Document Formatting

When you start with a blank document, Word provides a one-inch margin at the top and bottom of the page, and a stately one-and-a-quarter inch margin at each side.

Most people never change these settings. In fact, in its own, almost accidental way, Microsoft has dictated the standard margin formatting for the world’s business correspondence. But if you learn how to work with margins—as well as paragraphs and indentation—you can give your document a distinctive look, not to mention fit much more text on a page.

Margins

You can adjust the margins of a Word document in either of two ways: by entering exact measurements (in the Formatting Palette or the Document dialog box), or by dragging the margins directly on the ruler.

To use the numeric option, choose Format → Document → Margins tab, or click the Document Margins title bar on the Formatting Palette. There you’ll find individual boxes that let you specify, in inches, the size of the left, right, top, and bottom margins.

To set your margins by dragging, which produces immediate visible feedback, you need to be in Print Layout view (View → Print Layout) or Publishing Layout view (View → Publishing Layout).

  • Left, Right, Top, Bottom. To set margins by dragging, point to the line where the ruler changes from white to blue, without clicking. (The blue area is outside the limits of the margin.) When the cursor changes to a box with double arrows, drag the margin line to any point on the ruler you wish (see Figure 3-15). Now you can change the margins on both the horizontal and vertical rulers.

    Tip

    You may find it extremely hard to adjust the left margin, since the trio of indent markers (Figure 3-15) lies directly on top of the blue/white boundary. Move the cursor slowly from one indent marker to the other until the Left Margin screen tip appears and the cursor shape changes as shown in Figure 3-13. However, you may find it much easier to just move the first-line indent handle out of the way while you adjust the margin.

    The house-shaped controls in the top ruler set indents (). This example shows a first-line indent. Drag the blue/white boundaries in either ruler to adjust the margins.

    Figure 3-15. The house-shaped controls in the top ruler set indents (Indentation). This example shows a first-line indent. Drag the blue/white boundaries in either ruler to adjust the margins.

  • Header and Footer. Headers and footers (see Headers and Footers) appear within the normal margins. For instance, if you’ve set the bottom margin for 1”, you can have the page number (footer) appear a half-inch from the edge of the paper—half an inch below the bottom of the text. To do so, set the Footer margin for 0.5”, as shown in Figure 3-15.

Tip

When you’ve got your margins just the way you want them, you can make that the setting for all new documents you open. Just choose Format → Document and click Default at the lower left of the Document dialog box.

Gutters and Mirrors

Word’s gutter and mirror margin features make margins work when your document is destined to be bound like a book. In an open book, the gutter is the term for the inner margins where the pages attach to the spine. Usually, the gutters have to be wider than the outer margins to allow room for the binding and the spine. (You may want to talk to your publisher—the fine people at Kinko’s, for example—to learn about margin requirements.) Word can add this extra space automatically. For instance, if you set a gutter space of 0.25”, Word will add a quarter-inch to the gutter margin on each page.

Another useful tool for book margins is the mirror margin feature, which is designed to let you set up margins that are uneven on each page, but reflected on each two-page spread (see Figure 3-16).

A quick way to open this dialog box is to double-click the ruler located along the top-left side of the page. The gutter is an extra area for binding; the mirror margins feature is handy when you want the outer and inner margins to match on left and right pages.

Figure 3-16. A quick way to open this dialog box is to double-click the ruler located along the top-left side of the page. The gutter is an extra area for binding; the mirror margins feature is handy when you want the outer and inner margins to match on left and right pages.

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