Why WordStar Was So Comfortable to Write In

During the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, programs such as Electric Pencil, WordStar and WordPerfect turned the computer into a tool for writing. They were very different word processors, but they shared something that is less common today: when you opened them, almost everything in front of you belonged to the document.

Many of those computers displayed 80 columns, although that did not mean writing lines 80 characters long. WordStar, for example, could place the right margin at around column 65. Without necessarily being guided by typographic principles, the limitations of those screens ended up creating a contained writing surface surprisingly close to the proportions that have traditionally worked well for reading continuous text.

Writing also worked differently. WordStar was born at a time when even cursor keys or function keys could not be taken for granted on every keyboard, so many operations were performed with key combinations around the same area where your hands rested while writing. Once learned, they made it possible to move through and edit a document without constantly leaving the keyboard.

Some writers continued to value that way of working long after more modern alternatives appeared. George R. R. Martin, for example, continued writing for decades with WordStar 4.0 on a DOS computer with no Internet connection, while using another machine for email, the web and everything else. He did not need his word processor to do more things; he needed it to let him write.

Those computers were not better. They had enormous limitations, and modern word processors have solved many of their problems, but some of those limitations accidentally created an especially simple place to work: a contained width, few things competing with the text and a keyboard from which almost everything could be controlled.

WordPlanet™ does not try to bring back WordStar or turn a modern computer into a machine from the 1980s. It brings back some of the qualities that made writing in those environments so comfortable: a contained writing surface, the keyboard at the centre and an interface that lets the text take its place.

The 80 columns are part of that space, not because eighty is the perfect number for writing, but because they establish boundaries that no longer depend on the limitations of the machine. It does not matter how large the screen is or everything the computer is capable of doing beyond them. When you enter WordPlanet™, the place where you write once again has a scale, a purpose and boundaries.

Perhaps that is why some writers never wanted to leave WordStar behind. They did not need their word processor to do more things. They needed a place where writing felt natural and where the tool could disappear while they carried on working.

That is WordPlanet™. A place on your computer where everything is once again arranged for writing.