A few days ago, after fielding yet another question about how to do something in Word from another writer, I realized that I could write a focused, easy to understand class for writers using Word.

I’m a technical writer during the day with many, many years of Word use and I also have a background in instructional design (I write and present classes, usually on software usage).

I floated the idea briefly on Twitter and got some interest so I’m trying to judge both real interest and gather ideas of what issues writers are having so I can make sure they are addressed.

I’d like to cover Word 2003, 2007 and Mac Word (latest). I won’t cover OpenOffice or other programs because I don’t use them and they have some decent documentation of their own. I can talk about the differences between Word and Works as well.

I want to cover the following basic list of topics:

• The lay of the land in the Word User Interface
• Formatting a manuscript from scratch
• Changing existing formatting
• Creating and using templates
• Using track changes and comments
• Document file formats and what they mean
• When things go wrong and what to do
• Lots and lots of Q&A

For handouts, I’d like to give:

• Class packet with all the info in the class
• Downloadable templates for common manuscript formats

So my question to anyone reading this is what have I missed? What problems have you had that you wish you knew how to fix? What questions do you want answered?

Also, what version of Word are you using and is there interest in a class like this?

Let me know!