The shift key, which made it possible to type both capital and lower-case letters with the same keys, was added to typewriters in 1878; printing on the upper side of the roller came in 1880; and the tab key was added in 1897.

Thomas Edison patented an electric typewriter in 1872, but the first workable model was not introduced until the 1920s. M. Shultz Co.'s introduction of the automatic or repetitive typewriter in the 1930s was perhaps the greatest step from the typewriter toward modern word processing. The Shultz machine's main innovation was automatic storage of information for later retrieval. It was a sort of "player typewriter," punch-coding text onto paper rolls, similar to those used in player pianos, that could later be used to activate the keys of the typewriter in the same order as the initial typing. With the automatic typewriter, it was possible to produce multiple typed copies of form letters without the intermediary of carbons, photocopiers or typesetting.

In 1964, IBM brought out the MT/ST, which combined the features of its Selectric typewriter with a magnetic tape drive. On the tape, information could be stored, replayed, corrected and reprinted as many times as needed. This development marked the beginning of word processing as it is known today.

In the early 1970s, Linolex, Lexitron and Vydec introduced pioneering word-processing systems with CRT display editing. A CRT-based system introduced by Wang Laboratories Inc. in 1976 popularized word processing.

With the rise of personal computers, in particular the IBM PC and PC compatibles, software-based word processors running on general-purpose commodity hardware gradually displaced dedicated word processors.