This blog will continue as a source for informal extra material. As a bonus, it also works as an alternative to the Blackboard learning management site. (Sometimes Blackboard has a bad day.) Just click the thing that looks like three little lines ☰ in the upper right corner, and you have access to our course syllabus (which includes the reading schedule and assignments) as well as the course readings and the “Resources for Writers” directory.
The rumor from my secret sources is that Ashland University will soon make a transition away from Google Docs (and Google Drive, etc.) to a Microsoft product. Here are my early (and very personal) thoughts about the transition. Google Docs was always “word processing lite” Though it is getting better, Google Docs never gave much help with spelling or writing style, and its approach to page formatting was very primitive. Paragraph styles were especially weak. Docs was one of the first programs to automatically save your work, and that was a great advantage, but many other programs do that now. Its file format is unusual and hidden, so one result is that I keep getting files I cannot open from students who don’t really understand how it works. In general, Google Docs is OK if you are not too fussy about your final product, don’t want to learn how to use a better tool, and need something fast, free, and undemanding. I don’t think many businesses would use Google D