Chapter 6
IN THIS CHAPTER
Changing fonts
Changing the font size
Using text styles
Coloring text
Justifying text
Creating lists
After you type text into a document, edit it, and check it for spelling and grammatical errors, you’re ready to make it look pretty — a process known as formatting text. A properly formatted document can make your text easy to read, while a poorly formatted document can make even the best writing difficult or confusing to read.
The Home tab groups Word’s formatting tools into three categories:
To format any text, follow these steps:
The most common way to format text is to change the font. The font defines the uniform style and appearance of letters; examples include , , and .
To change the font, follow these steps:
Click the Font list box.
A list of the fonts available on your computer appears, as shown in Figure 6-1.
Move the mouse pointer over each font.
Word temporarily changes your selected text (from Step 2) so you can see how the currently highlighted font will look.
Click the font you want to use.
Word changes your text to appear in your chosen font.
The font changes the appearance of text, but the font size defines how big (or small) the text may look. To change the font size, you have two choices:
To change the font size, follow these steps:
The text style defines the appearance of text in one or more of the following ways:
To change the style of text, follow these steps:
Color can emphasize text. There are two ways to use color:
When you change the color of text, you’re physically displaying a different color for each letter. Normally Word displays text in black, but you can change the color to anything you want, such as bright red or dark green.
To change the color of text, follow these steps:
Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Font Color icon.
A color palette appears, as shown in Figure 6-3.
Click a color.
Word displays your selected text (from Step 2) in your chosen color.
Highlighting text mimics coloring chunks of text with a highlighting marker that students often use to emphasize passages in a book. To highlight text, follow these steps:
Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Text Highlight Color icon.
A color palette appears, as shown in Figure 6-4.
Click a color.
Word highlights your selected text (from Step 2) in your chosen color.
To remove a highlight, select the text and choose the same color again or choose No Color.
If you want a fast way to format text to make it appear colorful like a neon sign, then you can use Text Effects by following these steps:
Click the Text Effects icon.
A menu of different effects appears, as shown in Figure 6-5.
Click an effect.
Word changes your selected text (from Step 2) in your chosen visual effect.
Word can align text in one of four ways, as shown in Figure 6-6:
To align text, follow these steps:
Line spacing defines how close lines appear stacked on top of each other. To change the line spacing of text, follow these steps:
Click the Line Spacing icon.
A pull-down menu appears, as shown in Figure 6-7.
By default, Word automatically adds a blank line between paragraphs regardless of the line spacing you choose. To get rid of this extra space between paragraphs, click the Layout tab, click in the After text box in the Paragraph group, and type 0 (zero). (The default value may be 8 or 10 pt.)
Word can organize and arrange text in three types of lists:
You can create a list from scratch or convert existing text into a list. To create a list from scratch, follow these steps:
Click the Bullets, Numbering, or Multilevel List icon.
Word creates your list (bulleted or numbered).
If you have existing text, you can convert it into a list by following these steps:
Click the Bullets, Numbering, or Outline Numbering icon.
Word converts your selected text into your chosen list where each paragraph appears as a separate item in the list.
After you create a list, you may want to indent one list item underneath another one. To indent an item in a list, follow these steps:
Press the Tab key to indent an item to the right (or press the Shift+Tab keystroke combination to shift an item to the left).
When you indent a list, Word changes the number or bullet style to set the line apart from the rest of your list.
If you have a list, you may want to convert one or more items back into ordinary text. To convert a list item into plain text, follow these steps:
Click the appropriate Bullets, Numbering, or Outline Numbering icon.
If you want to convert a bullet list item into text, click the Bullets icon.
When you create a bullet or numbered list, you can choose from a variety of different styles. To choose a numbering style, follow these steps:
Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of a list icon, such as the Bullet or Numbering icon.
Make sure that you don’t click the Numbering icon itself.
A pull-down menu appears, listing all the different numbering styles available, as shown in Figure 6-8.
Click the numbering style you want.
The next time you click the Numbering icon, Word will use the numbering style you chose.
Numbered lists can cause special problems when you’re dividing or copying them because the numbering may get out of sequence, or you may want to start numbering from a number other than 1.
To change the starting number of a numbered list, follow these steps:
Right-click the item that you want to renumber.
If you want to renumber your entire list, right-click the first item at the top of the numbered list.
A pop-up menu opens, as shown in Figure 6-9.
When you create a document, Word creates page margins automatically. However, if you want to adjust the left and right page margins, or define how far the Tab key indents text, you need to use the Ruler.
By default, Word hides the Ruler to avoid cluttering up the screen. To display (or hide) the Ruler, follow these steps:
Select (or clear) the Ruler check box in the Show group.
The Ruler appears at the top and left margins of your document, as shown in Figure 6-11.
The Ruler defines the left and right margins for your paragraphs. To change these paragraph margins, follow these steps:
Move the mouse pointer over the Left Indent icon on the Ruler (the top icon), hold down the left mouse button, and drag (move) the mouse to the right to adjust the left paragraph margin.
Word displays a dotted vertical line to show you where the paragraph’s new left margin will be, as shown in Figure 6-12.
Move the mouse pointer over the Right Indent icon on the Ruler, hold down the left mouse button, and drag (move) the mouse to the left to adjust the right paragraph margin.
Word displays a dotted vertical line to show where the new right paragraph margin will be.
The two icons on the Ruler that define indentation are the First Line Indent and the Hanging Indent icons. The First Line Indent icon defines the position of (what else?) the first line of every paragraph. The Hanging Indent icon defines the position of every line of text except for the first line, as shown in Figure 6-13.
To define the first line and hanging indent, follow these steps:
Move the mouse pointer over the Left Indent icon on the Ruler, hold down the left mouse button, and drag (move) the mouse to the right.
Word displays a dotted vertical line to show you where the new indentation margin will be.
Move the mouse pointer over the First Line Indent icon on the Ruler, hold down the left mouse button, and drag (move) the mouse to the right (or left).
Word displays a dotted vertical line to show you where the new first line indentation will be.
Formatting can be simple, such as underlining text, or fairly complicated, such as underlining text while also changing its font and font size. After you format one chunk of text a certain way, you may want to format other parts of your document the exact same way.
Although you can take time to format text manually, it’s much easier to use Format Painter instead. Format Painter tells Word, “See the way I formatted that chunk of text over there? Apply that same formatting to a new chunk of text.”
To use Format Painter, follow these steps:
Select the text that you want to format. (Move the mouse pointer over the beginning of the text you want to format, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the mouse until you reach the end of the text you want to format.)
Word applies your formatting to your selected text.
As an alternative to choosing fonts, font sizes, and text styles (such as bold) individually, Word offers several predefined formatting styles. To apply a style to your text, follow these steps:
Move the mouse pointer over a style.
Word displays what your text will look like if you choose this style.
Click the style you want to use, such as Heading 1, Title, or Quote.
Word formats your text.
In case you need to format an entire document a certain way, you may want to use templates. Templates act like preformatted documents. Word comes with several templates, but Microsoft offers several through its website as well.
To create a new document from a template, follow these steps:
Click the File tab and then choose New.
All available templates appear, as shown in Figure 6-16.
Double-click a template.
Word creates a blank document with “dummy” text to show you how the formatting looks.
Type new text into your newly created document.
You may need to be connected to the Internet to download some of the available templates.
After you format text, you can always remove that formatting. The simplest way to do this is to apply the same formatting you want to remove. For example, if you underline text, you can remove the underlining by highlighting all the underlined text and choosing the underline command (by pressing Ctrl+U or by clicking the Underline icon).
If you want to remove multiple formatting from text, you can remove each formatting style one by one, but it’s much easier just to use the Clear Formatting command, which removes all formatting from text, no matter how much formatting there may be.
To use the Clear Formatting command, follow these steps:
Click the Clear Formatting icon, as shown in Figure 6-17.
Word removes all formatting from your selected text.
The Clear Formatting command will not remove any highlighting you may have applied over your text.
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