Overview

Today's session will have one purpose:

1 To introduce you to the basics of word processing

Much of scientific discourse is based on the printed word, in the form of published articles, reports, internal memoranda, and other documents. In prehistoric times (before the early-1980s), those documents were either hand written or composed using a mechanical or electronic device called a typewriter.

The advent of personal computing changed the way that we communicated by the written word. One of the first, and perhaps most important, applications for the personal computer was the word processor. Versions available included WordPerfect, MacWrite, and Microsoft Word.

The benefits of the word processor became immediate. They all had the ability to cut and paste words from one location in the document to the other, which allowed the user to revise the documents and correct mistakes without the need to erase ink from pages (or use correction fluid). Moreover, those applications allowed greater flexibility in formatting, by the ability to change fonts, point sizes, and add effects like boldface, underlining, italics, and strikethroughs. Margins, tabs, and headers could be adjusted electronically, to give the needed effect. Soon, it became possible to add images and other applications like spreadsheets. When combined with a high quality laser printer, an average user could produce a document that had the same quality only possible through a professional publisher a few years before.

Ensuring that you know how to use a word processing document is an important facet of FRF 101O. The word processing application that we will use will be MS Word, though applications produced by other companies are available on the market.

Practice Exercise:

To give you experience using some of the basic features of MS Word, conduct the exercise described in this link.

As you will see, you will be altering one of my published abstracts, saving it to a disk, and then sending it to me as an email attachment. Instructions for accomplishing the latter part will be discussed in the next session.

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