A Comparison of Writing Programs for the Mac
Scrivener | WriteRoom | Word
TextEdit | xPad | Bean
CopyWrite | OpenOffice | Ulysses 2.0
Nisus Writer Express | Mellel | Pagehand
Explanation of items on the feature chart
Scrivener
Website: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Price: $39.95
| Full screen mode |  |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option |  |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
One of my favorite features is the ability to set up word count progress bars for both the current writing session and the overall draft, and open them in a side window whenever you want. You can set up a word goal for each chapter, too, though these progress bars will not show up in full screen mode.
Speaking of word count — it’s remarkably easy to see the number of words in the entire document, in any chapter or section, in multiple chapters (just click the “Edit Scrivenings” button), or in a particular block of text (just select it and right-click; it’ll display at the bottom of the menu that comes up).
It has a beautiful full screen mode:
Moving your mouse to the bottom of the screen brings up a menu bar, from which you can access your notes (along with any pictures you happen to place there), scale the text size, adjust the “paper” width and positioning, and see word count.
You also never need to save your work. It does this automatically every 2 seconds or so if you haven’t typed anything.
WriteRoom
Website: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
Price: $24.95
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
“For people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in a digital world.” Not that using a typewriter in a digital world is bad, or anything, but WriteRoom excels at blocking out distractions without any unnecessary cheese. It’s like TextEdit, but with a full screen mode and word counter.
Entering full screen is as easy as pressing the ESC key. Default formatting is green text on a black background, but you can customize that however you like.
Microsoft Word
Website: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Word2008/
Price: $149.95 (as part of the Office 2008 suite)
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
My main complaint about Word is that it’s big and clunky and has a ridiculous number of features that no one would ever want to use.
It also doesn’t feel well integrated with OS X. For example, the keyboard shortcuts aren’t changed when I switch my keyboard layout from Qwerty to Dvorak. In any other program, I would press command-C to copy something regardless of the keyboard layout I was using; in Word, with the Dvorak keyboard layout, you actually have to press command-J.
TextEdit
Price: Free (pre-installed on every Mac)
Website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2523
It’s free, you already have it, and there’s really no reason why you can’t write bestselling novels with it. I used it as my primary word processor for half a year or so.
The largest problem is the lack of a word counter – though in a way, you may be better off ignoring how many words you’ve got until after you’re done. And you can always download a free tool like Word Counter 2.7 to use alongside it.
xPad
Price: Free
Website: http://getxpad.com
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
Think of this as an upgrade to TextEdit, while still remaining free and very simple. You can easily manage multiple files (if you want to keep each chapter separate, for instance). You can also sort documents into color-coded categories. It has a built-in word counter, and everything is saved automatically whenever you close xPad.
Bean
Price: Free
Website: http://www.bean-osx.com/
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
One of the only free page-based word processors I was able to find, and certainly one of the best. Has a decent, customizable full screen mode.
CopyWrite
Price: $24.99
Website: http://www.bartastechnologies.com/products/copywrite/
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
CopyWrite includes both “snapshots” and a word count progress bar, though from what I could tell, there’s no way to have the progress bar count only chapters and not your notes. It also doesn’t let you format sections of text individually – there’s a global setting to change the style of all text.
The full screen feature has a completely white background, rather than a white column bordered by black (as Scrivener has) or just light text on black (like WriteRoom).
It does organize notes well: by default there are 7 categories (Unfiled, Chapters, Characters, Places, Elements, Ideas, and Premise) and you can add more.
OpenOffice
Price: Free
Website: http://www.openoffice.org
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
OpenOffice might be called the free equivalent of Word, complete with spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and a whole lot of other things you won’t ever use.
The largest issue I had with it was that the word count isn’t displayed while you’re writing – you have to go to the “Tools” menu and select “Word Count” to see it, and you have to close the window before you can start typing again.
Still, it is free, so there’s no harm in forming your own opinion.
Ulysses 2.0
Price: €44.99
Website: http://www.the-soulmen.com/ulysses/
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
Uses a tabbed interface (sort of like a web browser) that I like – I can see how it’d be very useful to switch between various windows if you need to write things in several parts of your novel, or check something in a previous chapter.
In addition to the regular full-screen mode, there’s a separate “console mode” that lets you type on a black background very like WriteRoom.
But I got fustrated with a lot of things – I couldn’t figure out how to make my text italic, though there has to be a way of doing it – and it doesn’t have much to make it stand out over the other options that are available.
Nisus Writer Express
Price: $45.00
Website: http://nisus.com/Express/
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
Like Word, Nisus Writer Express lets you view your document in either page view or “draft view” (i.e. continuous text). Features include templates, columns, text highlighting, hyphenation, full screen mode, footnotes, section endnotes, document endnotes, and user-defined styles.
Mellel
Price:$49 ($35 for students)
Website: http://www.redlers.com/
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
A page-based word processor. I liked how styles are handled, after I got the hang of them; it’s also extremely easy to organize your document into sections, and it has the best footnote features I’ve seen in any program.
Pagehand
Price: $39.95
Website: http://pagehand.com/
| Full screen mode | |
| Converts dashes | |
| Correctly formats quotes following dashes | |
| Progress bar | |
| Separate chapters and sections | |
| Paged layout option | |
| Word counter | |
| Global find-and-replace | |
| Separate place to put notes | |
| Footnotes | |
| Snapshots | |
| Outlining features | |
Another page-based program with basic page layout features (like columns and styles).
Explanation of items on the feature chart
Converts dashes – two small dashes (--) will automatically change to a single larger one (–) as you type.
Correctly formats quotes following dashes – when you type a line of dialogue with a dash at the end, the closing quotation mark will be formatted in the right direction. (In other words, you won’t see “No–“ he said.)
Separate chapters and sections – means that there is some way to separate chapters and sections and navigate to them easily. This includes having multiple documents within a program, or being able to jump to different chapters in a single longer document.
Snapshots – after clicking a button to preserve a copy of a document, you can continue to make changes but will always be able to go back and look at the older version.
Most of the others should be self-explanatory, but if you’d like clarification, please feel free to leave a comment!
Nice article – I certainly hadn’t heard of most of those before – but you gotta wonder whether it’s really necessary to look beyond Scrivener. :)
Also, I’m a little surprised at the number of bestselling authors I could name who do use Microsoft Word, and have never really thought of using anything else.