MS Word
Fundamentals
Understanding Word
Every object in Word is either a Character, Paragraph, or Section. Word really doesn't know about anything else. For example, Word does not know what a "line of text" is. Understanding this principle is key to understanding and becoming proficient in Word.
To see this concept in action, open Word.
- Click Tools in the menu bar
- Click Options
- Click the View tab
- Under Formatting Marks, check the box to display them all.
With formatting marks enabled, you can see that the distinction between one paragraph and another is simply the paragraph character, ¶.
Key Concepts
In MS Word, Characters include every item you can see, not just those you type in on your keyboard. Paragraphs are simply a series of characters separated by carriage returns, the ¶ symbol you see when you hit the 'enter' key.
Word is linear. Every document has a character that is the first character of the document and another that is the last. You may think that objects like graphics and text boxes that 'float' over text are exceptions to this rule, but you'd be mistaken. Those objects are indeed linked to the main stream of characters. Even headers and footers are linked to the stream through the section marker that controls the headers and footers.
There are no "key codes" that turn on or off. In Word, the formatting is contained within the object. Instead of key codes, Word uses a select then do philosophy. Word only formats stuff you first select; if you don't select anything, then nothing gets formatted. (Note: for paragraph formatting purposes, putting the cursor anywhere in a paragraph selects that paragraph, likewise for sections)
Word frequently has several ways to do the same thing. For instance, to make words bold (or not bold) you can select them and click the B button on the Formatting toolbar, or press Ctrl+b, or Select Format/Font, choose Bold, and click OK.
Characters
Characters include every item (object) you can see, including non-printing characters like the Paragraph and Section markers. The primary formatting menu for characters is Format/Font. Take a moment and examine the Format/Font menu, and take a close look at each of the 3 tabs and all the various settings. If you are not sure what a setting will do, enter some text and try to format it. You have a high level of control using this dialog box. For example, while you can Underline characters by clicking the U button on the toolbar, there are 9 different ways to underline listed under Format/Font.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs are simply a series of characters separated by paragraph markers (¶). The primary formatting menu for paragraphs is Format/Paragraphs. From there you control the indentation from the left and right margins (margins are section formats). You can control the indentation of the first line separately from the rest of the paragraph, the spacing within the paragraph (sometimes referred to as leading) and the amount of 'space' before and after the paragraph. Tabs, borders (other than page borders), and bullets are all paragraph formats.
Tables are just a special organization of paragraphs, so each cell of a table can be formatted just like any other paragraph.
It is a not a good idea have two or more paragraphs marks next to each other. Here are three really good reasons:
- When a page break occurs in front of the unnecessary paragraphs, the text on that page will not start at the top of the page. Likewise, columns while contain extra spaces, which can be more obvious and annoying.
- The extra paragraph markers (¶) make reformatting a document much more difficult.
- You'll get one more method for squeezing space out of a document. For example, say you use 12 pts spacing after all of your paragraphs in a document. The document is just over 4 pages and you'd like to make it 'fit' on 3 pages. You can select the whole document and use Format/Paragraph to change the 'space before' from 12 pts to 10 or 11. If you use multiple paragraphs marks for spacing, then the only tools you have to shorten a document are character size, character spacing, and margins.
You should instead press Ctrl+0 (zero) to insert a blank space preceding a paragraph.
Sections
Every word document consists of at least one Section made up of one or more paragraphs. The primary formatting menu for sections is File/Page Setup. Sections control the overall margin setting, page orientation, page numbering, headers and footers, and columns.
NOTE: If you place a section break in the middle of a paragraph, the section mark will behave as both a section break and as a paragraph. It is strongly recommended to avoid this as it can cause considerable confusion and provides no real benefit.