by Ryan Budiman

Created on: January 26, 2009

Of course everybody knows what a PDF document is. But the question is: "What is so special with it?" If you are reading this article, chances are that you are wondering why you should use the PDF format over any other formats. So in this article I will outline the good stuffs about PDF, and most importantly, why you should use it.

The first extremely important point of PDF is that the formatting of the document WILL NOT CHANGE, whatever you do with it. Yes you heard (or read) me right, all the text, pictures, tables, graphs and everything else in the document will remain the same no matter how you open it (in Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader, and much more). This feature is especially useful in an organization or a company where all documents, like rules or term of service, must be standardized.

The second benefit of using the PDF format is to protect accidental changes to the document (imagine if a company's Term of Service was changed). Different that the normal word-processing program, where we can read and edit at the same time, a number of PDF readers like Adobe Reader can only be used to read and CAN NOT be used to edit any part of the documents. So unless your readers have already bought some PDF editor software (such as Adobe Acrobat, which is quite expensive), you can rest assured knowing that he/she can't change even the tiniest pixel of the document.

And finally, the last benefit is that the PDF format have became the standard of the computing world today. You can distribute any PDF documents and have it read almost everywhere. On the other hand, if you give out an DOCX (the new Microsoft Word 2007 format), or the ODT (OpenOffice) format, people may not be able to open it because they do not have the required applications.

Ok, so now you know what the PDF format is capable of. Unfortunately, creating a PDF document is not as easy as it might sound. Of course you can use free software such as the OpenOffice suite to create one, but in most cases when you want a professional looking document, you'll need to shell out some dollars out of your pocket to purchase a PDF editor. "Why purchasing PDF editor when I already have a free software to create one?" maybe your first thought after reading my last sentence. Well, I'll just simply say that you'll get a more streamlined interface and a huge array of impressive features to deal with almost anything related to creating and editing PDF, which, of course, is just the thing that free programs lacks.

All in all, your decision still counts the most. Whether you'll use a PDF format or not is entirely your decision to make. But if I may recommend, PDF is an excellent format for sharing important documents.

Learn more about this author, Ryan Budiman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.