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For 40 years there’s been an invisible hand guiding the way many of us write, work, and communicate. Its influence has been pervasive, yet its impact has been subtle to the extent that you’ve likely never noticed. That invisible hand is Microsoft Word.
At its launch in October 1983, this influential software was known as Multi-Tool Word, and not long after, changed to Microsoft Word for Dos. Back then, there were more than 300 word processing programs across multiple platforms. People of a certain age will remember WordStar or WordPerfect, yet in a little over a decade, Word eclipsed these rivals. By 1994, Microsoft says it had claimed a 90% share of the word-processing market, making it one of the most successful, well-known software products in history.
While establishing how many people use Word is tricky, recent filings show there are 1.4 billion Windows devices in use each month, and more than 90% of the Fortune 500 use the software. If only a third of those people used Word, it would still be more than the population of North America.
This context is important because it helps to explain why, and how, Word has had such influence on our lives.
Ironically, given its ubiquity, Word has rarely been a pioneer when it comes to features. As mentioned, it was far from the first word processor. It’s often credited with introducing grammar tools, despite the fact these were developed decades earlier. And the idea behind “track changes” – where you can see edits to a document – wasn’t a Microsoft invention.
Yet Word’s superpower was using smart, simple design choices to make such features accessible to a global audience, not just techies. Its “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) design philosophy is now commonplace in software and on the internet. Word introduced line breaks, along with bold and italic fonts on screen. It revolutionized typeset-quality printing, as well as the use of templates. And it was in these templates that Word’s early impact on communication emerged.
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