Formatting
The usability of a word processor is often based a great deal on how easily it allows the user to manipulate the typography of a document. The way the text in a document looks can often influence a reader and thus is an essential component of document creation. Formatting a document involves specifying such things as page layout, margins, character attributes and heading styles.
Annotation
When preparing a paper document writers often like to make notes to themselves in the margins about how an idea might be expanded or how a sentence might be altered. Also, editors of material like to project their ideas about certain sections of a text to the writer without actually altering the original material. Through the annotation component provided in both MS Word and WordPerfect, this versatile commenting capability is achieved.
In MS Word the user can insert an annotation at the place in the text where the cursor is currently located. When the user is in the viewing mode in which annotations are visible, an annotation flag such as "[P1]" appears embedded in the sentence and a text box appears at the bottom of the screen with a list of comments and the flags they are associated with. The comment can be textual or the reviewer can create a short audio file which can be played back later. The reviewer can also identify themselves via a dropbox provided at the top of the annotation textbox.
In WordPerfect the annotation method is similar, allowing a reviewer to identify themselves as well as store the date and time with each comment, but the annotation is connected to a line of text rather than embedded within the text. This method does not target the annotation specifically to an area in the text (as compared to MS Word), but the annotation is more easily noticed as an icon identifying it appears in the margin rather than embedded in a line of text as an ambiguous flag.
Page Layout
Both word processors provide an easy to use toolbar and menu options for indenting text, justifying it to the left or right of the page and centering it. As well, both provide a page layout component for altering the four margins of the page, communicating the effects of the margin changes through a small diagram of a page with text lines changing in size as the margin specifications are changed.
Character Attributes/Styles
A major benefit of using a word processor rather than written text or typewriters is the ability to change the character attributes such as the font, font style, size, color, effects (bold, underline) and character spacing. These features are appropriately developed in both MS Word and WP, providing an extensive list of fonts and sizes for text. The MS Word font formatting facility is slightly better in that it shows a demonstration of various fonts on the actual contents of the document making it more relevant to the user, whereas WP simply shows the effects on the sentence "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog" (though this sentence presents all letters of the alphabet). One useful feature that WordPerfect possesses is the QuickFormat which gives users the ability to select a certain paragraph and then have its character attributes mapped to various other formats, making alterations much more efficient.
Both MS Word and WordPerfect provide features for marking specific lines of text as titles, headings, subheadings, and so forth so that changing the character attributes in one such heading applies the change to all associated headings. This is very useful when writing reports or professional business documents since formatting titles nicely can organize a document well and break up the information into aesthetically pleasing sections. MS Word excels in this area by providing many templates of desirable heading formats in its Style Gallery, demonstrating appropriate styles for a multitude of documents such as memos, letters, reports and resumes which can be applied to the user's current document.
Table of Contents
Both applications provide techniques for quick creation of indexes and table of contents, figures or authorities. The user can invoke this by identifying the headings or captions and then simply getting the word processor to create the desired index/table. WordPerfect gives a bit of extra functionality by allowing users to specify the depth of a table of contents, etc.