Microsoft Word or MS-WORD (often called Word) is a graphical word processing program that users can type with. It is
made by the computercompany Microsoft. Its
purpose is to allow users to type and save documents.
Similar to other word processors, it has
helpful tools to make documents.
§ Inserts
pictures in documents
§ Web pages,
graphs, etc.
§ Tables
§ Prints in
different ways
MS Word is part of Microsoft Office, but can also be bought separately.
History
The program was first released in 1981. Many of the ideas and features in Microsoft Word
came from Bravo, the first graphical writing program. Microsoft bought the
Bravo program, and changed its name to Microsoft Word. When it first came out, it was not
very popular, and did not
sell as well as other writing programs like WordPerfect. Although it was not
very popular when it came out, it had a feature called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), which
meant that people can change the visual style of writing (e.g. bold, italics),
by clicking on buttons, when in other programs like WordPerfect, people had to
add special 'codes' to change the style of writing. WYSIWYG is now a common feature of all computer
writing programs.
There are versions for Microsoft Word for other operating systems as
well as Microsoft
Windows. New versions support fewer operating systems, although they
always support Windows.
