word processor essay in english

Success Skills

Advanced word-processing skills.

Even people who have been using word processors for years often don’t know about some of the advanced tips below.

Hanging Indents

MLA and APA bibliography pages use a special type of indent, called a “hanging indent.”  Where a normal paragraph indents the first line but not any others, a hanging indent paragraph DOESN’T indent the first line, but DOES indent all the others.  Luckily, it’s very easy to have your word processor do the hard work of this type of formatting for you, as this video demonstrates.

Bibliography Pages

Speaking of bibliographies (or Works Cited pages, or References pages), did you know that many word processors have ways to help you create those quickly?

Alphabetizing Bibliographies (and other Lists)

One more bibliography tip…if you create your citation list as you use sources, you’ll need to put these in alphabetical order at the end.  An easy way to do that is to use the Sort feature in your word processor.  This video demonstrates that in Word 2016.

Inserting Pictures

Many college projects will require you to include visuals in your essays.  The following video addresses how to add an image and then how to get the text around it to behave properly afterwards.

Change Default Settings

If the first thing you do each time you open a new document, is change your font size or style, as well as readjust your margins, then you probably will save time by changing the default settings so it starts just the way you like it. (This video is for Word 2013)

Free Alternatives to Word

Word is the most common word processor, but it’s expensive, especially if it didn’t come with the computer you bought.  Here are some free options to explore as an alternative.

• Office Online .  You’ll need to register with an account, but can then access your saved files from any internet-connected device.
• OpenOffice .  This is software you download on your computer, so you don’t have to be online to use it.
• LibreOffice . Similar to OpenOffice, you download this software directly to your computer.
• Google Drive . Connected to a Gmail / Google personal account, this flexible tool lets you access your saved files from any internet-connected device.  You can also download files to work on offline, and they will automatically sync when you go online again.

Candela Citations

• Introductory Text: Advanced Word-Processing Skills. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Creating a Hanging Indent in Microsoft Word 2016. Authored by : Tina Shanahan. Located at : https://youtu.be/yCStrefoSCU . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Change Default Formatting: Microsoft Word 2013. Authored by : Greg Stager. Located at : https://youtu.be/M61X8x8_Fp8 . License : CC BY: Attribution
• How to Create a Bibliography in Word 2016. Authored by : HowTech. Located at : https://youtu.be/EaTg2jOdbLE . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Word 2016: Pictures and Text Wrapping. Authored by : GCFLearnFree.org. Located at : https://youtu.be/jh9IQuu8J_s . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Word 2016 for Beginners Part 24: How to Sort a List in Microsoft Word 2016. Authored by : Simon Sez IT. Located at : https://youtu.be/MQZahOwhMa0 . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

What is a Word Processor-Types, Features, Importance

• Muneeb Tariq
• November 3, 2024

A word processor is a software application that allows you to create, edit, and format text documents. You can use it for various tasks, such as writing essays, reports, and resumes. Popular examples of word processors include Microsoft Word and Google Docs. These tools make it easy to organize your thoughts and present them.

History of Word Processors

1. format text effectively, 2. layout your page, 3. inserting graphics and multimedia, 4. tools for collaboration, types of word processors, why are word processors important in education, how can word processors help in academic work, ai and machine learning integration, role of word processors in remote learning, what is the difference between a word processor and a text editor, can i use a word processor offline, are word processors necessary for students.

The history of word processors dates back to the 1960s. Early versions were simple and required a lot of manual input. Here’s a brief timeline:

• 1960s: The first word processing software appeared. They were mainly used in business settings and were very basic.
• 1970s: The introduction of floppy disks allowed users to save their documents electronically, making it easier to edit and retrieve work.
• 1980s: WordStar and WordPerfect became popular. These programs offered more features, like spell check and formatting options.
• 1990s to Present: Microsoft Word emerged as a leader in word processing software. Online word processors like Google Docs introduced cloud storage and real-time collaboration.

Core Features of Word Processors

The following are the features of Word Processors:

Formatting text is a crucial skill when using a word processor. You can change the font style, size, and color to make your document visually appealing. Here are some basic formatting options:

• Fonts: Choose from various fonts to fit your document’s style.
• Text Size: Adjust the size to make headings stand out or to fit more text on a page.
• Styles: Use bold, italics, and underline to emphasize important points.

The layout of your page affects how readers view your document. Set the margins and spacing to make your content easy to read. Here are some layout tips:

• Margins: Keep standard margins for a professional look.
• Spacing: Use line spacing to improve readability.
• Indentation: Indent paragraphs to signal new ideas.

Word processors allow you to add more than just text. You can enhance your documents by inserting:

• Images: Visuals can help illustrate your points.
• Tables: Use tables to organize data.
• Charts: Present statistics or comparisons visually.

Many word processors have collaboration features. You can share documents with classmates, allowing them to add comments or make edits. Here’s how to collaborate effectively:

• Comments: Use the comment feature to provide feedback on specific parts of the document.
• Track Changes: Enable this feature to see edits made by others.
• Version History: Check previous versions of your document to revert if necessary.

There are various types of word processors to choose from. Each has its features and benefits:

• Desktop Word Processors: These are installed on personal computers and offer powerful features for comprehensive document creation. Examples include Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer .
• Online Word Processors: Accessible via web browsers, these applications allow for easy sharing and collaboration. Google Docs and Microsoft Word Online are popular choices.
• Mobile Word Processors: Designed for smartphones and tablets, these apps enable writing on the go. Examples include the Google Docs app and Microsoft Word app.
• Specialized Word Processors: Some software is tailored for specific tasks, such as LaTeX for academic writing, which is particularly useful for creating complex documents with extensive formatting.

Word processors are essential in education. They help students write documents more efficiently. With features like spell check and formatting tools, you can produce professional-looking papers. These tools also support collaboration, making it easy to work with classmates on group projects.

Word processors are integral to various academic tasks, including:

• Essay Writing: Students utilize word processors to organize thoughts and structure arguments effectively. The ability to easily edit and rearrange content streamlines the writing process.
• Research Papers: Word processors assist students in formatting citations and references, ensuring adherence to academic standards.
• Creating Presentations: While typically associated with slide-based software, word processors can be used to prepare written materials that accompany oral presentations, emphasizing key points.
• Resumes and Cover Letters: Students can craft professional documents for job applications. They allow them to present their qualifications clearly and effectively.

What Are the Future Trends in Word Processing?

Looking ahead, several trends are shaping the future of word processors:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how we use word processors. Features like predictive text and grammar suggestions make writing easier. These tools help you focus on your ideas instead of getting bogged down by mistakes.

As education shifts online, word processors become even more critical. They facilitate collaboration and document sharing among students and teachers. Being proficient in using these tools can enhance your learning experience.

A word processor includes advanced formatting tools, while a text editor focuses on simple text entry without extensive formatting options.

Yes, many desktop word processors can be used offline. However, online word processors typically require an internet connection for full functionality.

Yes, word processors are essential for students. They facilitate writing, editing, and formatting assignments. They make the learning process more efficient.

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One of his last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near a bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell. His face is horribly emaciated, almost skeletal. But if he pitied himself in those first difficult hours—because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will had let him down--it’s not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes. Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.

(Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996)

Downloading the image into a Word file and then pairing it with some of Krakauer’s verbal descriptions of the starving McCandless provide excellent pedagogical means of teaching assorted critical approaches to literature—that is, an instructor can pose questions to students that reveal biographical, cultural, and/or formalist reader predispositions toward the interpretation of literature, questions such as these:

Why did Krakauer decide to include this picture (rather than the one of McCandless waving at the camera) and how does it complement/contrast with the verbal description he fashions when characterizing McCandless in the final stages of the young man’s life, starving to death in the wilderness that he had so idealized?

Does the photographic self-depiction of McCandless mesh with Krakauer’s imagined verbal depiction of the young man’s final days, thoughts, and emotions? What matters about any variance in the two depictions—is one less “true” than the other? What does any difference reveal about Krakauer’s so-called journalistic objectivity?

Such questions provide an excellent means to start a discussion of any text, as students can be asked to “read” the photo in relation to any number of philosophical/theoretical approaches (Naturalism, Realism, or Romanticism, for examples) and contrast these ideals with the verbal textual representations before writing about them.

Undertaking these interpretive exercises in class, students are introduced to core concepts of visual literacy and reader-response theory and must address core questions:

Do these graphic depictions enrich readers’ (difficult) pleasure by accompanying verbal text, or simply entertain and reproduce cultural stereotypes?

Do graphic additions rob readers’ imaginations, which might otherwise conjure revelatory images of an altogether different kind?

Option 3: Using Microsoft's Comment Tool to Annotate Texts

As much literature can be found online (Amazon.com publishes lengthy excerpts of even the most recent novels in online advertisements), an excellent means of teaching students to read closely and annotate thoughtfully (not just circle and underline) is to copy and paste a portion of any text (poetry, prose, whatever) into a Microsoft Word read-only document, have students make personal copies of the document in class, annotate the excerpt, and then project students’ annotated texts for discussions of the text, either in the computer classroom or in the seminar room via the laptop.

Sample Exercise: Annotating Text with Microsoft Word

Note: The collaborative nature and in-class locale of this exercise is important, as students can easily and readily access databases from the English Library Web page ( http://www.lib.washington.edu /subject/English/) to provide biographical, etymological, and socio-historical glosses to a variety of terms and allusions in the text. All enrich class discussion and broaden students’ horizons about critical approaches to literary interpretation.

On Thursday we’ll be spending the first half hour of class annotating an excerpt of “The Lottery,” using various databases available to us via the UW Library—specifically, Literature Resource Center (to find biographical information about Jackson), Oxford Reference Online, and English Language Dictionaries.

The goal is not to find critical articles that provide a story interpretation for you, but for you yourself to build an interpretation of Jackson’s story by stopping at any word, phrase, or allusion that she chooses to include. Do this remembering that Jackson started with a blank page and was fastidious about the words she used to craft characterizations, setting, mood, conflict, etc.—always remember that she had choices, that she had designs on you as a reader to think and feel a certain way about the cast of characters and how things play out during the course of the plot. Words are her essential means of gaining your attention, especially through language connotations, denotations, and allusions.

When you find a word, also use the thesaurus feature in Word (in the Tool bar above, select Tools > Language > Thesaurus) to consider how Jackson might have chosen other words that would have attracted/distracted your attention to different character attributes and themes.

So in the first half hour tomorrow, I will have you comb the first part of this text, its exposition, highlighting words and phrases in which to insert your annotations, your commentary.

So in the first half hour tomorrow, I will have you comb the first part of this text, its exposition, highlighting words and phrases in which to insert your annotations, your commentary.  To do this:

Highlight the word or phrase in Jackson’s story that you are researching

Find the Tool Bar at the top of the page and left click on Insert

Drop the cursor down to Comment, selecting it

Keyboard your comment into the pop-up box that appears, briefly noting the information you researched and why you find it useful 

Option 4: Using Audio to Facilitate Textual Annotation

(Definition and sample assignment, Laurie George)

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Gustave Flaubert

Although instructors think most readily of using DVD clips in classrooms, not as frequently do we consider audio without the visual—any number of sites online feature audio clips of poetry, short stories, speeches, and novels read by the authors:

In the following exercise, students are asked in the computer classroom to listen to a writer’s oral rendition of their text as the students read the written rendition onscreen, and then respond in writing to their audiovisual reading of authorial voice.

Some background: because it is important in audio sessions to have students focused on listening rather than distracted by other considerations, students arrive at the listening session (such as the one described below) well versed in the differences between indirect and direct modes of literary address, as well as generic differences between memoirs and fiction.

Students are also well aware of the basic plot line of the selected text featured: in the case below, a 41-year-old man describes his class meetings of Alliance Francaise in Paris, a class he enrolled in willingly to learn French despite his fears that the pedagogical model would be less than collaboratively constructive. His fears are realized; his instructor proves to be extraordinarily abusive towards all the students in the class, whatever their race, gender, or ethnicity: discipline and punish is one way of encapsulating the thematic core of this David Sedaris essay.

Plot in mind, students are asked to listen to the text in the computer lab as they read the print text from the screens in front of them, and to insert comments (from the Insert column of the shortcut bar on Microsoft Word) as they read and listen. The exercise works best if the clip is replayed at least once, and better twice.

Option 5: Using Word's Readability Tool to Evaluate Texts

Microsoft Word also includes a tool for checking a text’s readability, whether that “readability” concerns a student essay, a critical essay, a wall graffiti note, a blog entry, a presidential address, a short story, a novel, etc.

This tool is therefore enormously useful for checking the stylistic profile of any professional- or lay-authored text, including the fictional styles of characters and personae penned from whatever actual or virtual source.

Sample Exercise: Examining Texts with Word's Readability Tool

Any document saved into Microsoft Word can be scanned for certain “readability statistics” by configuring Word in the following ways:

Only after a text goes through the keyed-in process of running Spell Check does this program display information about the readability of the document—but it does, finally, and this is what it displays:

The most useful features of the tool relate to a student’s editing concerns for their own writing or a student’s need to analyze the stylistic features of a professional writer. Both goals apply to the three headings of “Counts,” “Averages,” and “Readability” in the following ways:

• In a student draft, does the text include enough words—or too many—slightly fitted or stuffed into paragraphs that match the writer’s rhetorical goals for a given reading audience?
• In the professional text, does the variance of word averages indicate a kind of authorial style—for example, the minimalism of a Raymond Carver story? Alternatively, does a high count of words in a page of dialogue reveal verbosity in a certain set of characterizations?  How many paragraphs are included in this passage—if there were more or fewer, would the emotional and logical effect on the viewer be different? Would the difference add to credibility in whatever fashion?
• If a character in a fictional work is speaking a piece labeled “readable” in this manner, how reliably literate is this character?
• If the character or the author writes in extremely brief or extensively long sentences, what does the simplicity or complexity of the style reveal about the character, or the author’s style or the author’s values?
• What about the character’s or author’s passivity or activity in sentence construction? What does this stylistic attribute reveal about the character or author—is the writer hiding culpability behind passive voice? Is the author implying thematically that a character is unwilling to take agency, the passive voice indicative of that resistance?
• If conventional criteria measure this writing excerpt as “low” in the conventional reading level of “Flesch-Kinkaid” grade levels, then what does this gradation imply about the readers’ values or the evaluators’ values concerning literacy?

Option 6: Brainstorming and Freewriting

Brainstorming and freewriting often work best when they are made a regular part of the class routine. Word makes it easy to do this. Some instructors start off every day in the computer classroom with a ten-to-fifteen minute freewrite or with an electronic journal response. Alternatively, students could be given time in class to brainstorm before a paper is due. Unlike a handwritten freewrite, both the student and the instructor can share the end product. Students can print out a copy or save a copy to disk, and instructors can review the class responses from their offices.

Sample Exercise: Working Toward an Interpretative Thesis

During this class period, you will be working toward a strong, interpretive thesis based on the evidence and ideas you’ve already collected about your topic. The following steps are designed to help you get started in the thesis process; feel free to skip or alter them—whatever will help you most. Have the people near you read what you have written and advise you on it; ask questions, and offer suggestions. There’s no need to be silent. Hold the mouse over highlighted text to see instructions on how to do various tasks. Remember to SAVE OFTEN.

Review your journal entry from last night and, in the space below, type in your “proto-thesis,” or a summary of what you think you want to write about. If you need a few sentences, that’s okay; this statement is just a place to get you started. 

II. Argument Brainstorm

As we’ve discussed in class, every argument breaks down into a number of sub-arguments—a series of subordinate ideas that are the building blocks of the larger argument. In the space below, begin to think about how your topic could be broken down. Start by looking at your topic statement above and listing off all the ideas that seem related to it. Or, if that doesn’t work, try listing a series of questions that you think you would need to answer in a paper about that topic. List these ideas, sub-topics, and questions in the left-hand column of the chart. In the column to the right, list two or three pieces of evidence that might be useful in developing a paragraph about each sub-topic. Try, whenever possible, to be very specific about your evidence. Don’t worry about whether or not you will use each one of these—at this point you are just generating ideas. If you run out of space, insert more rows in the table.

III. Speculations

Now, think carefully about the lists above. Generate a series of claims related to your topic that could serve as subtopics to organize and to develop your argument. Your goal here is to construct claims; write out complete sentences, as if these were going to be the topic sentences of your paragraphs. Use the top box to brainstorm freely, and come up with as many ideas as possible. Once you generate your list, cut and paste different claims into the bottom boxes, and experiment with organizing your ideas in different ways.

IV. Thesis Statements

Now that you have worked though your ideas and listed out both your evidence and possible organizational strategies, try to come up with two or three possible thesis statements. Look carefully at the lists you have made; you may have several more thesis options that you originally thought.

V. Peer Commentary

Review the worksheet, especially sections III and IV, and then comment on the thesis statements above. Consider whether or not the thesis seems broader than the ideas expressed in the brainstorming section. Does it seem arguable? How clear is it? Does it oversimplify? Is it too complex? Be sure to write your name in the gray box above your comments.

If you want to work with these reviews at home, be sure to print a copy of this file or save a copy to disk.

Integrated Option:

Additional instructions for how to add more rows to tables, print and save can be added using the comment function. When students move the mouse to the highlighted text, these instructions appear in a comment window.

Option 7: Peer Reviews and Self Assessments

Word gives you a number of options for peer-reviews and for student self-assessment. Students can read ‘hard-copies’ of each other’s papers, then write a peer review, assessing the strengths and weakness of the argument. Or they can comment on the paper electronically, making a copy of their partner’s file and inserting comments into the document itself. Word provides a number of features to help make their inserted comments stand out. Students can use the Comment feature or the Highlight feature, described below, or simply place all their comments in bold or in capital letters.

Sample Exercise: On-Screen Peer Editing

(Laura Kuske) Today you are going to workshop your peer’s paper and provide advice on how he or she could strengthen the argument. This time, your review will focus especially on organization, evidence, and paragraph structure. You will be working in pairs and using the prompts below to guide your responses to your partner’s paper. Before you begin, you will need to follow these initial instructions.

Getting Started

Step 1: Exchange file names with your partner, and open his or her document. Double-click on the “Word” icon to open Microsoft Word. Select Open from the File menu, and choose your partner’s file from the directory list.

Step 2: Make a personal copy of your partner’s file. Since you will be making changes to the file, you want to make sure you are working from a COPY, not the original. To do this, Select Save As from the File menu, and rename the file as directed by your instructor.

Step 3: Tell the computer who you are. The person you are reviewing will want to know who said what; you need to tell the computer who you are so it can attribute your comments to you. To do this, select Options from the Tool menu. From the window that pops up, select User Information. Type in your name and initials at the prompt.

Step 4: Begin your review. To insert comments, highlight the text you are commenting on and select Comments from the Insert menu. Type in your suggestions in the window that appears at the bottom of the screen. To add end comments, simply scroll to the end of the document, click the mouse at the bottom of the text, and begin typing. Use the following questions as your guide, and be sure to save your work periodically.

The Peer Review

1. Read the paper over once, fairly quickly. Do not make any comments. You are merely trying to formulate a general impression of the argument as a whole. At the end of the paper, describe your initial response to the argument. Without referring back to the essay, see if you can summarize the main points. What does the paper seem to argue? How persuasive did you find the argument? Thinking back, can you remember the logic of the argument, or is it all a blur? Was there anything about the paper that grabbed your attention? Were there claims that you strongly disagreed with or found insufficiently supported?

2. Reread the paper slowly and carefully, and comment on the introductory paragraph. First, find the thesis, and underline it. Next, insert a comment evaluating its effectiveness; consider both the myths and purposes of a thesis that we discussed in class last week.

3. Next, take a closer look at each body paragraph, and identify two that you feel might benefit from further revision. Considering all the structural issues we discussed today, think carefully about how the paragraph is put together:

Is there a topic sentence near the beginning of the paragraph? If so, highlight it, and comment on how well it fulfils its role. Does it present a concept or a detail from the story? Does it connect to the thesis?

Does it have a clear relationship to the ideas developed in the preceding paragraph? How well does it capture the main idea of the paragraph? If there is no clear topic sentence, comment on what you think the topic of the paragraph might be.

Look at the body of the paragraph. Insert your comment(s). Consider what type and how much evidence is used; is there enough? Is there too much evidence? Are claims being developed over the course of the paragraph? Does the writer do more than merely summarize from the story? Does he or she present you with specific details from the text? Does the writer explain what the evidence proves and WHY?

4. Insert a comment at the end of the paragraph considering the paragraph’s conclusion. Does the paragraph offer one? Does its conclusion offer any new perspective on the evidence and on how it relates to or develops the ideas expressed in both the topic sentence and in the thesis? Does the conclusion seem forced or obvious? Does it seem unrelated to the evidence offered? Do you see how the conclusion can be derived from the evidence offered?

Printing Your Comments

When you and your partner have finished commenting, you can print out a copy of the paper with all the comments. From the File menu, select Print. To select this option, you must use the menu; do not use the print icon. In the window that pops up, click on Options. Make sure that there is a check-mark next to Comments in the list that appears. If the check is not there, simply click the mouse in the box to insert the check-mark. Now, click OK to return to the print menu. Click OK again to send your file to the printer.

Sample Exercise: Self-Assessment of Organization in Film Analysis

(E.L. George)

In this revision of your essay, I'd like you to assess your own draft (before a classmate moves to your workstation to respond):

1. Make a copy of your essay and name it movie#OR

2. In the copy, above the title, use 14 pt. bold faced font to state your thesis (even if it appears again in the introductory paragraph). Then number the paragraphs in boldface in the space following each paragraph (create space as you need to).

3. Reread each paragraph, and in the space you've created, type out the main claim of the paragraph (if you use topic sentences in your paragraph, you would rewrite the topic sentence).

Examine the list, and ask yourself the series of questions noted in The St. Martin's Handbook.

What organizations strategies are used? spatial? chronological? logical? [compare & contrast?]

Are they used effectively and consistently?

Do the main points clearly relate to the thesis and to one another? Are any of them irrelevant [disunifying the essay]?

Can you identify any confusing leaps from point to point?

Do you need to provide additional or stronger transitions?

Can you identify clear links [either through a logical shift of ideas or obvious transitions or repeated words ] between paragraphs and ideas? Do any others need to be added?

Have any important points [about the likenesses and differences of movie x on corporate life vs. movie y] been left out? (63)

Sample Exercise: Self-Assessments Using Auto-Summary

(Laura Kuske)

Paper Title:

Today, instead of reviewing a partner's paper, you are going to do an extended assessment of your own writing… with a little help from Microsoft Word. Part of the point of today's exercise is to expand our discussion of paragraph structure and argumentative logic to include transitions -- which means that we are going to begin focusing on how to clearly express the connections BETWEEN ideas and between paragraphs. In order to begin to see why transitions are important, we are going to spend the first part of class today working on creating an abstract of our arguments. Ideally, an abstract can be formed by collecting the main ideas of an argument into a single paragraph. But for an abstract to MAKE SENSE, these ideas have to be expressed in ways that make the relationships between ideas clear, while still accurately reflecting the specific content of the paragraphs. That can be quite a challenge, and the attempt can often reveal quite a bit about the places where the connections are not yet clear enough in the larger argument.

What we do today may seem a little confusing at first, because you are going to move back and forth between two Word files -- this worksheet and your own paper-- and we are going to try out a few 'advanced' Word commands. If you have problems or get lost along the way, just raise your hand and I'll help get you back on track.

1. Begin by opening the file containing your draft. Do not close this worksheet before opening your paper. You will need to have BOTH files open to do this exercise. To move between the two files, click on the Windows menu and select to file you want to look at.

2. Once your paper file is open, select AutoSummarize from the Tools menu. AutoSummary will review your paper, collect what it takes to be your main ideas, and write an abstract of your paper. From the window that appears, select the option to hide everything but the summary, and set the percentage at 10%. Click OK. Word will create an abstract of your paper. Although the rest of your paper will disappear, it is still there. You may need to delete a few extra paragraph returns to format the summary. It should appear as a single paragraph. Creating/Critiquing/Revising your Computer Generated Abstract

1. Read carefully through the summary Word created. Does it seem accurate? Does the abstract read smoothly or is it choppy, abrupt or confusing? Pretend, for a moment, that this was not computer generated, but something written by you to be submitted (for instance) on the class Web page. Critique the abstract in the space below. Would you submit this abstract as representative of your paper and your writing? Why or why not? How would you revise it? Comments:

2. Now, return to your paper, and increase the percentage of the text Word uses to create the AutoSummary to 15%. Reread the summary. Keep playing with the percentage until you have what you consider to be the best 'raw material' for an abstract of your paper. You will be editing and revising this, don't worry if you have to include extra material to get in all the ideas you want to include. Cut and paste the text from your abstract here. Percentage: Abstract:

3. You are going to revise this material in a moment, but first, take a look at exactly what parts of your paper the computer selected to create your abstract. To do this, return to your paper file and click OK to clear away the summary and return to the argument itself. Select AutoSummarize again, but this time, select the option to hightlight key points and click OK. Set the percentage control window to the same percentage you used to create your abstract. Scroll through your paper and observe what parts of your paragraphs--and how much of the paragraphs-- the computer is using. Do the computer's selections reflect the topic sentence/conclusion pattern you might expect? How much 'other' material did you have to include to get a complete outline of your argument? Did the computer skip over some of your topic sentences and conclusions? Why? Comment on the patterns you notice and reflect on what they might suggest.  Comments/Observations:

Now cut and paste the raw material above into the box below and revise it into a concise and accurate abstract for your paper. Your abstract should be no more than 12-15 sentences (approximately 1 to 2 sentences per paragraph). It should provide a reader with a quick summary of all your main points, and the ideas should 'flow' together smoothly. It should not read like a list. It should read like an overview of an argument. Revised Abstract:

When you are done, print out a copy of this page (only this page.), and a copy of your paper. You will be giving a copy of your paper and your abstract to a peer partner to review.

Option 8: Writing Workshops

Word offers a range of powerful tools to help workshop writing, especially when used in conjunction with the overhead projector. Word allows you to highlight text in different colors, track editorial changes made to a document, or move text around in order to try out a variety of organizational or stylistic strategies.

Sample Exercise: Group Highlighting

(Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges)

Students participated in the following writing workshop during the class preceding the final draft due date. The essay assignment asked students to analyze a single scene from one of three early horror films, focusing on the narrative and cinematic elements at play in the scene. Before the workshop, I created a document featuring excerpts from students’ papers as well as links to digitized video clips of the scenes. The excerpts represented the three main problems students had with their drafts: their paragraphs tended to be diffuse discussing several technical elements that served different functions; paragraphs often had little discernible connection to the thesis; and formal film terminology was absent or misused.

As they viewed the projected essay excerpts, the class analyzed weaknesses and developed strategies for revision. During the workshop, students asked to view the linked clips to confirm details or to point out cinematic elements the writer had missed. I served as recorder, using Word’s highlighting function to mark passages as directed by the students. Writers whose paragraphs we analyzed could copy their marked passages and paste them into another document; a number of writers did so during the workshop, taking notes on their peers’ comments, then saving the marked passage once the class had completed the review.

The following example demonstrates how students marked the excerpts:

Scene:  Dracula; scene in which Dracula and Van Helsing Meet

Writer’s Thesis:  The scene separates Dracula and Van Helsing from the other characters as it pits the two against one another in a struggle between evil and good.

Explanation of Highlighting:  The yellow highlighting marks a passage connected with the first part of the thesis--that technical elements of the scene separate Dracula and Van Helsing from the other characters. Although the passage suggests that a pattern of alternating close-ups distinguishes these two characters from other characters in the scene, the class thought that the idea needed further explication, perhaps in another paragraph. The green highlighting indicates an idea that the class thought detracted from the analysis in the rest of the paragraph. The blue highlighting marks a passage the class viewed as connected to the thesis. Students suggested that the writer make this passage the focus of the paragraph. They also suggested that the writer connect the editing of the close-ups and the issue of knowledge. Van Helsing's growing knowledge is conveyed through editing, and it is this knowledge that pits him against Dracula.

Sample 2: Style Imposters

(Karen Kupka)

Read through the following passages carefully, using Word’s highlighter to note the distinctive features of the writer’s style. After you think you’ve grasped the stylistic differences between the two passages, try impersonating both authors. Pretend that you are Hemingway, and rewrite the excerpt from Carter’s  The Bloody Chamber  in your own inimitable style. When you’re done with that, transform yourself into Carter and elaborate on  A Moveable Feast .

Option 9: Reverse Outlines

Word also provides a range of outlining features that allow students to take a paper and convert it into an outline. An outline can help students to see the organizational structure of their papers in a “bare bones” format. Word also allows you to easily break down a student’s paper paragraph by paragraph and create a reverse outline exercise. This type of reverse outline allows students to visualize their paper’s organization as it is—and as they want it to be.

Sample Exercise: Reverse Outline

Step 1: Read the following paper. As you finish each paragraph, type out what you think the most important idea (in other words, the thesis) of the paragraph is. What is the general claim of the paragraph? Be sure to write out the thesis in a single, grammatically correct sentence.

Despite appearances, I believe that Imogene & Marya's friendship is not the most important thing in Joyce Carol Oates's story, "Theft." No character in the story has as important a role as Marya, but her friendship with Imogene does not play the most important role in Marya's life. Therefore that friendship cannot occupy the most important part of the story. While this friendship concerned Marya a lot, she eventually discovered that other things--her work and especially her writing--played a much more important role in her life. Marya gave up her friendship with Imogene because it took up too much time, time in which she could do more important things like writing. Marya saw writing as the most important thing in her life because writing overcame the destructive effects of time, while friendship just passed the time.

THESIS OF 1st PARAGRAPH:

It's hard to say exactly why Marya wanted to be Imogene's friends, but whatever the reason was, it wasn't the most important thing in Marya's life. Marya of course didn't initiate the friendship. Imogene pursued her. Marya never planned to be Imogene's friend; it happened to her like an accident. But Marya had some curiosity towards Imogene. Before Imogene ever approached her, Marya found herself staring "at the blonde girl in her political science class" who wore "a handsome camel's hair coat" and "an engagement ring with a large square-cut diamond" (476). This attraction, however, didn't seem to have any reason, or at least any particular importance. Marya throughout the story stared at a lot of people, but doesn't end up friends with any of them, except Imogene. Again I would say the friendship depended more on Imogene than Marya.

THESIS OF 2nd PARAGRAPH:

Though her relation with Imogene confused her for a while, Marya came to realize that work held more importance for her. "It occurred to her with a chilling certitude that every moment not consciously devoted to her work was an error, a blunder" (487). Marya worried constantly whether she did enough work. This didn't mean her work at the library. If anything, she regretted the time her job took from her. What worried her was schoolwork. She wanted to work hard at it. She even enjoyed it. But fear motivated her as well. She thought nothing mattered as much as success, even her own health. She felt that only "one's personal accomplishment" (493) mattered in life. In the story two kinds of accomplishment mean the most to Marya: school and writing. As I will explain later, because of the problem time created in her life, writing proves more important than anything else.

THESIS OF 3rd PARAGRAPH:

What created this preference from writing over schoolwork was her attitude toward time. The idea of time kind of scared her. In fact, Marya got quite hung up on the idea of time. "Time is the element in which we exist...We are either borne along by it, or drowned in it" (487). Here Marya reveals her fear that time would destroy her. But she thought that time could help her as well, if she did things right & worked hard. She asked herself, "Wasn't time the precious element that would carry her along to her salvation" (481)? Marya obsessed over the destructive effects of time. Her thoughts about the photographs of the old athletes express her feelings:

Another rowing team. Hopeful young men, standing so straight and tall; their costumes slightly comical; their haircuts bizarre. An air of team spirit, hearty optimism, doom (481).

Marya thinks of doom when she sees this picture because the picture reminds her that those men eventually died. I think Marya expresses this sense of doom in other places in the story as well, like when Phyllis's mother and sister came to clean out Phyllis's room: "And then the waters close over your head.--This phrase ran through Marya's head repeatedly" (491). Marya is thinking her about the doom that overcame Phyllis: doom comes like a flood, then washes you away into oblivion. Marya's obsession over this phrase is a sign that she considered this more than just Phyllis's problem. It was a personal problem for Marya too, because the source of the problem was time itself, something Marya couldn't escape. I believe Marya believes that "doom" was another word for "time."

THESIS OF 4th PARAGRAPH:

The first problem Marya experiences with the problem of time comes from not having enough of it, so she gets rid of Imogene in order to have more time for work. I think the writing was on the wall from the very beginning of their relationship. In the coffee house with Imogene's friends, when Marya thought she "should have been elsewhere" (481), that other place was back at her room or in the library working. She always felt that "she hadn't...time for 'wasting' on people" (478). In her journal she writes the following words on the subject of friendship: "She hadn't time...she hadn't energy for something so...ephemeral" (483). This last quote points out what really bothered Marya about friendship, that it isn't permanent. Eventually she thought conversations with anyone, whether Imogene or not, wasted her time.

THESIS OF 5th PARAGRAPH:

This sense of impending doom scares Marya, but she has a game plan. Just after she thinks the thoughts about the rowing team, she decides "she really should leave...she shouldn't be here" (481), because she feels this same doom closing in on her, and feels that only through work can she escape it. And the work that could save her is writing. Without writing, she's doomed to destruction like the rowers. But if she could become a writer, she'd have an indestructible existence. We know she believes this when she says "a writer's authentic self...lay in his writing and not his life; it was the landscape of the imagination that endured, that was really real" (474). By becoming a writer she too could have an "authentic self" that "endured." People would read her books long after she'd gone. People would know her "authentic self" long after the end of her "life." So what work she puts into writing is work toward eternity, while what work she puts into friendship is, as she says of sex, "as good a way as any of passing the time" (499). But Marya doesn't want to just pass the time. Marya's quotation of Thoreau expressed her need to avoid such frivolity: "How can anyone kill time without injuring Eternity?" (487)

Step 2: Retype each thesis statement below: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) What you have here is a reverse outline of the paper. It is called "reverse" because the outline was written after the paper was written. Based on this reverse outline, evaluate the argument of the paper by answering the following questions:

Was there a clear claim for the whole paper stated in the first paragraph?

How did the subsequent subordinate claims support the main claim? In other words, based on your reverse outline, describe how the supporting points that each paragraph brought out supported the main claim for the paper?

Do you get a sense of the progression in the subordinate claims? In other words, can you see how the supporting points follow one from the other?

Step 3: Pick out one paragraph from the paper to examine in further detail.

How has the writer signaled the transition from the previous paragraph to this one?

Evaluate the development & support of the paragraph. How did the details presented support the general claim of this paragraph?

How are the ideas within the paragraph related to each other? In other words, how has the writer tried to make the paragraph cohere, to make it flow together?

Has the writer considered possible objections to the general claim of the paragraph? How?

Option 10: Editing

Although the program has limitations, Word’s grammar and spell-check tools can assist students with the editing process. Moreover, because students can easily change their prose in Word, you can create exercises that allow them to explore a variety of options for word choice, syntax, and source integration.

Sample Exercise: Using Quotations

(Alison Tracy)

Make yourself a copy of this file called “quotex.doc” and be sure you are working in your own file. Go ahead and type your answers right into the prompts below.

The following exercise will give you some further practice in using quotations smoothly, effectively, and correctly in your own writing. Select a quote from the following passage to complete each sentence. First, read through the examples carefully.

I am not merely asserting that “We are not all alike.” Those who aren’t aware of that would not likely read this essay or anything like it. What I am saying is that generalizations from within are every bit as fragmenting as scrutiny from without. From my boyhood I have read and heard all manner of statistical facts and figures about black people. Really, they’ve told me very little about who I am, let alone who we are. We’re too big for that, and as individuals too complex. I’m not so sure we should ever find ourselves in the position of saying this general thing or that general thing about black people, expecting our words to discover the essence of our “true self-consciousness,” for when we do, we will be doing no more than talking about black people, talking around them, never quite getting it right, never pinning us down, never quite turning sound into substance, and never—much like the way sharks course around caged divers—ever able to sink our teeth into flesh. Reginald McKnight, p. 180

Try to use the quotes in several different ways throughout the exercise:

a) Use a signal phrase followed by a comma:

McKnight says,

McKnight claims,

b) Use your own  complete sentence, then a colon, followed by the quotation  (which must also be a complete sentence.) Notice that I’ve also left out a brief phrase by inserting the ellipses.

McKnight thinks that negative messages from his own black community are as bad as racist attitudes among other races: “generalizations from within are . . . as fragmenting as scrutiny from without” (180).

Work the quotation right into your own sentence  (and here I’ve used brackets to indicate a slight change in wording in his sentence):

He thinks that people who want to pin down “black people” as one thing or the other are like “sharks cours[ing] around caged divers” (180).

You need to be sure you are using the correct methods to add the quote to your sentence. Each sentence can be complete several ways; be sure that whatever way you choose, you use the correct signals and punctuation. You may add words or alter the prompt slightly.

1. McKnight doesn’t want us to think that he is just restating a cliché; he claims,

2. McKnight wants to show that statements made by other black people can be just as harmful as those made by white people:

3. He claims that all of the “facts and figures” he has heard don’t do much to explain his culture to him

4. McKnight wants us to see “black people” not just as a group, but

5. Trying to pin down “blackness” to a certain set of qualities doesn’t do justice to the complicated natures of black individuals

6. McKnight uses the image of sharks biting to explain how vicious people can be about each other

7. He doesn’t think words can ever explain our true selves

8. He doesn’t want us to continue the mistakes of the past

Option 11: Grading

Students can use Word to develop and modify evaluation rubrics. Creating such rubrics allows students to consider their audience’s expectations, and it gives them an active role in the grading process.

Sample Exercise: Grading Rubric

(Alison Mandaville)

Rationale:  In this exercise students use the  Insert Table  feature of Word to develop a grading rubric for essays which they will then apply to peer essays and, finally, to their own writing. Students work in groups at the computers to develop the rubric and then can either work in groups or alone to use the rubric to grade each other’s work. The nice thing about doing this on the computer is that students can then print out a copy which looks official and which all group members can read. In addition, the rubrics can be used later to project on the overhead for whole class discussion/modification. My students’ rubrics are fairly general, but you may also have students make rubrics that are very specific to a particular assignment/topic.

Spending the time making their own chart, agreeing on definitions and criteria for each score and then applying this rubric to their own work is a great way to both examine closely the elements of a good essay and begin to be able to systematically evaluate their own writing. For 104-5 students in particular, I think this exercise is useful in helpful empower students to evaluate their own work and begin to establish some control over their ability to understand and improve their grades. The group aspect reinforces all those good group skills and makes what could be a fairly dry exercise much more fun. There can be some tension around grading each other, so I retain final authority in assigning grades, but find that their grading gets more and more effective the more they do it until sometimes I have few changes to make.

The Exercise:  The easiest way to create a table in Word is to use the “Insert Table” icon on the pictorial toolbar. First place you cursor in your document where you want the table to be. Then Left click on the icon that looks like a mini-table with a blue band at the top--the one without an Excel symbol on it. Hold down the mouse as you draw the size of your chart. When your chart is the size you want, release the mouse button, and the chart will drop in where your cursor was.

Students work together (one student creates the table and types in information OR everyone makes their own after agreeing on criteria) to label the chart (terms to define on one axis and scores on the other) and define the criteria for scoring an essay. The terms you ask them to define will depend on what you’ve been working on—you may ask them only to do one or two to start, adding another criteria with each assignment.

Students work to evaluate a draft of each other’s essays based on their own rubrics.

Large group discussion following the group exercise can help fill out individual groups’ charts and pinpoint areas of fuzziness re: writing criteria.

NOTE:  Resist the impulse to create the chart for the students because first, it’s good to know how to make a chart, and second, the terms you ask them to define, and the scale you ask them to use will become much more firmly entrenched if you have them set it all up.

Option 12: Reflection

At the end of an assignment sequence, you can ask create a short reflection exercise that allows students to reflect upon both their essay and the usefulness of activities in the sequence. Students can type their responses into the document and save the file to an evaluation folder.

Sample Exercise: Reflecting on the Writing Process

1. How did the process of writing this essay help you to develop as a cinema studies thinker and writer? Did comparing and contrasting two films give you any insight into patterns and shifts in the horror genre?

2. Which elements of your first draft (thesis paragraph, use of evidence, organization, etc.) did you revise most extensively? How have those revisions made the essay stronger?

3. If you could still revise your essay, what would you revise? Why?

4. Which aspects of the writing process for this essay did you find easy? Which did you find difficult? Why?

5. Please offer a grade for each of your peer reviewers, using the following scale and explaining to what extent each reviewer's comments helped you to revise.

Plus:  An extremely useful evaluation Check:  A mostly useful evaluation Minus:  Not very useful overall (perhaps not complete)

6. How did the process of reviewing other writers' work influence your revision process?

7. Was the flexibility of the peer critiquing method (paper, Word) useful? Do you have any suggestions for organizing the peer critique process for Essay #3?

8. Did issues discussed in the conference and my comments on your paper or Web site help you to revise your work? Why or why not?

9. Which activities and homework (responses, brainstorming sheet, discussion of lecture arguments and responses, in-class clip analyses and comparison presentation, essay workshop) did you find most and least helpful in writing your first draft? Why?

10. What types of activities and homework would you like to do in preparation for our next paper, an analytical essay that incorporates research?

Useful Advanced Features

Word is a powerful program with more features than it is possible to cover in a manual of this scope. However, the following table highlights some of the features available through Word 2007that are most useful to a writing classroom. More extensive information on how to use these features can be found in the on-line Word  Help  menu and in the sample exercises in this manual that make use of these features.

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The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

As Microsoft Word turns 40, we look at the role the software has played in four decades of language and communication evolution.

For 40 years there’s been an invisible hand guiding the way many of us write, work, and communicate. Its influence has been pervasive, yet its impact has been subtle to the extent that you’ve likely never noticed. That invisible hand is Microsoft Word.

At its launch in October 1983 , this influential software was known as Multi-Tool Word, and not long after, changed to Microsoft Word for Dos . Back then, there were more than 300 word processing programs across multiple platforms. People of a certain age will remember WordStar or WordPerfect, yet in a little over a decade Word eclipsed these rivals. By 1994, Microsoft says it had claimed a 90% share of the word-processing market , making it one of the most successful, well-known software products in history.

While establishing how many people use Word is tricky, recent filings show there are 1.4 billion Windows devices in use each month , and more than 90% of the Fortune 500 use the software. If only a third of those people used Word, it would still be more than the population of North America.

This context is important because it helps to explain why, and how, Word has had such influence on our lives.

Ironically, given its ubiquity, Word has rarely been a pioneer when it comes to features. As mentioned, it was far from the first word processor. It’s often credited with introducing grammar tools, despite the fact these were developed decades earlier . And the idea behind "track changes" – where you can see edits to a document – wasn’t a Microsoft invention .

Yet Word’s superpower was using smart, simple design choices to make such features accessible to a global audience, not just techies. Its "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) design philosophy is now commonplace in software and on the internet. Word introduced line breaks, along with bold and italic fonts on screen. It revolutionised typeset-quality printing, as well as the use of templates. And it was in these templates that Word’s early impact on communication emerged.

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"Word templates led people to use the same formatting in communications, and eventually, this has become instantiated as a norm," says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies human-computer interaction. If you work in finance, there's a specific way reports are expected to be laid out. Letters follow a set pattern, memos are largely formatted in the same way. "Users know where to find information in these standardised documents; they don’t need to spend time trying to find what they need."

If you take this idea of professional conformity a step further, Word has also been significant in helping establish English as the global language of business . While it would be an overstatement to say Word alone made English the dominant language , as a US firm, Microsoft's mother-tongue is American-English. When this is coupled with Word’s ubiquity, it at least reinforces this dominance.

"Word primarily operates in English," says Noël Wolf, a linguistic expert at the language learning platform Babbel. "As businesses become increasingly global, the widespread use of Word in professional and technical fields has led to the borrowing of English terms and structures, which contribute to the trend of linguistic homogenisation."

Word's spell-checker and grammar features have become subtle arbiters of language, too. Although seemingly trivial, these tools "promote a sense of consistency and correctness", says Wolf, and this uniformity comes at the cost of writing diversity.  "Writers, when prompted by the software's automated norms, might unintentionally forsake their unique voices and expressions."

This becomes even more invasive when you look at the role and impact of autocorrect and predictive text. Today, when typing on Word, the software can automatically correct your spelling, and make suggestions for what to write next. These suggestions aren't (yet) based on your personal writing style and tone – they're rule-based. The suggestions you see will be the same as millions of others. Again, this may feel innocuous but it's another example of how Word standardises language by loosely guiding everyone down the same path. 

"Without auto-completion, a person might check a thesaurus when searching for a word," says Mark. "With auto-completion, it can lead to more rote use of language and may not encourage original writing ."

For those trying to learn a language , or even get better at their native tongue, features such as autocorrect have been found to have a negative impact on student's writing abilities and spelling skills. There is also some evidence that, in adults at least, rather than making users lazy spellers, autocorrect features can reduce exposure to misspellings and so avoid the disruptive impact this can have on our memory for how a word should be spelt .

Clippy: the assistant that users loved to hate

Another cultural legacy of Microsoft Word is  a character called Clippy . Around the turn of the century, this animated paperclip would pop up in the Office programs offering help with drafting. Clippy's badgering tone and lack of common sense made it widely unpopular , so it was eventually discontinued. However, Clippy lives on in pop culture as  an internet meme , where its passive-aggressive advice is used for humour. In academic circles, it is also widely cited as an example of a failure in technological pedagogy . For those missing Clippy, however, the character has made a reappearance in Microsoft Teams .

Wolf adds that by promoting uniformity in written communication, grammar and spelling features in word processors such as Word "enforce established language norms".

"Word may not recognise vocabulary or grammar conventions that are part of local dialects , and will try to correct them," she says. This can effectively marginalise regional nuance, she adds. On an individual scale, these impacts may seem minimal but they become magnified when repeated on a software that has millions, if not billions of users. 

Such tools play a broader role in the evolution of language more generally, too. Because Word defaults to US-English, so too do its spellchecking features. Write a word ending in "-ise" and it will suggest changing it to "-ize", unless you've taken the time to change the default settings.

Of course, it is worth remembering that Word isn't just available in English. It supports around 100 languages , including European Spanish and Latin-American Spanish.

But when the differences between dialects are subtle, the suggestions made by the software become less noticeable and more persuasive.

Take the word "trialing/trialling" for instance. "Trialing" is considered the US-English spelling. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) doesn't even recognise "trialing" as a word , instead, opting for the use of the double-L common in British-English. Despite such a clear distinction by the OED, the American spelling regularly makes its way into British-English publications and style guides. There's an argument that this is because of increasingly global audiences and would again be an overstatement to lay the increasing Americanisation of English entirely at the feet of a piece of word processing software, but as part of influence of American culture has had on language more generally , it may have played a role.

Similarly, the efficiency brought about by standardisation can shape how we write, not just what we write. When clarity is put ahead of stylistic or poetic flair – Word's grammar checker has a specific "clarity" refinement option – it can have implications for how we value forms of creativity.

Based on a quick, albeit arbitrary, experiment, if Harper Lee had used Word to write To Kill a Mockingbird, the software's clarity refinement would have suggested changing: "I never loved to read. One does not love breathing," to "I never loved to read. Breathing is necessary." Does this remove the poetry and depth of the original? The example is somewhat facetious, but it illustrates the effects using such tools can have. In an age where clarity and readability are prioritised by search engines, and in which the glut of online content is said to be shrinking our attention span, such seemingly subtle shifts could potentially have far-reaching impact on creative writing.

Yet there’s no denying Word has improved accessibility and diversity in myriad other ways. By bringing word processing into people's homes, it has empowering more people to write, create and contribute. This increases diversity of voice, rather than impeding it. In 2018, Microsoft added dictation features into Word to empower people with dyslexia and dysgraphia to easily type with their voice. It is one of a number of accessibility features in the software.

In the early days of its adoption, word processing was even linked with promoting greater, not worse, essay-writing prowess. In a 1992 study, essays written on a word processor were rated "significantly higher" than those written by hand . Word processing allowed students to make "microstructural rather than macrostructural" changes to their work, and by being able to continuously revise their writing, the end result was seemingly improved.

According to Wolf, word processing has taken some of the cognitive load out of writing, which allows more space for creativity. For example, while spell-check may not promote spelling retention, "when used mindfully, spell-checkers serve as valuable aids by enhancing language proficiency and communication", says Wolf. "They enable users to focus on word choice and strategy of communication rather than spending time and energy pinning down the correct spelling."

This has the potential to become even more impactful as artificial intelligence (AI) is integrated into word processing. But opinion is divided. On one hand, by removing technical aspects of spelling, sentence construction and so on, AI may free people up to be even more creative. Its ability to learn and understand a person's unique writing style could lead to an era of highly personal, unencumbered imagination. "[Generative AI] cannot be entirely relied upon to produce accurate prose every time , but it can reduce the process of creating text to editing," according to Ed Challis, head of AI strategy at UiPath, which develops robotic automation software. He believes this will "lead to innovations across all areas of content creation and communication".

That said, a potential over-reliance on automation could discourage users from actively learning and improving their linguistic and written skills, believes Wolf. If large language models are being trained on decades of increasingly homogenised content, there's the risk this will make things worse, not better. 

Whatever happens, the next 40 years are likely to continue the push-pull effect Word has had on language and society over the previous 40.

"Microsoft Word's impact on linguistic evolution is a complex interplay between standardisation and diversification," says Wolf. "It can homogenise language but also enables expression in various languages. The ultimate impact depends on how individuals and communities choose to use this powerful tool in the evolving landscape of global communication."

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