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About a year back, the Boston Globe wrote a piece on the history of word processing machines with the assistance of Matthew Kirschenbaum, a professor who currently teaches English at the University of Maryland. The focus of their discussion was on how a computer, generally seen as something cold and impersonal, could actually improve the content creation process.

Kirschenbaum said, “There was a fear that the word processor would seduce young writers into thinking the work was done simply because it looked nice on the page.”

While that fear may have been justified when people first began using word processing programs in the 1980s, the allure eventually faded away and these tools became a necessary part of our personal and professional lives. Software programs like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works, AppleWorks, and WordPerfect introduced a new way to write, one that was faster, cleaner, and more efficient than the typewriter or handwritten approaches taken before them.