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A word processor is software or a device that allows users to create, edit, and print documents. It enables you to write text, store it electronically, display it on a screen, modify it by entering commands and characters from the keyboard, and print it. Word processors facilitate writing and editing, especially with their ability to copy and move text (“cut-and-paste”), their built-in dictionaries to check spelling, and their grammar checkers. Other common features include a wide choice of typographic fonts and sizes, various paragraph and page layouts, tools for finding and replacing strings of characters, and word counts.

Modern word processors also have many features once reserved for desktop publishing systems, such as table creation and importation of graphic images. Word processors developed from mechanical machines, later merging with computer technology. The history of word processing is the story of the gradual automation of the physical aspects of writing and editing, and then to the refinement of the technology to make it available to corporations and Individuals.

The term word processing appeared in American offices in the early 1970s centered on the idea of streamlining the work to typists, but the meaning soon shifted toward the automation of the whole editing cycle. The first word processing device (a "Machine for Transcribing Letters" that appears to have been similar to a typewriter) was patented in 1714 by Henry Mill for a machine that was capable of "writing so clearly and accurately you could not distinguish it from a printing press". More than a century later, another patent appeared in the name of William Austin Burt for the typographer.