You will do a lot of writing in college, far more than you did in high school, and you need a tool that will work well for you. All the material below is my own opinion—none of it official Ashland University policy. It’s just one writer hoping to help other writers.
I have been heavily involved in computer use since about 1980, first as a typesetter, then running my own desktop publishing business, then teaching college students. I was here before Windows. I was here before DOS. After learning more than a dozen different word processing programs and nearly that many operating systems, I feel that I know a bit about using a computer.
I absolutely do not care which software program you use. If you have an ancient Macintosh Classic and you type documents on AppleWorks, fine. You just have to figure out how to save as a Word file and transfer to a modern system. In fact, if you are typing on a 1951 Smith-Corona mechanical typewriter, let me know, and we can probably work something out.
You want something that will help you, not get in your way. You need a word processor that is cooperative and a file storage system that will help you find things efficiently. If you have a poor Internet connection, you have fewer choices. (I would recommend Apple Pages or LibreOffice, below, for people with Internet problems.)
You probably used this one in high school, and even though it is not the official Ashland program, many people around here understand it. If you have a Gmail address (available free), you have Google Docs.
Advantages: It is the program you used in high school, so you probably understand it. The UI (User Interface) is simple and straightforward, and it does not seem to change much. It does not take up space on your computer and any computer that can get to the Internet can use it. Because it is “device independent,” (which means it does not care what kind of computer you are using) and it stores everything on its own cloud server, you can start a file on your Apple computer, open it up on a school Windows computer, then go back to your Apple to finish.
Disadvantages: The spelling/grammar checker is weak (though it is getting better), and the paragraph styles are not too helpful. You need to go through an extra step (easy) to download files to send to others or to upload to Blackboard. It is an online program, so if your Internet quits, you are out of luck. If you like to save large amounts of music and/or video files to Google Drive, you may run out of space (and then pay for more).
Here is the link for the tutorial for Google Docs.
This program comes free with your Apple computer.
Advantages: This is a top-quality product that works beautifully on your Apple. You can set it to save files directly to iCloud or to your own computer. When you update the software on your Apple, you automatically get the newest version of Pages. If you have an Apple iPhone, you can use it to work on Pages files. I love the way the predictive spelling checker works.
Disadvantages: It is only for Apple. The UI makes sense, but it is quite different from anything else. The Pages files are large and unusual, so you cannot simply send them to someone or upload them to Blackboard; you must go through the “Export” menu.
Here is the link for the tutorial for Apple Pages.
This is an oddball that you have never heard of. It is a free download, and I have been using a version of it for years.
Advantages: It lives on your computer, and versions are available for unusual or old machines. You can use LibreOffice if you have no Internet connection whatsoever. Surprisingly, it is the most powerful of the options I have listed here; it can do several things that others cannot. Its normal odt file structure is an industry standard, so you can send files or upload them to Blackboard without converting anything.
Disadvantages: The UI is somewhat cluttered. Unlike the others, it comes with no academic templates (though I have put a couple together for you).
Here is the link for the tutorial for LibreOffice.
Advantages: It’s the official one, so if you have trouble, the campus IT department should be able to help. Like Google Docs, it is “device independent” and saves its files in its own online cloud server. The spelling, grammar, and style checking are top-quality.
Disadvantages: Because it is an online program, you are out of business if your Internet connection goes down. The User Interface (UI) is difficult, the file storage system incomprehensible, and the program is very slow. At least twice in the last year, everything related to Microsoft crashed for an entire day. Microsoft has a bad habit—especially with online products—of making radical, unexpected changes in the way they look and work, so if you open Word and it does not look like anything you have ever seen before, the problem is probably not with you or your computer. The online version of Microsoft Word is not really a full professional product. It lacks some features and hides many others. The templates for MLA and APA papers are just wrong in several ways, and there is no way to fix them.
Microsoft Word is now deeply buried in Microsoft Copilot, so typing a college paper is quite a challenge—you must dig deeply to find the program and then dig much deeper to find the MLA template (which is a challenging piece of work in itself). Copilot was not written for a student who wants to write academic papers; it was obviously written for an administrative assistant in a corporate office who must crank out meeting summaries and cute “Away from the office” email messages for executives who are on vacation.
Microsoft Copilot is now a fully Artificial Intelligence (AI) product, and from the first click, it is working hard, very hard, to persuade you to let it write for you. That’s not just contrary to the purpose of this course; that is a violation of Ashland University rules. Microsoft Copilot is working hard to get you to violate the Ashland University Academic Integrity Policy and perhaps get suspended from the University.
This is why I am not giving any further instructions for using Microsoft Copilot.
In addition to the programs I have mentioned above, they suggest these possibilities for a downloaded full office suite. All are free and I have heard good things about them, but I have not tried them.
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.
Revised 6/19/25 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.