# Ten Reasons Why TeX is Better than Word

1. TeX math mode is a thing of beauty. Equations come out looking correct. Mathematical expressions in Word are treated as an afterthought. Equation editor is evil.

2. TeX is guaranteed to be bug free. The author, Stanford Professor Donald Knuth, will send you a reward check is you find a bug. The reward is currently \$327.68 (that is, 2^15 cents).

3. TeX is free (as in beer) and free (as in speech).

4. TeX has real comments. Anyone who doesn't comment their code is an ass.

5. TeX provides a full, turing-complete, language. The text produced by your input file can be the result of conditionals (which I use to reuse sections in different documents) or the result of complicated calculations. In the TeXbook, Knuth demonstrates the power of the TeX language by defining the \primes{n} command, which calculates and prints the first n primes (see page 218).

6. There are no TeX "macro" viruses. You can safely receive TeX documents by email and not worry about it reading your OutLook address book and mailing copies of itself to all your friends.

7. TeX has no GUID (Globally Unique Identifier). Word documents are embedded with a code that can be traced back to your computer (the police captued the author of the Melissa virus by tracing his GUID). Big brother Bill is watching!

8. TeX versions are not incompatible. The file format has never changed. I have TeX files from 1989 that work without problem in the latest version of TeX.

9. There is no undo feature in TeX. This is a good thing. No one can ever seen earlier versions of your TeX document by pressing the Undo button.

10. TeX documents are small and lean. What's the smallest Word file on your computer?

Kent Lundberg