I recently noticed that one of my colleagues, a fellow editor, was reading a document set in 10-point type, with the lines running all the way across his giant 21-inch monitor. He was having a terrible time "tracking" from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, and he was squinting, bending forward in his chair, and generally looking miserable.
"Why don't you shrink the window?" I asked.
"What?" he said.
"Size the window so it's not so wide. You'll be able to read more easily."
"How do I do that?" he asked.
"You know those three little boxes on the upper right? The left one minimizes the window, and the right one closes it."
"Yes."
"The middle one makes it so you can size the window." [As you've noticed, my colleague was using a PC. On a Macintosh, you can just grab the lower right of a window and size to your heart's content.]
"Show me," he said.
I took the mouse and clicked the middle "Restore" button (which looks like two cascading windows). Then I positioned the mouse pointer on the right-hand border of the window, pressed and held the left mouse button, and sized the window to about six inches across.
Next, I clicked View > Zoom and bumped up the Zoom size to 200 percent.
"How's that?" I asked.
"Lots better," he said.
If you usually edit a document with the Word window stretching all the way across your screen, you might want to change your strategy. If you were designing a book, you probably wouldn't allow a line length of more than about 24 picas (four inches). Otherwise, the text would be too hard too read. You won't torture your readers, so why torture yourself?
Another thing: If you work with a wide, wide window, you'll find yourself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling back and forth on a line. If your window is relatively narrow, you can often move to a certain word by scrolling one or two lines down (a keystroke or two) rather than 50 characters across. You may not realize how much time you spend scrolling through text, but it does add up.
Finally, remember that you don't have to look at text in its actual size. Zoom was invented for a reason. Go ahead, make your text so you can read it from six feet away. Amaze your friends. Make your life easier. That's what all these tools are for.
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RESOURCES
In 2001, I wrote a couple of articles about using sample text while designing a book or generally experimenting with Word:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705763701
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1705865120
But if you're tired of lorem ipsum and that quick brown fox, you might be interested in the ungreek.toolbot engine, an online tool that gives you the option of several different source texts from which to generate sample (gibberish) text, including the Rubaiyat, Jane Eyre, the Tao Te Ching, and the Critique of Pure Reason (in German). It's fun to play with, and useful, too:
http://ungreek.toolbot.com/
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