FREE online courses on the Basics of a Computer - WHAT IS SOFTWARE - Word
Processors
One of the software packages often
discussed as a tool for office automation is a word processor. We will now see
some things that a word processor can do.
Put simply, a word processor is a
mechanism to process words and groups of words. It is really a means of putting
words together manipulating them and getting an effective presentable document.
It is like a typewriter. It allows creation of a document and much more-there is
flexibility in reformatting and changing, and in introducing and deleting. One
can have frills and fancies like boldfacing and underlining. What's more, it is
easier to use and features like left and right margin alignment and indentations
are taken care of automatically.
In any office there is a large
volume of typing. These may consist of letters, memos notes or reports. We shall
take the example of a report and see how it evolves.
First the author pens down some
points and outlines the structure of the report. Then starts the elaboration.
Once the flow of though starts, she just keeps writing whatever she thinks of,
hoping to restructure later. On reading what has been written, some portions
seem topsy-turvy. So she tries shuffling the order of material in the report and
submits for typing of the first draft. Then the typist adds his own mistakes.
The report is then corrected; by marking on the typed material itself occurs.
The cycle continues with the typist taking over again.
The word processor can make things
easier by enabling the executive who is writing the report to type it himself,
or also by greatly decreasing the typist's effort in retyping the report since
changes to a report alone can now be typed. In the case of a normal typewriter
being used, the whole report needs to be retyped even if there was one single
error. Common word processors in the market are WORDSTAR which used to be
popular a decade ago, WORDPERFECT which was the next in the line development,
and now, MS-WORD from Microsoft Inc. is the most widely used word processor.
