Blinking vertical thing

[Xinfu]

When we open a Word file, the thing controlled by the mouse is the cursor, then what is that called which is a blinking vertical thing that indicates the place of putting words into when you type the keyboard?

[wrholt]

That is also a cursor: it marks the location of the keyboard input focus; that is, the location of the screen object that receives any characters you type at the keyboard.

If the screen object that has the keyboard input focus is a text-entry window, the keyboard input focus cursor usually looks like a blinking vertical bar positioned at the text insertion point. Otherwise the screen object is highlighted in some way that makes it stand out; for example, a button object may have a dashed line surrounding the button's caption, or the background may have a different color than other buttons, and so on.

If you need to distinguish the two cursors because context does not make it clear, you can use a more descriptive name.

For the cursor controlled by the mouse possible names include "mouse cursor", "mouse pointer", "mouse" and "pointer".

For the cursor that identifies the location of keyboard focus possible names include "text cursor", "text entry cursor", "keyboard cursor", "keyboard focus" and "focus".