Writing Apps on a Budget – WPS Office
By: P. J. Mayhair
The second installment in our series “Writing Apps on a Budget” will explore WPS Office.
WPS Office has been around for decades under several names, so if it sounds like a new-comer to the word processing world, it is far from it. However, what is new, is that it’s a free download. Originally, WPS Office (under a different name) was only available after payment (like MS Word). Recently, they offered a free basic version that has nearly every function that the full paid version has, and small advertisements.
Very similar to Word (in fact, it was created as a direct MS Word competitor) many of the features you come to expect from MS Word are available on WPS Office. The layout is clean, and easy to customize. Some users may not like the default icon size in some areas, as they can be small and hard to see, however these icons are for selections that aren’t used by the average writer.
A feature that is especially interesting and unique among all the other programs in this series is the ability to have tabbed documents. Much like an internet browser, you can have multiple documents open on the same program screen. The user can switch between the open documents with ease using the tabs at the top. This works well if you use one document per chapter, or if you have your outline or scenes in a separate document from your draft.
WPS Office is available on Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. You can upload documents to Google Cloud storage from the program which allows for working across multiple platforms.
This guest post is by P. J. Mayhair. He writes horror and suspense novels and short stories. He enjoys jelly beans, bourbon, and talking about all things writing. You can see his blog at PJMayhair.com and follow him on Facebook.
