Microsoft Word 2010 is a word-processing program, designed to help you create professional-quality documents. With the finest document-formatting tools, Word helps you organize and write your documents more efficiently. Word also includes powerful editing and revising tools so that you can collaborate with others easily.
Word Processing
Word processing software is, and has been for decades, among the most common of applications utilized for both commercial and home computing. It is interesting to note, then, that the history and development of word processing has had very little in common with the development of practical computing.
A simple definition ofword processing might be the application of technology to manipulate printed text. That said, the lineage of word processing must be traced to the invention of both the printing pressand of movable type–both arguably dating from around the end of the Middle Ages. These earliest systems were as costly as they were cumbersome, which caused the printed page to be held in widespread imagination as high art indeed. The result was that hand lettering, with all its inherent risks for errors and illegibility, remained the norm for the vast majority of text, for several hundred years. It was not until the late eighteenth century that an inventor addressed the problem. Henry Mill constructed a portabletypesetting system that can probably be considered the world’s first typewriter. However, it was difficult to manufacture, difficult to use and was subject to frequent malfunction. It was not commercially successful.
Mill’s endeavor was followed by that of William Burt, who patented a slightly more marketable “typographer” in 1829. But it was Christopher Sholes’s invention, in 1867, that brought affordable typing to the world. Sholes also developed the familiar “QWERTY” keyboard, so configured to reduce the probability of jammedhardware by placing most common consecutive letters far apart. Sholes’s typewriter was marketed worldwide by the Remington Company, best known for the rifles and six-shooters of the same name, and remained the standard for printed text production until well into the twentieth century.
The next logical step in the development of word processing was the application of electricity. Although Thomas Edison patented an electric typewriter as early as 1872, it was not until the 1930s that electrically assisted typing became common. The first commercially successful system was the IBM Electromatic. This model was the standard for business usage until its successor, the IBM Selectric, was introduced in 1961. The Selectric marked a notable advance as its “typeball,” which replaced the earlier configuration of numerous single-letter plates, could be easily and economically replaced. This made for quick, simple alterations between fonts, typefaces and point sizes.
Microsoft Word 2010 Beginners Tutorial 