Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Full Word Essay

The last few posts were about Microsoft Word, and they were pieces of an essay I'd written for class. This is the full essay here. Sorry about the weird format.
                                                                                                Microsoft Word is a widely used word processor. Word was developed as part of the Microsoft office from the mid 1980s and early 90s. It quickly became widely used, and today is easily the #1 word processor on the planet.
Despite its name, Microsoft Word is usable on the Mac and Windows systems. It overtook Appleworks for Mac, and is firmly in place today. Currently, Word has two different sets of models, one for Macs and the other for PCs. 
Word features a variety of keyboard shortcuts. The most important are listed below.

   All Caps                      CTRL+SHIFT+A
   Bold                          CTRL+B or CTRL+SHIFT+B
   Bookmark                      CTRL+SHIFT+F5
   Cancel                        ESC
   Clear                         DELETE
   Close or Exit                 ALT+F4
   Copy                          CTRL+C or CTRL+INSERT
   Cut                           CTRL+X or SHIFT+DELETE
   Delete Word                   CTRL+DELETE
   Font                          CTRL+D or CTRL+SHIFT+F
   Font Size Select              CTRL+SHIFT+P
   Go Back                       SHIFT+F5 or ALT+CTRL+Z
   Go To                         CTRL+G or F5
   Help                          F1
   Hidden                        CTRL+SHIFT+H
   Hyperlink                     CTRL+K
   Indent                        CTRL+M
   Italic                        CTRL+I or CTRL+SHIFT+I
   Move Text                     F2
   New                           CTRL+N
   Normal                        ALT+CTRL+N
   Open                          CTRL+O or CTRL+F12 or ALT+CTRL+F2
   Outline                       ALT+CTRL+O
   Paste                         CTRL+V or SHIFT+INSERT
   Print                         CTRL+P or CTRL+SHIFT+F12
   Proofing                      F7
   Redo                          ALT+SHIFT+BACKSPACE
   Replace                       CTRL+H
   Save                          CTRL+S or SHIFT+F12 or ALT+SHIFT+F2
   Save As                       F12
   Show All                      CTRL+SHIFT+8
   Shrink Font                   CTRL+SHIFT+,
   Small Caps                    CTRL+SHIFT+K
   Style                         CTRL+SHIFT+S
   Thesaurus                     SHIFT+F7
   Underline                     CTRL+U or CTRL+SHIFT+U
   Undo                          CTRL+Z or ALT+BACKSPACE
   Word Underline                CTRL+SHIFT+W




History                                                                                                      Word began in 1983 as Multi-tool Word. When Microsoft Office formed in 1984, Word became a part of it. Word quickly became quite popular, and in 1987 started a Mac Line as part of their Word 3.0 series. Before long, Word had taken over as the default worked processing unit, beating out Apple’s Macwrite.
            In 1993, after the wildly successful Word 5.1, Word had gained permanent power. After the embarrassing 6.0 release, Word began to make consistent models, starting with Word 97.  Word 98 was released the following year, complete with Clippie, the lovable little helper that was killed off the following year. The 2000 model was Y2K proof, and following that came a string of similar models. Word 07 was the real changing model. It modified the format and shortcuts, and was much more. Word 08 is the current model for macs, while Word 2010 is the current model for the PC.

Impact
Since its breakthrough in 1984, Microsoft Word has ruled the industry of Word Processors. Out of all the word processors, Word has the most users and has maintained its power for over twenty years. As a result, the power of Word is simply epic. With Word, people can easily type essays, novels, and anything they want. They can upload it to the Internet or publish it. They can copy, they can fax, and they can work efficiently.
         Microsoft Word is the word processor. It’s the one that made much of this revolutionary technology happen. Before Word, word processors were like computer typewriters. They could delete, print, and did work, but not well. Word was just one of dozens of word processors at the time, but it’s the only one that’s stuck. It took the ideas from other word processors and turned them into the best word processor. Without Word, the world of the word processor would be very different.

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