WriteRoom is for those who just want the “room to write” without any distracting palettes, dialog boxes, menus, formatting options—or even a status bar.

As writers, we occasionally like to declutter and focus on the words we’re composing and not the plethora of rich document-formatting options in Word 2008. WriteRoom, from Hog Bay Software (free, www.hogbaysoftware.com) is like a long yoga session on the beach: It’s just a brilliant, distraction-free app. Granted, you won’t be using it to format a garage-sale sign, make an advertising brochure, or even type a novel and track your changes. WriteRoom is essentially a full-screen view that removes all toolbars, palettes, and the status bar. The closest you can get to this state of nothingness in Word 2008 is to work in the Draft layout view, hide all formatting options, and remove the status bar. However, there is no way to hide the menus or run in a full-screen mode where the Dock and the Mac desktop are just a click away, although Microsoft told us it plans to add a full-screen layout view in the next release of Word for Mac.

Five Ways to Go Greener

Creating and sharing text documents necessitates printing on paper—most of the time. Here are five ways you can be a little kinder to our friends of the forest and still easily view, distribute, and access your text docs.

1. Ditch Paper Notes and Use Evernote

If the goal of word processing is to organize your thoughts, Evernote (free, www.evernote.com) goes a step further—it organizes your life. Instead of typing up documents, printing them out, and taking them with you when you get mobile, you can use Evernote to capture all the pieces of your digital existence (digital photos, clip art, text notes, reminders) and then access them from your laptop or iPhone. The program works automatically: If you drag and drop a Word file into the Evernote, for example, you can then access the document file from your iPhone, as long as you have an account (register at evernote.com).

2. Print to PDF

Mac users know that the Print To PDF feature is available from just about every application, including Word 2008. Once you print to PDF, you can email the document or save it to a USB key drive, and then take that text with you anywhere you go and skip printing. In Word, just go to File, then Print, click the PDF button, and choose Save To PDF. Now, copy the PDF to where you will need it.

3. Make An Online Doc

In Word 2008, you can create a Web document just by going to the File menu and selecting Save As Web Page. Name the file, and save the results (which includes images and formatting) in a folder. Now, use an FTP tool such as FileZilla (free, filezilla-project.org) to upload the file to your FTP site to skip printing.

4. Use Fully Recycled Paper

Some paper is only partially recycled (10% or more, it says on the packaging), but you can buy 100% recycled paper at online shops such as ThePaperMillstore.com that is certified as 100% recycled. Yes, it costs three times as much, but think of how you’re benefitting the environment.

5. Print Double-Sided Sheets

One quick way to be more environmentally conscious about your word processing is to always print on both sides of the sheet. Not many printers support this option automatically, but we used an HP Photosmart 7760 printer to do it manually. When you select Print, under Pages, type in the odd numbers of the pages you want to print. For example, with six sheets, print only pages 1, 3, and 5. Click Print. Then take those sheets and load them like you normally would with the printed side facing down or up (depending on the printer you use), and print the even numbers of the document (2, 4, and 6). This may take some getting used to, but eventually it will become second nature.