Principles of Distraction-Free Writing Apps
Recently, distraction-free writing and apps which promise a distraction free writing environment are more and more preferred over traditional word processors.
At MonsterWriter we spend a considerable amount of time thinking about distraction in a writing process and what features a writing application should have in order to provide the very best productivity. This article gives you an overview of what we think causes distraction and how distraction-free writing applications - especially MonsterWriter - mitigate sources of distraction.
Don't Think About Page Layout While Writing
Traditional word processor applications force you to think about the layout of your text all the time. Meaning, they make you think how your text looks like when it is printed. This is because they display the text in a page layout while you are writing it. So, you see where a page ends and where a page starts. This results in the constant effort of trying to fix the layout of the text while composing it.
This gets frustrating when you have to insert new content at the beginning or in the middle of your writing. Once something has been inserted somewhere in the middle of the document the layout of the following pages is usually broken. Images are on different pages now, headings are placed as the last element of a page. Widow and orphan text lines are placed all over the document.
This disaster not only happens when you insert or change content somewhere in the middle but also when you decide to change the page settings. Another page size, other page margins, other font sizes, and so on.
Writing applications try to solve this problem for a long time. The common trend is to move away from the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) idea and use concepts like Markdown, LaTeX, or WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean). You can read more about why we think WYSIWYM is the right way to go in section [section: Don't Think About Formatting While Writing] or about the trade-of of Markup, LaTeX in section [section: Don't Read Cryptic Markups Within the Text].
Don't Think About Formatting While Writing
When you write content it is not only the layout that is unimportant at this moment but also in which font-size and color the content is formatted in. At some point, you have to care about such things but definitely not while you are writing.
A big distraction source we observed is the fact that people are using spaces and newlines to format/layout their documents. For example, they insert new lines between headings and paragraphs because they want a certain visual distance between them. Another pitfall is the usage of spaces to indent the first line of a paragraph. Once you have started formatting your document like this, you will be doomed to fix all those paddings over and over.
Modern text processors provide features for solving that kind of things but they are hidden and the majority of users just does not know about them.
What you see is what you mean applications just do not allow you to insert newlines and spaces randomly (you are invited to try it out in MonsterWriter). Just because it does not make sense from a semantic perspective.
This seems like a hard restriction at the first glance but it takes away the temptation to bother with unimportant things. And the best part, without those manual layout workarounds automatic typesetting applications can take care of bringing your content into a page format.
Don't Read Cryptic Markups Within the Text
LaTeX and especially Markdown has a huge fan base. Anyway, we think it is unintuitive to work on content that looks like the source code of a computer program. We admit, markdown isn't complicated to learn but when I read my parts of my content over and over again, I do not want to see cryptic markups in it.
Writing without the need to grab the mouse all the Time
One of the benefits, why Markdown is so successful is the fact that can do all necessary formatting with the keyboard. There is no need to move your hand to the mouse all the time.
We think you can have the best of both worlds, using markups and not seeing them. This way they become just a shortcut. For example in MonsterWriteryou can use the mouse to transform a paragraph section into a heading one, two, .. section or you can simply insert "# ", "## ", "### " as the first characters in the paragraph. Try it out, it provides an incredible workflow.
An Uncluttered User Interface
This is what most of the existing tools are about when it comes to distraction-free writing. Showing as few controls as possible. Indeed, we think it's a good idea.
Showing You the Word Count All the Time
Really? What is the main goal of your text? Hitting a word count or transporting a message to the reader? Focus on the second and spend your energy to phrase the message. Do not spend time blowing up a text artificially to hit a word count.
Don't spend time creating complicated things manually
Especially when it comes to writing more complex documents like a bachelor thesis you need a table of content, captions for tables, images, .. cross-references, references to other sources, a bibliography, footnotes, heading numbering, formulas, code listings, and so on. Check out how easy this is using our tool.
