To start with, Write 2 has an uncluttered, alluring interface. A simple toolbar provides access to the most-important settings you'd want in a text tool: font, size, line spacing, character styles, and alignment. A Command button--it sports the actual symbol--at the right edge of the toolbar displays a menu with many less-frequently used settings. A styles button at the left edge of the toolbar lets you choose and configure styles.

Styles, common to text behemoths like Word and Pages, are one of the features that make Write 2 stand out from many other inexpensive text tools. Styles allow you to quickly apply a set of commonly-used character and paragraph settings--for example, a particular font, text size, alignment, and more. You can either click the styles button and choose a style, or you can choose Write 2 Styles (or press Control-Tab) to display a small window that shows what all your configured styles look like.

If you're used to styles in programs such as Microsoft Word, you'll find a big difference here, however. With Word, if you click anywhere in a paragraph, then apply a paragraph style, that style will change the text of the entire paragraph. In Write 2, you must select the complete block of text--say, an entire paragraph--you want to change and then apply the style. Also, once you've applied a style, the Styles window closes; it would be useful to be able to keep that window open until you manually close it.

Curiously absent from the Styles window are list styles, for either bulleted or numbered lists. You can create lists using the Format menu and then create your own styles, but bulleted and numbered lists are common enough that they should have their own styles or commands. Also, you can't edit styles, so if you create a style and later want to modify it, you need to make a new style; this also means that to update any text that had the original style applied, you need to manually apply the new style to all that text. This is not the way styles should work.

Write 2 comes with many advanced features. In addition to styles, it offers a full range of formatting options, such as lists, tables, tables of contents, comments, and a template chooser. (A number of preset templates are available, and you can create your own.) You also have extensive control over text display: You can zoom, display text in pages, use a ruler to set margins and tabs, and much more. Write 2 also supports full-screen mode, although Write 2's full-screen view isn't the best of the writing apps I've seen, as it merely extends the Write 2 window from the top to the bottom of your display, with a linen background on each side.