Formatting Word documents

- Formatting refers to enhancing the appearance of a document. You format text,

paragraphs, pages or the entire document.

Formatting text attributes

- Text formatting refers to features such as changing fonts (type, style and size of
characters), changing text colour, underlining, bolding, italicizing, making a
character(s) superscript or subscript. To format text, use the formatting toolbars,
Format menu or keyboard shortcut keys.

To format existing text using the format menu:

1. Highlight the text to be formatted.
2. On the Format menu, click the Font command, a dialog box with all formatting
features is displayed.
3. To change font type and size, where necessary scroll down the Font list box and select
a font type. For example Verdana font would appear Verdana. To increase the font
size, where necessary, scroll down the Size list box and select the required size e.g. 20
points (pt). A point is a fraction of an inch. 72 points is equivalent to 1 inch.
For example “Verdana” is size 16 points i.e. 16/72.
4. Bolding text: Bolding make the selected text appear darker than the rest of the text. To
bold text:
a) Activate the font dialog box
b) From the font dialog box, select Bold.
5. Underline text: underlining refers to placing a line at the base or bottom of a word
or a phrase. To underline:
 Activate the font dialog box.
 Click the don arrow on the right of underline and select the underline
and select the underline style required e.g. single, double, dashed etc.
6. Italicizing text: to italicize is to make the text slant forward.
 To italicize, activate the font dialog box.
 Under font style, Click Italic
7. Changing font colour: In most cases, the font default colour is black. However
you can change the font colour for example to red, green, blue, etc. to change the font
colour:

 Activate the font dialog box.

 Click the down arrow at the right of font color list box and select the
colour of your choice.

Using formatting toolbar

- As mentioned earlier, the formatting toolbar lets the user easily format text by
clicking the required format button. For example to bold text, highlight it then
click bolding command B on the formatting toolbar.

Using keyboard shortcuts

- The following are keyboard shortcut used to apply font styles.
 To bold press Ctrl + B.
 To italicize press Ctrl + I.
 To underline press Ctrl + U
Change case
- When typing a text, there are a number of cases that user may intend to apply in
order to create contrast within the text. These are:
1. Sentence case: All the first characters of the first word in a
sentence are in uppercase (capitalized).
2. Lowercase: All characters in lowercase.
3. Uppercase: All characters appear in uppercase.
4. Title case: All the first characters of each word in a sentence appear
in uppercase.
5. Toggle case: It changes upper cases to lowercases and vice versa.

To change the case of an existing text:

1. Highlight the text
2. On the Format menu, click Change case.
3. In change case dialog box, select the case type to be applied
4. Click OK.

Superscript and Subscript

- A superscript appears just above the rest of the characters as in cm2 while a
subscript appears just below other characters as in H2O.

To make text Superscript or Subscript

1. highlight the character (s)
2. On the Format menu, click Font
3. On the Font dialog box select Superscript or Subscript

Paragraph formatting
- A paragraph is a separate block of text dealing with a single theme and starting
on anew line or indent.
- Some of the formatting features you can apply onto a paragraph include
alignment, drop cap, indenting, line spacing and setting breaks.
Alignment
- Alignment is the arrangement of text relative to the left margin, centre of
page or the right margin.
- The five major alignment options available are the Left, Centre, Right,
Justified and distributed (force justified).

Left alignment
- Lines of text are lined up evenly along the left margin but unevenly at the right
margin. This is the default alignment. To align left:
1. Highlight the paragraph.
2. On Format menu, select Paragraph
3. Select Left from the list box

Right alignment
- This is opposite of left alignment. Lines of text are lined up evenly along the
right margin but unevenly at the left margin. To align right:

1. Highlight the paragraph

2. On Format menu, select Paragraph
3. Select Right from the list box.
Center alignment
- The lines of text are centred unevenly between the left and right margins.

To center paragraph:
1. Highlight the paragraph.
2. On Format menu, Select Paragraph.
3. Select Centred on the list box

Justification
- Lines of text are arranged evenly along the left and right margin. To justify a
paragraph:

1. Highlight the paragraph

2. On the Format menu, Select Paragraph
3. Select Justified on the list box

Distributed
- A distributed or force justified is force justified evenly along the left and right
margin even if a line has only one word. To force justify a paragraph:

1. Highlight the paragraph

2. On the Format menu, Select Paragraph
3. Select Distributed on the list box

Drop caps
- There are times when you wish to attract the reader’s attention by making the
first character in a sentence large, taking more space in the next line. Such
kind of a character is said to be “dropped”. To apply drop cap:

1. Highlight the first character in the sentence

2. On the Format menu, click Drop Cap dialog box appears
3. Click Dropped or in Margin
4. Select font in case you wish to apply a certain font to the dropped cap.
5. Specify the number of lines to drop then click OK

Indenting paragraphs
- Indentation refers to moving the text away from the margin. You can indent
the first sentence in a paragraph (first line indent), the whole paragraph (full
indent) or the rest of the text except the first line (hanging indents).

First lines indent.

1. Select the paragraph to be indented.
2. On Format menu, click Paragraph. Paragraph properties dialog box appears.
3. Click the down arrow in the list box under special and select First line
4. Specify by how far the paragraph is to be indented from the margin in “By”
text box.
5. Click OK to apply the indent and close the dialog box

Hanging Indent
 1. Select the paragraph to be indented.
2. On Format menu, click Paragraph.
3. click the down arrow in the list box under special and select hanging
4. Specify by how far the paragraph is to be indented from the margin in the By text
box.
5. Click OK to apply the indent and close the dialog box.

Full Indent
1. Select the paragraph to be indented or position the cursor anywhere in the
paragraph.
2. From the formatting toolbar, click the Increase or Decrease indent button

Settings tabs
- Tabs stops refer to constant intervals for an insertion pointer when the tab key
is pressed. Tabs are used to create data in column form. By default the tab stop
is set at 0.5 of an inch.

- To change the default setting:

1. On the Format menu, click Tabs
2. In the Tab dialog box ,enter a new value for tab stop in Tab stop position
3. Choose the type of tab either left, centre or right.
4. If need be specify the tab leader option.
5. Click the Set button then click OK

Setting tabs using the ruler

- The easiest way to set tabs is by using the ruler. On the left corner of the
horizontal ruler is a tab alignment button that lets the user select the type of
tab.

To set the tab using the ruler:

1. Click on the tab button to choose the required tab type. Notice that the tab type keeps
on changing as you click the button.
2. Set the tab stop by clicking where you want it to be on the ruler.
3. Drag the tab stop. The table below gives an explanation of each button.

Button Name Purpose

Left tab Text is aligned

Centre tab Text is centred

 Bar tab Insert a vertical line at stop
and align text to the right of
the line

Decimal tab Text is aligned at decimal

character

Right tab Text is aligned to the right

Line spacing
- Line spacing refers to the vertical distance between lines of text. The default
line spacing is single spacing.
- This type of spacing accommodates the characters in a text leaving a small
extra space between lines.
- Characters spacing on the other hand, refers to the space between the
characters in the text.
To change line spacing:
1. Highlight the text.
2. On Format menu, click Paragraph.
3. Click the down arrow from the line spacing list box and select the spacing required
e.g. double, 1.5. etc.
4. Click OK to effect the changes

Bullets and numbering

- Bullets and numbers are used to create ordered list.

To add bullets or numbers:

1. Highlight the text.
2. On the Format menu, click Bullets and Numbering.
3. In the dialog box, click Bulleted, Numbered or Outline Numbered tab.
4. Select the type of bullets or numbering, then click OK.

Page and document formatting

- Page and document formatting refers to formatting individual pages or the
entire document.
- This includes subdividing a page into columns, page setup, page numbering,
inserting headers and footers, inserting footnotes and endnotes etc.