Forty years of using WordStar!
by Rob - December 16th, 2023.Filed under: Uncategorized. Tagged as: Software, WordStar.
Forty years ago today, on December 16, 1983, I started using the word-processing program WordStar.
Two days earlier, I’d acquired my first computer, an Osborne 1B, which came bundled with the CP/M operating system, SuperCalc spreadsheet, Microsoft BASIC, and WordStar 2.26.
And, today, I still use WordStar: WordStar for DOS 7.0 Revision D, the final version ever produced. It has file-stamp dates of thirty-one years ago (December 21, 1992).
George R.R. Martin also still uses WordStar for DOS, but he stopped upgrading at version 4.0.
As Anne Rice said, “WordStar was magnificent. I loved it. It was logical, beautiful, perfect. Compared to it, MS Word is pure madness.”
And I do love it. I love that I can still open and edit files I wrote forty years ago with ease.
I love that it was designed for touch-typists: you never have to take your hands off the home typing row to do anything (yes, you can use a mouse or function keys if you wish, but you never have to).
I love that you can mark a block and then do something else before having to deal with it (unlike Word, where if you mark a block and then start typing, everything in the marked block is gone as Anne said, pure madness!).
I love that it lets me see (or hide) the formatting codes in the document (an idea WordPefect stole from WordStar, and something Word sorely lacks).
I love that it changes cursor shape so that I can tell at the insertion point whether I’m in insert or overtype mode.
I love that I can have italics in a different color than regular text, making it easy to see if a period or comma is italicized or not.
I love that it’s utterly distraction-free if you wish, with a minimalist screen.
I love that it provided a night-mode decades before Word offered such a thing.
I love that it’s freely installable on any computers I own, and that, with DOSBox-X, the emulator I use, it runs flawlessly under Windows, Mac, or Linux.
I love it for all the reasons I describe here:
https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm
Years ago, I wrote a conversion routine that flawlessly converts WordStar files to RTF for flawless importation into Word, and I do that when I have to submit something.
I’ve written everything for the past forty years in WordStar: novels, short stories, articles, screenplays, teleplays, HTML code, and, yes, this very post. And I intend to go on using it for the rest of my life.
December 17th, 2023 at 3:06 pm
Hooray for WordStar (on the Osborne 1, no less!)
Back in 1981 that was the word processor and computer I first learned on, and my fingers still remember the control key commands for so many of the features. Even on a unix or linux box these days I tend to install the jove editor because it uses so many of the same commands and my hands just *know* them.
For the record, I collect old computers as a hobby and my two old Osborne 1s are the oldest machines in my collection right now.
March 16th, 2026 at 10:48 am
Hello Robert. Can you explain how you deal with smart (or curly) quotes? It’s my understanding that WordStar only does straight quotes ” and ” rather than the curled ones required for published books. What is your solution to that problem?
Best wishes
Huw
April 26th, 2026 at 1:32 pm
Hi, Huw. In my WordStar for DOS 7.0 archive, you’ll find a special WordStar printer definition file called LJ6DTP. Simply select that one for your document (with ^P? from within the document), and you’ll get smart quotes whenever you insert « and » in your document (and em-dashes whenever you insert an undercore _ character). Send me an email at sawyer@sfwriter.com and I’ll send you a WordStar macro that automatically changes typewriter quotes correctly to smartquotes.