I use a lot of RTF (Rich Text Format) files in Apple’s “TextEdit” application because they allow bold, italic and underlined text, as well as cyrillic text encodings, and they load a lot quicker than MS Word documents. I recently found an AppleScript for OSX that creates a new text file in the current window, and modified it to create an RTF file instead.
To install it, just download the compiled script and place it in /Applications or wherever you like, then drag the application icon to a Finder window’s toolbar. Click on the icon and you’ll be prompted for a filename. Enjoy!