I've been working on a paper for my Western Civilization class and trying to adapt to Word 98. Ever since 1988, my father has stuck to using Word 4.0 and since I inherited his first Macintosh, so have I. So after ten years, Dad decided to upgrade.

I have used Word 7.0 before, but only briefly, so I'm still not entirely used to the new features. Like the wavy red line that appears under questionable words. I'm writing a paper that discusses Islam and I imagine a Muslim might find it rather offensive that Qur'an gets underlined. I certainly find it annoying to see my paper plagued by red wriggly worms.

The program's automatic capitalization feature can be useful, although I don't think e e cummings would have been too terribly impressed with it.

However, most annoying of all is this little icon at the very bottom of the document -- when I type, it shows a little pencil madly wagging over the blank pages of a book. And when I stop, the pencil is replaced with an X. The actual function of this feature is lost on me: I think I should know when I'm typing!

Other words Word 98 refuses to acknowledge: eremitical (living as a hermit, especially under religious vows) and coenobitic (referring to a religious order that lives together in a community).

There was a time when I would have thought that coenobitic meant "having lots of pins stuck into your head."