Typical usage

Word processors have a variety of uses and applications within the business world, home, education, journalism, publishing, and the literary arts.

Business

Within the business world, word processors are extremely useful tools. Typical uses include:

legal copies letters and letterhead memos reference documents

Business tend to have their own format and style for any of these. Thus, versatile word processors with layout editing and similar capabilities find widespread use in most business.

Home

While many homes have word processors on their computers, word processing in the home tends to be educational, planning or business related, dealing with assignments or work being completed at home, or occasionally recreational, e.g. writing short stories. Some use word processors for letter writing, résumé creation, and card creation. However, many of these home publishing processes have been taken over by desktop publishing programs specifically oriented toward home use which are better suited to these types of documents.They hence can be used for letter writing, creating cards, resume creation, and other types of documents

Literature

Novelists, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and essayists naturally gravitated toward word processing once the technology became widely available. Notable early adopters in the mid- or late-1970s included science fiction author (and BYTE Magazine columnist) Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Stanley Elkin, James Fallows, and Michael Crichton. However the first novel generally credited as having been written on a word processor is Len Deighton's Bomber, which was composed on an IBM MT/ST in London in 1968-9; Deighton's typist and assistant, Ms. Ellenor Handley, was the person to actually operate the machine.