I spend a large amount of time in my profession writing and editing[1]. The industry standard is Word, with some scant holdouts on WordPerfect. Word is a behemoth. The UI objectively makes reading and writing text difficult.

Recently, I've switched to using VSCode for my first draft (written in markdown), and then converted via pandoc to .docx. From there, I can reformat to the industry standards.

Why the extra step? Because when you're fighting with the UI for your attention, the ability to focus on the written word takes a backseat. I'll often end up tripping over some auto-correct feature (the autocorrects for copyright and euro are two of my greatest foes) or cryptic formatting issue, and end up getting farther and farther away from my original focus.

Word processing is broken. VSCode in markdown with a few extra plugins for QOL (e.g. spell check) is a nice balance between something raw and plaintext like VIM and an unbearably clunky MS Word. I can't wait for Microsoft to add Clippy 2.0 powered by ChatGPT into Word so that it can finally complete the slow erosion the author in favor of pure computer-generated text.

[1]: Just because I spend most of my time writing and editing for a living doesn't mean I'm great at it. I explicitly disclaim any typos in this comment!