Formatting(Character formatting and Paragraph formatting):

FORMATTING TEXT:

Formatting text refers to the editing text, making text attractive and presentable.

User can change text style, text size etc. User can apply bold, italic and underline options on text.

• You have to select all text before applying text formatting options.

   You can select whole text by using shortcut key Ctrl+A.

• You can use the following steps to select text.

1. You can double-click on a word to select it.

2. You can triple-click on a paragraph to select it.

3. You can use Ctrl+click on a sentence to select it.

There are basically two types of formatting:

• Character formatting, and

• Paragraph formatting

CHARACTER FORMATTING:

Character formatting is the formatting that we can apply to any single character or to a group of characters.

It has the following options.

Font: This will decide the appearance of our text.

Font Style: We can make change the text style i.e. Bold, Italic or both.

Size: This increases or decreases the size of the text– the size measured in points (72 points =1 inch).

Font Color: We can apply colours to the characters or text for printing the final document.

Underline: We can highlight text by using underline option.

Effects: We can also apply different effects to our text. Two most common effects are Superscript and Subscript. The 2 in 32 is a superscript. To change a character as superscript,you need to select only that character and click the box against Superscript. Similarly 1 in T1 is a subscript.

PARAGRAPH FORMATTING:

In MS Word, we can begin new paragraph by pressing enter key. We can format paragraph by editing its alignment, indentation, paragraph spacing and line spacing.

Some paragraph formatting options are as follows:

Alignment:

Alignment refers to the position of text with respect to left and right margins.

We can change the alignment of text by use of the alignment buttons in the paragraph group under the home tab.

There are four alignment options.

1. Align Left: Align left option places the text to the left margin. We can use shortcut key (Ctrl+L) for left align.

2. Center: Center option places the text in the center of the left and right margins. User can use shortcut key (Ctrl+E) for center align.

3. Align Right: Align Right option places the text towards the right margin. We can use shortcut key(Ctrl+R) for right align.

4. Justify: Justify option places the text in a way that the text is equally distributed between both the margins. We can use shortcut key (Ctrl+J) for justify align.

Indentation:

Indentation is the distance of the paragraph from left margin or right margin.

Some indentations are:

1. Left Indentation: Left Indentation is the distance of the paragraph from the left margin.

2. Right Indentation: Right Indentation is the distance of the paragraph from the right margin.

Setting indentation:

Use these steps to set the indentation for the text.

Step 1 Select the text to be indented.

Step 2 Clicks on the Page Layout tab.

Step 2 Specify the values for Left and Right Indent in the Paragraph group under Page Layout tab.

More indentation options:

To set more indentation follows the given steps.

Step 1 Click on the Dialog Box Launcher button at the bottom-right corner of the Paragraph group under Page Layout tab. The Paragraph dialog box display.

Step 2 Enter the value for Left and Right Indents or choose one of the Special category indents and specify its value.

Line Spacing:

Line spacing is the space between the lines of text in a paragraph of a Word document. We can increase or decrease this space by following steps:

Step 1 Select the text or the paragraph.

Step 2 Click on the line spacing option in the paragraph group. A drop-down list will be appearing.

Step 3 Select the space that you want from the drop-down list. Space will be inserted.

Paragraph Spacing:

Paragraph spacing is the space before or after a paragraph. We can set paragraph spacing by following steps:

Step 1 Select the paragraph to be spacing or just place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph.

Step 2 Clicks on the Page Layout tab.

Step 3 Enter the desired values in the before and after spin boxes under spacing in the paragraph group.

More Line and Paragraph Spacing Options:

To specify the values for line and paragraph spacing, we can follow the given steps:

Step 1 Click on Line Spacing Option in the Line and Paragraph Spacing drop-down list in the Paragraph group under the Home tab. The Paragraph dialog box displayed.

Step 2 Choose the desired settings in the Spacing section of the dialog box.

Step 3 Click OK button to apply the settings.

      

       Some other links:

• What is MS Word?(How to Start,New document, Save, Open, Close):
• Formatting(Character formatting and Paragraph formatting):
• Column Formatting,Find & Replace,Page- Margin,Orientation,Size & Print:
• Inserting Picture, WordArt, Shapes, Symbols in MS Word:
• Data- Input, Edit, Select and Modifying in MS Excel:
• Formatting a Worksheet, Home Tab Features in MS Excel:
• Inserting Charts, WordArt, Shapes, ClipArt in MS Excel: