WORD BACKSPACE CIRCUIT FOR BUFFERED KEY ENTRY DEVICE

An improved word backspace circuit is provided for a key entry device having a shift register buffer memory that holds a character entered from the keyboard. As the operating position in the shift register buffer is backspaced toward the first character of a word, a logical operation is performed on each character of the record in a scanning operation that proceeds forward in the order that the characters of the record are entered in the buffer. In this forward scanning operation, each space is recognized and its occurrance is recorded in a latch. So long as the space is followed by at least one character position before the operating position in the buffer, the latch is reset and the backspace operation is continued to the next character position. When the space character position is followed immediately by the operating position, the latch is kept set to prevent a further backspace operation.