Why Word is a bad choice for academic writing

For years I’ve been telling everyone who would listen that MS-Word may sometimes be useful for short notes or for making a “Back in 5 minutes” sign to stick on your door, but if you want to write a serious document like an academic paper, a book or a thesis, then you should use a serious tool such as LaTeX. For those who are not yet convinced, Ben Klemens has a nice article entitled “Why Word is a terrible program”. It’s well worth reading.

Update: here’s another useful article on Why LaTeX is superior to Office