Editing Cut, copy, and paste (section)

===Early methods===
The earliest editors (designed for [[teleprinter]] terminals) provided [[computer keyboard|keyboard]] commands to delineate a contiguous region of text, then delete or move it. Since moving a region of text requires first removing it from its initial location and then inserting it into its new location, various schemes had to be invented to allow for this multi-step process to be specified by the user. Often this was done with a "move" command, but some text editors required that the text be first put into some temporary location for later retrieval/placement. In 1983, the [[Apple Lisa]] became the first text editing system to call that temporary location "the clipboard".

Earlier control schemes such as [[NLS (computer system)|NLS]] used a [[word order|verb—object]] command structure, where the command name was provided first and the object to be copied or moved was second. The inversion from verb—object to object—verb on which copy and paste are based, where the user selects the object to be operated before initiating the operation, was an innovation crucial for the success of the desktop metaphor as it allowed copy and move operations based on [[direct manipulation]].<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Metaphors create theories for users|author=Kuhn, Werner|title=Spatial Information Theory a Theoretical Basis for GIS|series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science|pages=366–376|year=1993|volume=716|publisher=Springer|doi=10.1007/3-540-57207-4_24|isbn=978-3-540-57207-7}}</ref>