Depending on the work for which it was designed, an application can manipulate text, numbers, graphics, or a combination of these elements.

It handled graphics, sound, and video as easily as other computers of its time manipulated plain text.

When word processors did nothing more than manipulate text, a computer with a monochrome adapter and display was just right.

Reviewers also complained that the screen was too dim and small to read and use for manipulating text.

The new technology has lowered the cost and increased the speed of creating and using type, enabling graphic designers to manipulate text in novel ways.

The various tools available to manipulate text include the width, height, "other shape", kashida, join, separate and rotate tool.

Trying to manipulate such text, to alter character spacing, for example, was largely a matter of trial and error, mostly error.

Students can manipulate video, graphics and text to create multimedia reports of their own as part of assignments that accompany the software.

This program allowed users the ability to manipulate graphics and text not just for business data, but for all communication purposes.

In contrast, word processors, which manipulate text rather than numbers, are not usually referred to as data processing applications.