During their 1983 fall semester, Foxborough High School seniors used Apple IIe’s to write their English-class essays. From this experiment, a focus of my Boston University doctoral research, many of the generalizations that Matthew Kirschenbaum observed regarding professional writers also emerged (“The qwerty history of the word processor,’’ Ideas, May 8).

“The illusion of the perfect page’’ also captured the Foxborough students. “Easy’’ revision was fun. Gone was the pain of retyping. Sharing of rough drafts was common. Plenty of feedback improved quality for many, while some struggled to hold on to original insight and voice. The impact on quality was distinctly “idiosyncratic,’’ to use Kirschenbaum’s word.

By 1985 word processing was still so new that I presented my research observations to the International Conference of Teachers of English. Now word processing is so common that preschoolers send us notes this way.

We talk to our computers, see the words, edit and revise. The computer as tool, more than ever, fascinates.

Damian Curtiss

Hingham