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They are control key sequences that are arranged so that a typist need never remover their fingers from the keyboard. The control key was to the left of the A so easily pressed with you left little finger.

You had full control of the cursor without the need for dedicated arrow keys or page up and down keys. It worked on a normal terminal keyboard. I first used it on an Apple ][ with a Z80 add-on that ran CP/M.

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Thanks for sharing! I'd consider all those things true for Emacs/Vim bindings as well? (Just curious if you'd disagree with that assessment.)

That's true-ish. But the thing about Wordstar is that it is a word processor not a text editor. Other word processors don't make this so easy. Also the standard keybindings for cursor control in Emacs are much less ergonomic.

^ = control

In Wordstar: ^S/^D moves left/right; ^E/^X moves up/down; ^A/^F word left/right; ^R/^C moves page Up/Down

Notice that all of those use only the left hand. In Wordstar almost everything to do with cursor control uses only the left hand.

Emacs is mnemonic ^b for left (back), ^f for right (forward), ^n for next line, ^p for previous line, etc. You need both hands and the keys are all over the keyboard.

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