What Is the Difference Between Cut and Copy?

By Staff WriterLast Updated April 15, 2020

When an object is cut from a document, it is completely removed and placed into a temporary buffer; however, if an object is copied, a duplicate of it is placed in a temporary buffer while the original remains in place. After the object has been pasted, copying will leave two similar objects while cutting only leaves a single object because the original is deleted.

The temporary buffer is commonly referred to as a clipboard. Copying and cutting is used in word processing to either move blocks of text from one part of the document to another or to simply duplicate text. If two cuts are made in succession, the object from the first one is replaced by the object from the second cut.