Of course, the downside is that you have to be online to use them, which isn’t always possible. By and large, they get out of the way and let you write. They’re always up-to-date, you don’t have to worry about backing up or even saving, and they don’t burden you with too many features that you’ll never use. There is a certain appeal to the idea of writing tools that are web-based. I thought I’d give an overview of the different places I write because I know that many of my colleagues think that Microsoft Word is the only option, which makes me sad. I’m not nearly as prolific as I’d like to be but I think I do a decent job of getting words onto the page, either here on the blog, journal articles, research proposals, lengthy emails to students, conference presentations, or notes in workshops I attend. It began as a list of text editing software that I thought might be useful for people who are stuck using MS Word but has since grown beyond a simple list. Note: I started writing this post more than a year ago and have regularly pushed it back in the queue.

Focuswriter website