Ever emailed a document as an attachment back and forth between people, gradually adding edits and suggestions? This can be a very cumbersome way of collaborating, especially if three or four people are involved. You may even end up with several different semi-edited versions, which have to be painstakingly stitched together and reconciled. Email is not a tool for revision.

There’s a better way: collaboratively editing an online document. The easiest way to do this is with Google Docs. Here’s how.

Google Docs is a free online suite of tools: word processor, spreadsheet, drawing tool, and pseudo-PowerPoint. You need to have a Google account, which you’ll already have if you’re a user of Gmail or any of the other Google tools. Once you’re logged in, from any computer with Web access, you can see and edit all your documents (and if your laptop gets stolen you can at least be sure all your writing has been backed up regularly). There’s even a tool, Google Gears, that enables you to work on documents offline and have them synced back to the Google Docs collection when you find wireless again.

The real power of Google Docs is that you can give other people access to selected documents, simply through an email invitation (they don’t need a Google account). Collaborators can just read the document, or you can give them editing permission and they can add comments or make edits.

All your edits are kept as a revision history, rather like Wikipedia’s, so it’s easy to see who wrote what and when, and you can rewind a set of edits to an earlier version. That means nobody has to be cautious about making changes, as every previous draft is preserved.

Google Docs isn’t as powerful as Microsoft Office, and there are still a few important things missing: for example, the only way to add Zotero references is through a simple drag-and-drop of your bibliography, rather than citing as you write. But features are being added all the time: for example, you can store files of any kind in your Google Docs folder, up to 1 GB, rather than email them to yourself, and lots of additional storage is available pretty cheaply.

For more help on getting started with Google Docs, check out this Profhacker article, and of course the Google Docs help pages.