All rights reserved.One of the earliest uses for Personal Computers was to replace the typewriter with something more powerful, and that lets you make changes to text on the fly, rather than stamping letters directly onto paper. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Desktop publishers may include only simple word processing features but provide enhanced formatting functions, such as routines for merging text and graphics into complex page layouts. While they have features found in simple word processors, such as search and replace, that make the entry and editing of words and numbers easier, text editors provide only the most primitive facilities for text formatting and printing. Text editors are designed for creating and editing computer programs.

Word processors are distinguished from text editors and desktop publishing systems. To aid in these alterations, the text is displayed as it will appear when printed with indented paragraphs and lists, multiple columns, tables, etc this is called a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) display. In addition, a document's format-type size, line spacing, margins, page length, and the like-usually can be easily altered. As word processors have become more sophisticated, such functions as word counting, spell checking, footnoting, and index generation have been added.

As the text is entered or after it has been retrieved, sections ranging from words and sentences to paragraphs and pages can be moved, copied, deleted, altered, and added to while displayed.

Word processors have various functions that allow a person to revise text without retyping an entire document. Text is most commonly entered using a keyboard similar to a typewriter's, although handwritten input (see pen-based computer) and audio input (as for dictation) devices have been introduced. Word processing, use of a computer program or a dedicated hardware and software package to write, edit, format, and print a document.