to be created over a long gestation period, including many pages of notes and musing and entirely new plot backgrounds. The ease and zero cost of submission also frees up resources better spent on writing.

The idea of never getting feedback except from a few friends may have limited pre-Internet authors to a handful of experimental novels. But with the stigma of self-publishing easing, with sales demonstrating that novels that were once slush pile rejections do have merit, it seems that people are more willing to write books they know can be published. And teens and young writers may no longer feel they must wait out some apprentice period in the hope of some vague breakthrough decades down the line.

Then again, who knows how many handwritten or typewritten manuscripts have been composed over the last two hundred years? How many were submitted and rejected, how many were locked in desk drawers? How many wound up in landfills? How many were godawful and how many were okay and how many were inspired? Did an unpublished writer tend to concentrate on fewer novels, maybe just two or four, as compared to a modern writer of a fantasy series who may have ten or fifteen eBooks out there already? Though Kafka did publish some stories during his short life, he was an unpublished novelist with just three novels–as far as we know!

With speed of composition increasing, one may feel freer to experiment and learn by attempting new novels as opposed to working the same one over again and again. If Novel One doesn’t work, try Novel Two. Don’t bother rewriting, just keep moving. Authors may be feeling like TV scriptwriters coming up with an entirely new script every week. Whatever the case, it does seem that the creative energy is ramping up. The main drawback, it appears to me, is that the joy of time-saving might easily turn into raw haste, with a corresponding decline in the quality of our work.

So which is it, new rising creative energy, or half-done work blindly flung into the World Publishing Machine? While it may be tempting to assume that the increasing quantity of eBooks means a corresponding decline in quality, consider that most writers really do want to keep improving. Although we hate to be told that something isn’t working in our novel, we do act on it if we come to feel it’s a valid point. And if we spy that fault ourselves we’re the first to throttle it and laughingly badmouth our error to the world. The revision of any given work can really go on indefinitely. All it takes is the willingness to improve. And I have to think that’s where we’re heading.

So … we are the recipients of numerous gifts. If we weren’t to get them until 2033, what would you being doing right now? Cranking more sheets through the typewriter, I hope!

copyright 2013 by Michael D. Smith

The web is overflowing with writing apps of all shapes and sizes. To find one that’s perfect for you, you have to start with a list of your writing needs and app preferences.

Do you want a vanilla text editor? Feature-rich software for writing novels? A good old word processor?

If it’s the last one you’re looking for, you’ll appreciate our following roundup of the best web-based online word processors currently available. The apps are all free of cost!

1. Microsoft Word Online

Word processing has been synonymous with Microsoft Word forever. Naturally, the first app on our list is Microsoft’s online version of Word. Why pay for Microsoft Office when you have enough reasons to use Office Online?

To use Word Online, all you need is a free Microsoft account. You’ll find the app interface familiar if you have used the desktop version of Word. Going online with Word makes document sharing and working on the go easier. Like the desktop app, the online app also supports real-time collaboration among other features.

Word Online is a lighter version of the desktop client, so you might have to do without a few features such as split views and style creation. Also, you can save files only to the default MS Office file format, DOCX. But you can still view and edit documents in other Office file formats.

Keep in mind that Word Online is just one of several free alternatives to Microsoft Word, and that gives you plenty of options to choose from.

Visit: Microsoft Word Online

2. Google Docs

Google Docs works anywhere and for everyone. Apart from the expected basic tools you need for creating and editing stylish documents, Google Docs gives you many more.

You can start off with beautiful templates, get back to older file versions, and share documents easily. The collaboration tools bring in comments and real-time editing options. And thanks to autosaving, you don’t have to worry about saving your writing manually.

Plus, with Google Docs add-ons, you can sign documents, create charts and mind maps, insert text snippets, and so on.

Google Docs has an edge over Word Online thanks to its cleaner interface, better collaboration tools, and free voice typing.

Visit: Google Docs

3. Zoho Writer

Zoho Writer is sturdy enough to compete with Word Online and Google Docs. When we compared the three apps, Zoho Writer came out on top.

Besides the usual document editing and collaboration tools, the app has separate views for each stage of the writing process. This makes for a minimalist interface, because the tools you need at each stage are the only tools you’ll see.

Zoho lets you save your documents to other cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. But by default, it saves your documents to its own cloud storage, Zoho Docs. For more on what it can do for you, check out our reasons for trying Zoho.

Visit: Zoho Writer

4. Pages for iCloud

If you’re a Mac user, Pages for iCloud is the perfect solution for word processing. It’s the cloud-synced version of Pages, which is part of iWork, Apple’s native office suite.

The good news is that you don’t need a Mac to use Pages for iCloud. If you sign up for an iCloud account, you can use Pages anytime, anywhere.

The app has a clean and easy-to-use setup, so you should have no trouble using it from the get-go. It also supports real-time collaboration, but there’s a catch. The people you’re collaborating with need to have an iCloud account or create one to view and edit documents. If you don’t consider this a dealbreaker, go ahead and get yourself Pages for iCloud.

Visit: Pages for iCloud

5. Quip

With Quip’s structure and functionality, you might find yourself in unfamiliar territory. But the minimalist interface will help you orient yourself quickly.

Start off with one of the in-built templates to save time. If you begin with a blank document, you can still insert useful elements like a checklist, calendar, a Kanban board, and a project tracker. Formatting options show up in place when you select text.

Keep in mind that Quip is free only for personal use (and comes with unlimited documents). For collaboration with a group or a company, you’ll have to pay up.

Visit: Quip

6. Dropbox Paper

You’ll find many compelling reasons to try Dropbox Paper, but the strongest one is probably its tight integration with Dropbox. The beauty of it is that Paper documents don’t count toward your Dropbox storage.

Paper wins another point for Markdown support. Markdown, after all, is now the fastest way to write for the web. Unlimited documents and versions, rich media support, and collaboration tools make Paper even more attractive.

Visit: Dropbox Paper

7. OnlyOffice Document Editor

OnlyOffice is open source, which is not the same as free. It’s one of the lesser-known online word processors, but it’s no less capable than the other apps on our list. Actually, in terms of layout and features, it’s reminiscent of Microsoft Word.

You can upload documents from your computer or bring them in from other cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox. It’s quite handy that you can collaborate in real time with anyone and not just OnlyOffice users.

Visit: Only Office

8. Writer

Word processors typically give you rich text formatting options. That makes Writer, plain-text writing software, a misfit on our list. But it’s too good an online word editor to pass over.

Writer gives you a distraction-free setup, which means no toolbars and icons in sight unless you want them. Throw in autosaving, offline support, unlimited documents, a word counter, and you have a reliable place to store your words.

No rich text support here, but keeping up with the times you have Markdown formatting and preview options. And you can not only download your documents to TXT, PDF, and HTML formats, but also publish them directly to platforms like WordPress and Tumblr.

Feel free to change the look and feel of the editor to suit your tastes.

Visit: Writer

The Best Online Word Processors to Use Anywhere

A free online word processor may not come with the advanced options built into desktop word processing apps. But it can still work out well for you.

Finding a satisfying solution depends on the feature complexity you need. And now you have several great online options to choose from. While you’re exploring them all, you might also want to take a look at a few other browser-based tools for writing and related activities.

Are you considering Google Docs as an offline word processor instead of Word?

Microsoft is moving away from standalone software to a subscription and web-based service.

It is a monthly charge that you could do without paying for basic online word processing.

Why pay for all the programs you will never use by installing Office just to do basic word processing?

Free word processors

There are many free word processor alternatives to Word.

But Google Docs word processing is one of the most popular choices.

Similar to Microsoft Office, it is a suite of office tools.

The biggest difference is that it is absolutely free.

Changing from Microsoft Word to Google Docs

For a content writer, author, or blogger, Docs includes all the writing tools and functions you could ever need in a word processor.

It has all the collaboration tools you need for text documents.

Unlike some free word processors, Docs has a word count so that you can keep track of your word count goals.

You can do editing and share your files in real-time, with a revision history similar to Word Track Changes.

Better still, everything is free, including 15 GB of storage space on Google Drive.

The one small drawback

If you are out of wi-fi range or can’t get connected to the Internet, you can’t access files or edit your documents.

But this has all changed. It is easy now to make any file available when using the Google word processor offline.

You can now use Google Documents and open and edit your files anytime without an Internet connection.

This makes it one of the best offline alternatives to Microsoft Word.

All you need to do is set up offline sync access to use the Google Docs standalone features.

How to set up Google Docs offline

Here is how you can easily change from Microsoft Word to Google Docs and still work offline.

You will probably have most of the necessary setup steps already done.

But I’ll take it step by step, and you can skip the ones you already have in place.

1. To use Docs requires a Google account. If you don’t have one, you will have to sign up for a Google account.

2. Ensure you have the Google Chrome browser installed on your computer and signed into Chrome.

3. You need to use Google Drive. Make sure you install the Google Drive app on your computer.

Now you are ready to set up everything for offline sync Google Docs. It only takes four quick and easy steps.

1. Open Google Docs and click Settings

2. In the settings box, checkmark the box or slide labeled Offline.

You also have the option to check the box for recent templates to show on your home screen.

3. In the pop-up box — Click Add extension.

4. Don’t close this screen. Wait for Google to finish setting up your offline access.

In the bottom left corner, you can check the setup progress.

You have finished the setup of the Sync Offline Chrome Extension.

You can now use your free offline word processor any time you like.

Anytime you need to, you can use either the online version or use your offline files in your Chrome browser.

Note: There are many other Chrome extensions for bloggers and writers.

Using Google Documents offline

To open your application when you are offline, open a new tab or window in Chrome.

Now click the apps tab in the far right corner of the screen and select Docs.

Alternatively, you can type docs.google.com into your browser address bar.

Then you will see this screen.

When you edit offline, your edits and saves will be saved locally in Chrome and then synced to Google Drive the next time to are online.

However, I prefer to use the Google Drive app.

I can find, copy, move, or delete my files on my local drive.

Again, any changes you make will be synced the next time you connect to the Internet.

You can also use Docs in offline mode on your mobile devices.

Refer to Google Help for instructions for installing and setting up your device.

Google Drive and file-saving tips

Google saves all your word processing files to Google Drive.

To access your Google Drive files offline, click on the Google Drive icon from the apps box in Chrome.

If you have already installed the app, you can open the Google Drive app from your local applications folder.

It will then sync Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other files to your local hard drive.

By default, it saves all new documents to the root of your Google Drive. There is no setting to change the default location of new files.

However, there are easy ways to overcome this minor issue.

First, create a new folder in Google Drive. Perhaps be imaginative and name it My Docs.

When you start work on a new file, use the Docs File menu, and select Move To. You can then save your new file in your new folder.

Alternatively, you can open a new document from your Google Drive. Navigate to your new folder before you select New.

Now click Google Docs to create your new document, and it will be saved automatically into your new folder.

Summary

Google word processing with Docs is free and has everything a writer could possibly need in a word processor.

You can also easily work with Microsoft Word files.

It is simple to use, and there is no learning curve at all when moving from Word. The menus are similar and intuitive.

If you want to do more, there are hundreds of add-ons available.

But the biggest and best feature, like most Google products, is that everything you need to write, create, edit, save, and share files is free.

Of course, you will need to work or collaborate with people using Word documents, but this is easy.

You can import and export all the popular file types.

Yes, for authors, you can even export to epub files.

If you are happy with an installed software version of Word, there is no urgent need to change.

But if you have a very old version and thinking about buying a new laptop, older versions of Word may not work.

For example, for Mac users, older versions of Word will not work on High Sierra or later operating systems.

This is when the Google word processor and spreadsheet can be a (free) lifesaver.

But if you are considering the cloud-based Office 365 and paying $99.00 per year (United States price. Possibly more in some countries), then free might very well tempt you.

Especially if you only need a word processor and only occasionally use a spreadsheet.

Related Reading: For Mac users, you always have the alternative of using Apple Pages instead of Word.