In this lesson, we have examples of both type of documents.

The first being informative with a clear structure and conveying information.
The second type being creative, where we use color and variety to convey
information.
Of course, an informational document can be treated like a creative document but it
would
require excess time and effort to bring it to that extra level.
So it's up to you to decide whether it's worth the trade-off to invest the time and
effort into making it more creative or more informative.
Before you begin your design process, it's always important to understand the
purpose
of the document you're creating.
No matter which type of document you're creating, there are some design principles
that must
always be followed.
The first one is font style.
You should always have the same font throughout the document unless it's necessary
to change
it somewhere for effect.
These corporations or schools will require a certain type of font, so make sure you
follow
the guidelines if they're set up for you.
The second style element is the color palette.
If you're a corporation, you're going to want to use your corporate colors.
The use of a color palette allows you to add variety but keep everything coherent
and
consistent together.
Unless you're a professional designer, we recommend using the color schemes that
are
provided in Microsoft Word, or you can go online and search for a palette that is
coherent and added to Microsoft Word.
Number three is the use of white space.
Always leave considerable white space in the document, which makes it easier to
read and
easier on the eyes as well, particularly between sections and between paragraphs
you
always want to have sufficient white space.
Number four is coherence.
Coherence means that the whole design ties together.
That means headings and subheadings are always the same font size and color, but
they are
different from each other.
So all H1 level headings are the same size and color.
All H level two headings are a smaller size or a different color but consistent
with each
other and so on, et cetera, as you work through the document.
You should generally have a good idea beforehand of the common type of bold
italicize and underline
or highlighting that you want to use to create a differentiation between heading
levels.
A good report needs to have a clear and concise sense of structure to guide readers
through
the document.
This can be achieved through the use of three items, headings, headers and footers,
and
a table of contents.
As well as subheadings should give readers a basic idea of what the section they
are about
to read is all about.
Readers when skimming through headings should be able to quickly locate the
information they
need and get an overall sense of the entire document.
To allow readers to skim through a report, headings need to stand out in a larger
bolder
font and sometimes even use a different color.
Readers and footers are an important part of giving structure to a report.
They appear at the top and bottom margins of each page and can be used to give
important
information such as the page number or the section of the document that they are
currently in.
The section heading is particularly useful when you have a long report with
different
sections that span multiple pages.
Finally, the table of contents consolidates all of the headings, subheadings, and
paragraphs
into a succinct summary that tells the reader which page the information they are
seeking
is on.
For digital documents, the table of contents can be linked so that you can simply
click on
a table of contents heading and jump right to that section of the document.
This makes things very easy to navigate when reading the document on a computer.
Word, layout, and setup.
In this session, we have several objectives.
We'll begin by setting up our document and adding our corporate theme colors so we
can
grab these colors easily in later steps.
Then we'll look at ways to set the default font styles that can be applied
throughout
the document.
Next, we'll set up paragraph and line spacing to make sure that there is proper
alignment
and the right amount of space between lines and paragraphs.
Finally, we'll use headings and page breaks to separate sections in this document.
Please open up the downloadable file called word demo dash blank.
Before we get started on everything, let's do a brief overview of the ribbon.
This part, where all the functions are, is called the ribbon area.
We are currently under the home ribbon.

Click on the footer and break the link.

In the header, we want to put the logo of the company, so let's insert the CFI logo
again
and adjust the size.
We also want the header to display the name of the section.
For longer documents that have sections spanning multiple pages, it can be very
helpful to remind
the reader which section of the document they are currently reading in.
In the header and footer section, using tabs, we can have text left, center, and
right aligned
in the same line.
The logo is left aligned.
Let's adjust the ruler to make it zero.
When I press tab, the cursor moves to the center and I can type anything I want
here.
It will be center aligned.
When I press tab again, it will be right aligned.
See these black markings on the ruler here?
These control the position of text.
We want it to be completely right aligned, so move the right marking to 16.5.
On the right side, I want the section title here.
Instead of typing in the section title for each section, you can select quick parts
and
field.
Go down the list and find style ref and select heading one on the right side.
This way, the section title appears in the header and you can scroll down and see
that
it reflects the section title and automatically updates.
Now let's move to the footer.
We want to have a page number in the footer.
You can add that to the middle.
Let's use the tab again.
Move the marker to the middle, which would be 8.25.
Under page number, I find it easier to format if you insert it into the current
position.
Let's move our cursor to the right side and type private and confidential.
We want to bold that and move the marker to the far right.
Next software automatically detects if a URL is typed and it turns it into a
hyperlink
so that it can be clicked on and bring up the web page.
But you can also embed the link into a picture.
For text, select a text that you want to turn into a link.
Right click and then select link.
To link it to a web page, you type or paste the URL here.
For pictures, for example, let's turn this logo into a link.
You right click on the picture, select link, and type or paste the URL in the same
location.
Hyperlinks can also link to documents on this computer as well as locations in this
document.
The table of contents is an application of linking to locations within the
document.
You can change the background of the document to a picture or have a watermark
placed throughout
the document.
Under the design ribbon, select watermark and then custom watermark.
Let's choose a text watermark.
We can change the text to read confidential and press OK.
You will see that the watermark appears on all of the pages of the document.
If you only want it in the contents section of the document, then undo the
watermark and
go into headers and footers.
Repeat what we did previously, but in the header.
Design, watermark.
Now the watermark only appears on pages 3 and after.
We've made all the changes we want in the headers.
Now we want to go through every page and check if there's any formatting issues.
All the pages look fine except for the pages that are in landscape orientation.
The position of the headers and footers are a bit messed up.
Let's go into the header editor on page 13 and break the link with the previous
section.
Don't make any edits yet.
We also need to break the link between pages 13 and 14 because we don't want the
changes
on page 13 to reflect on the following pages.
Now we can adjust the position of the headers by dragging the markings into the
correct locations.
Do the same for the appendix section.
Break the link with the previous section and break the link with the following
section.
Adjust the markings.
Now finish checking the rest of the document.
Nothing looks out of place anymore.
We're now completely done with formatting.
Proofreading Tools.
In this section of the course, we'll cover some of the most useful built-in
proofreading
tools in Word to help you audit your final product.
We'll look at how to use comments for revision as well.
We'll use the spelling and grammar as well as Word count functions to check for
errors.
We'll also show you the read aloud function and how to use that.
Lastly, we'll use track changes and compare documents functions to allow others to
proofread
the document for us.
Comments can be a useful tool when you want to make a reminder for yourself or the
readers
or proofreaders of the document.
You can do this by highlighting some text and right-click and then new comment.
A side window appears and you can type your comment in there.
When someone else reads it, they can reply under your comment.
When you're done with your comment, you can either resolve it, which grays out the
comment
but leaves the comment there for you to revisit it if needed, or you can delete the
comment
entirely.
When all comments in this document are deleted, the comment side window disappears.
Remember to delete all your comments before printing or exporting to a PDF because
comments
tend to mess up the formatting of the document.
You've probably noticed that there are a few squiggly lines under some of the text
in this
document.
That's Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check automatically detecting
mistakes.
The default option only finds simple grammar mistakes, but there are options to
find
more advanced grammatical errors.
Open up options by going into file, under proofing, the writing style option should
show grammar
by default.
We can change it to grammar and refining, as well as customize the settings on what
type
of grammar mistakes we want Microsoft Word to catch.
Basic grammar mistakes are already checked, but we can also look for other things
like passive
voice, with unknown actor, colloquial terms, quotation, punctuation, and cliches
even.
Change the settings based on your own writing style.
Select OK.
Also, check the box that shows readability statistics.
Let's close options and use the spelling and grammar check in Word.
Spellcheck suggests that the last sentence of the first paragraph be changed to
have a question
mark.
Unfortunately, we don't want the paragraph to end in a sentence with a question
mark, so
instead of accepting word suggestion, we can change the document ourselves.
By removing the what in the question, the sentence is fixed.
Word automatically detects that the problem is solved, but then raises another
issue.
Put the cursor on the underlying words, and you can see that word deems the comma
before
is unnecessary.
Double click on the suggestion made by word, and the grammar is fixed.
Keep on doing this for the rest of the document.
When the proofreading is done, word produces the readability statistics that we
asked it
to do when we changed the options.
It shows the word count, which can also be found in the bottom left corner of the
document.
It shows some averages, and the most important data is in the readability section.
The ideal score for the reading ease of an average document, according to research,
is
around 60.