Are You Game for a New Kind of Mouse?
For a good part of my elementary school years my reading diet included large portions of Tom Swift, Danny Dunn, and Alvin Fernald, those midcentury envoys of STEM, the boy-inventors. This probably goes a long way toward explaining why I’m always on the lookout for ways to reduce my workload through technology, preferably technology with blinking lights. So when I first came across a mouse designed for computer gaming, the idea of turning it into an editing productivity tool was very alluring. I was surprised, however, that I couldn’t find anything written on the subject—there are plenty of blog posts about gaming mice by video editors and photo editors but apparently none by editors of writing. Now that I’ve reached a level of comfort editing with a gaming mouse, it seemed like an opportune time to pass along what I’ve learned. To be sure, programming one of these mice won’t be for everyone, but I’ve found that mine has provided a modest but noticeable productivity boost.
My Razer Naga Trinity mouse has twenty-one programmable controls: twelve thumb buttons and nine buttons on its top (the wheel can be pressed down and toggled left and right, and rotating it forward and backward can also trigger commands).
What is a Gaming Mouse?
Mice designed for computer gaming have a few common features: very responsive and accurate sensors, ergonomic designs, programmable LED lighting, and typically between five and nineteen programmable buttons. These buttons, designed to trigger keyboard shortcuts, are the key to increased productivity, speeding up casting spells in the dungeons of World of Warcraft or executing Word commands in the dungeon that is the home office. They can also be programmed to control your computer’s media settings (speaker and mic volume, for instance), launch or switch between programs, and carry out a range of other tasks.
Mouse Benefits
While you might initially balk at taking the time to assign commands to all of these buttons and get comfortable using them, there will be a payoff for your effort:
Ease of access to commands—Switching to a gaming mouse has helped me avoid shuffling through the Word Ribbon to find frequently used commands, like Show/Hide, and decreased my need to recall and perform three- and four-finger keyboard shortcuts assigned to my macros. This significantly speeds up repetitive tasks like accepting and rejecting tracked changes and applying styles to long documents.
Improved organization of commands—The grid layout of thumb buttons on many gaming mice allows commands to be organized in logical, spatial arrangements that I’ve found easier to remember than keyboard shortcuts.
Flexibility—Mouse software allows users to set up profiles so that the commands assigned to buttons can be changed en masse. This facilitates using the mouse with different programs or for different tasks in one program. I currently use five profiles, with button assignments tailored to general editing work, manuscript clean up (working with tracked changes), Word’s Read Aloud tool, assigning styles, and Adobe InDesign.
Less hand fatigue—Triggering commands with just my thumb avoids uncomfortable finger gymnastics and is particularly welcome when completing repetitive tasks.
A view of the thumb button settings in the Razer Synapse configuration program. Buttons in this Word Read Aloud profile control starting and stopping the reading, adjusting reading speed and volume, and moving to the previous and next paragraph.
Challenges
Switching to a gaming mouse is not without its downsides:
Learning Curve—Setting up the mouse and getting used to it can take a little time. If you are already using keyboard shortcuts or creating custom menu buttons for macros and looking for another productivity boost, a gaming mouse may be a good fit. If you are not using keyboard shortcuts already, learning them first might be a better intermediate step.
Price—Gaming mice tend to be more expensive, but there are some that are moderately priced. The pricier mice are also not necessarily better suited for editing.
Reliability—I’ve encountered glitches with my Razer mouse every few months that require me to reboot my computer, but these have not been more than minor inconveniences. I expect that the software for Logitech mice is more stable.
Compatibility—Support for Apple computers and left-handed users is limited, but at least a few options for each are available.
Mouse Suggestions
Corsair, Logitech, and Razer are the best-known brands, and each has a range of models with different features and prices. Limiting your search to mice designed for MMO (massively multiplayer online) games will help you find ones with a large number of thumb buttons. Reviews on rtings.com and other sites are a good source of information on mouse ergonomics, reliability, and similar concerns.
Tips
Start small: program a few buttons at a time until you get a sense of which commands are actually useful and where they should be located (since some buttons are easier to reach than others).
Some Word commands don’t have built-in keyboard shortcuts, so they have to be created before they can be assigned to mouse buttons. Track Changes commands are among these, as is the command for pasting unformatted text.
You can program Word keyboard shortcuts to apply styles, insert symbols, and place Building Blocks (AutoText entries) and then assign these to buttons.
In Word, browsers, and some other programs, holding down the Control/Command button lets the wheel on any mouse control zooming instead of scrolling. The wheel on a gaming mouse can also be programmed to trigger other commands. Mine is set to scroll page-by-page in addition to line-by-line. However, there are a number of other options such as changing font size or scrolling through comments.
The programmable lighting built into gaming mice can be handy if you use multiple profiles. For example, I set my mouse to light up in blue when my general editing profile is running and in red when my manuscript cleanup profile is loaded.
