CIT 2101 – COMPUTER APPLICATIONS I

TOPIC 3: INTRODUCTION TO WORD PROCESSING

1.0 Overview

Word processing is the act of using a computer to transform written, verbal, or recorded
information into typewritten or printed form. The ability to perform word processing requires a
computer and a special type of computer software called a word processor. A word processor is a
program designed to assist with the production of a wide variety of documents, including letters,
memoranda, and manuals, rapidly and at relatively low cost. A typical word processor enables the
user to create documents, edit them using the keyboard and mouse, store them for later retrieval,
and print them to a printer. Word processing technology allows human beings to freely and
efficiently share ideas, thoughts, feelings, sentiments, facts, and other information in written form.

Word-processing is essentially typing, editing, and manipulation of a document in a desired

1.2 Units of the Document:

 Character:

 It refers to the alphabets, numerical digits, punctuations and other special symbols
which are commonly used in the text.

 Word:

 A word is group of characters that are separated from other group of characters by
some delimiters like, comma, full stop and space.

 Sentence:

 A sentence is a group of words preceded and followed by appropriate delimiting

 Paragraph:

 It is a group of one or more sentences, paragraphs are separated by leaving blank lines
between them.

 Pages:

 It is the amount of text that can be printed on one page of a paper.

 Chapters:

 It is a collection of pages

 Documents and files:

 It is a group of chapters. Usually, a complete document may be very short such as a

1.3 Features of Word-processing:

 Word-wrap

 In word-processing packages, the text can be continuously typed and the computer
automatically starts a fresh line when a line is filled up. As soon as the length of a
sentence exceeds the right margin, the corresponding word is automatically adjusted
in the following line. This is called word-wrap. A paragraph is created only when
carriage control is externally given for a sentence.

 Cursor control

 The four directional keys of the keyboard. Helps in locating text for editing in a much
similar manner of that of a pointer.

 Editing

 Words or lines can be entered (inserted) or deleted in any part of the text with proper
alignment. Similarly, there is a facility to recover the text which is deleted by mistake
or accidentally. Another important facility is that any word can be replaced by a new
word through out the file, wherever the old word appears. In addition to these, a block
of text (which is frequently used) can be prepared and moved or copied wherever
desired in the file.

 Formatting

 The text formatting refers to the way the text is desired to appear on a page. This
includes following functions
 CIT 2101 – COMPUTER APPLICATIONS I
TOPIC 3: INTRODUCTION TO WORD PROCESSING

Setting left and right margins, paragraph setting, line spacing, selecting font
specifications e.g., underline, bold, italics super/subscripts, setting footnotes, number
of lines per page, printing page numbers and headings for header and footer, table of
contents, indexing the text

 Spell-check

 Word-processing packages provide checking of spellings facility

 Thesaurus

 It provides synonyms (or words with similar meanings)

 Macros

 A macro is a character or word that represents a series of keystrokes. The ability to

 Printing

 It gives a hard copy of the text. The printing can be controlled after printing a fixed
number of pages or can be resumed from any specified page number.

 File management

 This facility allows to create, delete, move & search for files.

 Mail merge printing

 This facility helps in printing same – original letter with different addresses, so that
each letter is – original and not a carbon copy.
 CIT 2101 – COMPUTER APPLICATIONS I
TOPIC 3: INTRODUCTION TO WORD PROCESSING

1.4 Examples of word processing packages -

1. MS-WORD (MICROSOFT WORD)

2. WORDSTAR

3. CHIRATOR

4. NORTON EDITOR