Word 2007: The Missing Manual

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Every Word project you create—whether it's a personal letter, a TV sitcom script, or a thesis in microbiology—begins and ends the same way. You start by creating a document, and you end by saving your work. Sounds simple, but to manage your Word documents effectively, you need to know these basics and beyond. This chapter shows you all the different ways to create a new Word document—like starting from an existing document or adding text to a predesigned template—and how to choose the best one for your particular project.

You'll also learn how to work faster and smarter by changing your view of your document. If you want, you can use Word's Outline view when you're brainstorming, and then switch to Print view when you're ready for hard copy. This chapter gets you up and running with these fundamental tools so you can focus on the important stuff—your words.

If you've used Word before, then you're probably familiar with opening and saving documents. Still, you may want to skim this chapter to catch up on the differences between this version of Word and the ghosts of Word past. You'll grasp some of the big changes just by examining the figures. For more detail, check out the gray boxes and the notes and tips—like this one!

The first time you launch Word after installation, the program asks you to confirm your name and initials. This isn't Microsoft's nefarious plan to pin you down: Word uses this information to identify documents that you create and modify. Word uses your initials to mark your edits when you review and add comments to Word documents that other people send to you (Section 16.3).

You have three primary ways to fire up Word, so use whichever method you find quickest:

Start menu. The Start button in the lower-left corner of your screen gives you access to all programs on your PC—Word included. To start Word, choose Start → All Programs → Microsoft Office → Microsoft Office Word.

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The first time you launch Word after installation, the program asks you to confirm your name and initials. This isn't Microsoft's nefarious plan to pin you down: Word uses this information to identify documents that you create and modify. Word uses your initials to mark your edits when you review and add comments to Word documents that other people send to you (Section 16.3).

You have three primary ways to fire up Word, so use whichever method you find quickest:

Start menu. The Start button in the lower-left corner of your screen gives you access to all programs on your PC—Word included. To start Word, choose Start → All Programs → Microsoft Office → Microsoft Office Word.
Quick Launch toolbar. The Quick Launch toolbar at the bottom of your screen (just to the right of the Start menu) is a great place to start programs you use frequently. Microsoft modestly assumes that you'll be using Word a lot, so it usually installs the Word icon in the Quick Launch toolbar. To start using Word, just click the W icon, and voilá!

When you don't see the Quick Launch toolbar, here's how to display it: On the bar at the bottom of your screen, right-click an empty spot. From the menu that pops up, choose Toolbars → Quick Launch. When you're done, icons for some of your programs appear in the bottom bar. A single click fires up the program.
Opening a Word document. Once you've created some Word documents, this method is fastest of all, since you don't have to start Word as a separate step. Just open an existing Word document, and Word starts itself. Try going to Start → My Recent Documents, and then, from the list of files, choose a Word document. You can also double-click the document's icon on the desktop or wherever it lives on your PC.

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When you start Word without opening an existing document, the program gives you an empty one to work in. If you're eager to put words to page, then type away. Sooner or later, though, you'll want to start another new document. Word gives you three ways to do so:

Figure 1-1: When you start Word 2007 for the first time, it may look a little top-heavy. The ribbon takes up more real estate than the old menus and toolbars. This change may not matter if you have a nice big monitor. But if you want to reclaim some of that space, you can hide the ribbon by double-clicking the active tab. Later, when you need to see the ribbon commands, just click a tab.

Creating a new blank document. When you're preparing a simple document—like a two-page essay, a note for the babysitter, or a press release—a plain, unadorned page is fine. Or, when you're just brainstorming and you're not sure what you want the final document to look like, you probably want to start with a blank slate or use one of Word's templates (more on that in a moment) to provide structure for your text.
Creating a document from an existing document. For letters, resumes, and other documents that require more formatting, why reinvent the wheel? You can save time by using an existing document as a starting point (Section 1.2.2). When you have a letter format that you like, you can use it over and over by editing the contents.
Creating a document from a template (Section 1.2.3). Use a template when you need a professional design for a complex document, like a newsletter, a contract, or meeting minutes. Templates are a lot like forms—the margins, formatting, and graphics are already in place. All you do is fill in your text.

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If you've mastered creating a document from an existing document and creating a document from a template, you'll find that opening an existing document is a snap. The steps are nearly identical.

Choose Office button → Open (Alt+F, O). In the Open window (Figure 1-6), navigate to the folder and file you want to open.

The Open window starts out showing your My Documents folder, since that's where Word suggests you save your files. When your document's in a more exotic location, click the My Computer icon, and then navigate to the proper folder from there.

When you open a document you've used recently, you may see its name right on the Office button → Recent Documents menu. If so, simply click to open it without a trip to the Open dialog box.
With the file selected, click Open in the lower-right corner.

The Open box goes away and your document opens in Word. You're all set to get to work. Just remember, when you save this document (Alt+F, S or Ctrl+S), you write over the previous file. Essentially, you create a new, improved, and only copy of the file you just opened. If you don't want to write over the existing document, use the Save As command (Alt+F, A), and then type a new name in the File Name text box.

Figure 1-6: This Open dialog box shows the contents of the tale of two cities folder, according to the "Look in" box at the top. The file tale of two cities. docx is selected, as you can see in the "File name box" at the bottom of the window. By clicking Open, Mr. Dickens is ready to go to work.

Opening a file in Word doesn't mean you're limited to documents created in Word. You can choose documents created in other programs from the Files of Type drop-down menu at the bottom of the Open dialog box. Word then shows you that type of document in the main part of the window. You can open Outlook messages (.msg), Web pages (.htm or .html), or files from other word processors (.rtf, .mcw, .wps).

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Now that you know a handful of ways to create and open Word documents, it's time to take a look around the establishment. You may think a document's a document—just look at it straight on and get your work done. It's surprising, though, how changing your view of the page can help you work faster and smarter. When you're working with a very long document, you can change to Outline view and peruse just your document's headlines without the paragraph text. In Outline view, you get a better feeling for the manuscript as a whole. Likewise, when you're working on a document that's headed for the Web, it makes sense to view the page as it will appear in a browser. Other times, you may want to have two documents open on your screen at once (or on each of your two monitors, you lucky dog), to make it easy to cut and paste text from one to the other.

The key to working with Word's different view options is to match the view to the job at hand. Once you get used to switching views, you'll find lots of reasons to change your point of view. Find the tools you need on the View tab (Figure 1-7). To get there, click the View tab (Alt+W) on the ribbon (near the top of Word's window). The tab divides the view commands into four groups:

Document Views. These commands change the big picture. For the most part, use these when you want to view a document in a dramatically different way: two pages side by side, Outline view, Web layout view, and so on.
Show/Hide. The Show/Hide commands display and conceal Word tools like rulers and gridlines. These tools don't show when you print your document; they're just visual aids that help you when you're working in Word.
Zoom. As you can guess, the Zoom tools let you choose between a close-up and a long shot of your document. Getting in close makes your words easier to read and helps prevent eyestrain. But zooming out makes scrolling faster and helps you keep your eye on the big picture.

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From the earliest days of personal computing, the watchword has been "save early, save often." There's nothing more frustrating than working half the day and then having the Great American Novel evaporate into the digital ether because your power goes out. So, here are some tips to protect your work from disasters human-made and natural:

Name and save your document shortly after you first create it. You'll see the steps to do so later in this section.
Get in the habit of doing a quick save with Alt+F, S (think File Save) when you pause to think or get up to go to the kitchen for a snack. (Note for old-timers: Ctrl+S still works for a quick save too.)
If you're leaving your computer for an extended period of time, save and close your document with Alt+F, C (think File Close).

Ribbons, buttons, and menus are all well and good when you're doing something new or complicated. But when you know where you're going, a good keyboard shortcut can save time. Word 2007 has dozens of keyboard shortcuts. If you don't have your favorites memorized, use the Alt key to reveal them.

Press the Alt key, and you see small badges with letters and numbers pop up next to menus and buttons. These are your shortcuts. If you're looking for the keyboard shortcut to close your document, follow these steps:

Press and release the Alt key to show the keyboard shortcut badges.

When you do this, the badges appear over menu items and ribbon buttons. (The Alt key acts as a toggle. If you change your mind and don't want to use a shortcut, then press the Alt key again and you're back in normal typing mode.)
Press F to open the Office menu.

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Despite advanced features like grammar checking, indexing, and image editing, Word is still, at heart, a word processor. You probably spend most of your time entering text and massaging it into shape. Amidst all the slick graphics and geewhiz automation, Word 2007 makes it faster and easier than ever for you to enter and edit your text. A quick read through this chapter will reveal timesaving techniques that'll help you spend less time hunting, pecking, and clicking, so you can move on to the important stuff—polishing your prose and sharing it with the world.

This chapter starts with a quick review of the basics—putting words on the page and moving around your document. You'll also learn how to cut, copy, paste, and generally put text exactly where you want it. To top it off, you'll explore the Find and Replace features and learn how to save keystrokes using Word's Quick Parts.

Whenever you're entering text into Word, the insertion point is where all the action takes place (Figure 2-1). It's that vertical, blinking bar that's a little taller than a capital letter. When you press a key, a letter appears at the insertion point, and the blinking bar moves a space to the right. To type in a different spot, just click somewhere in your text, and the insertion point moves to that location.

Press Shift to type capitals or to enter the various punctuation marks you see above the numbers keys (!@#$*&^). When you want to type several words in uppercase letters, press the Caps Lock key. You don't have to keep holding it down. It works like a toggle. Press it once and you're in caps mode. Press it again and you're back to lowercase.

The Backspace key and the Delete key both erase characters, but there's a difference: The Backspace erases the characters behind the insertion point, while the Delete key eliminates characters in front.

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Whenever you're entering text into Word, the insertion point is where all the action takes place (Figure 2-1). It's that vertical, blinking bar that's a little taller than a capital letter. When you press a key, a letter appears at the insertion point, and the blinking bar moves a space to the right. To type in a different spot, just click somewhere in your text, and the insertion point moves to that location.

Press Shift to type capitals or to enter the various punctuation marks you see above the numbers keys (!@#$*&^). When you want to type several words in uppercase letters, press the Caps Lock key. You don't have to keep holding it down. It works like a toggle. Press it once and you're in caps mode. Press it again and you're back to lowercase.

The Backspace key and the Delete key both erase characters, but there's a difference: The Backspace erases the characters behind the insertion point, while the Delete key eliminates characters in front.

Figure 2-1: As you type, the characters appear at the insertion point. Sometimes people call the insertion point the "cursor," but the insertion point and the mouse cursor are actually two different things. You use the mouse cursor to choose commands from the ribbon, select text, and place the insertion point in your document. The cursor can roam all over the Word window, but the insertion point remains hard at work, blinking patiently, waiting for you to enter the next character.

Word's cursor changes its appearance like a chameleon, hinting at what will happen when you click the mouse button. When you move the cursor over the ribbon, it turns into an arrow, indicating that you can point and click a command. Hold it over your text, and it looks like an I-beam, giving you a precise tool for placing the insertion point between characters.

But if all you do with Word is type, you're missing out on 95 percent of its potential. What makes Word a 21st-century tool is the ease with which you can edit text, as described next.

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Even among the best writers, the first draft needs a lot of editing before it's ready for public viewing. You'll need to change words, delete boring parts, and move sentences (or even whole paragraphs) to reorganize your text.

In Word, as in most programs, you have to select something before you can do anything to it. Say you want to change the word "good" to "awesome": Select "good," and then type your new, improved adjective in its place. To delete or move a block of text, first select it, and then use the mouse, keyboard, or ribbon commands to do the deed. Since selection is such a fundamental editing skill, Word gives you many different and new (see Figure 2-5) ways to do it. If you've been dragging your mouse around for the past 20 years, you're lagging behind. This section shows you some timesaving selection techniques—with and without the mouse.

Most of the time, you type in insert mode. Put your cursor in the middle of a sentence, start typing, and Word inserts the letters you type at that point. Existing text scoots along to the right to make room.

In the other mode—overtype mode—every time you type a character, it writes over and erases the next one. Before Word 2007, most people stumbled upon overtype mode by accident. They'd click in the middle of a sentence and start typing—and the letters to the right of the cursor started to disappear! In those earlier versions of Word, pressing the Insert key threw you right into overtype mode. It was an easy mistake to make, since Insert is just above the muchused Delete key (on most keyboards).

Microsoft made overtype mode harder to get to, so people would not accidentally type over all their hard work.

Now the Insert key doesn't do anything unless you make a few tweaks to Word's settings.

If you miss that old overtype mode and want to toggle back and forth with the Insert key, follow these steps.

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Using that nice blue scrollbar on the right side of your document is the most obvious way to navigate your document. And if your mouse has a wheel on it, then using it to scroll is pretty speedy too. But when your document's more than a few pages long, trying to scroll to the exact point you're looking for is just plain inefficient.

Word's most powerful ways of boogieing around your document don't involve scrolling at all. You can use the keyboard to hop from place to place. For really long documents, as with long journeys, the best way to get around is by using landmarks. For example, you can check all the graphics in a document by jumping directly from one to the next. Or you can go directly to a specific heading in a 400page business report by telling Word to find it for you. You can even create your own landmarks using Word's bookmarking feature. Word's got the tools, and this section tells you how to use 'em.

If you're working with a large document, then Word has some other great ways to find your way around. You can use Outline view (View → Documents View → Outline) to easily navigate between chapter and section headings (Section 1.4.1). The Document Map (View → Documents View → Document Map) shows a similar view in the bar along the left side of your document (Section 1.4.3). If your pages include distinctive graphics, then the Thumbnail View (View → Show/Hide → Thumbnails) can help you find the spot you want by eye (Section 9.1).

You've heard it before: You lose time every time you take your hands off the keyboard to fumble for the mouse. For short jaunts especially, get in the habit of using these keyboard commands to move the insertion point:

Move left or right. Left/right arrow keys.
Move to the beginning or the end of a line. Home/End. (On most keyboards, these keys are just above the arrow keys. On most laptops, the Home and End keys are either along the right side or in the top-right corner.)

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When it comes time to edit your text and shape it into a masterpiece of communication, the job is all about cutting, copying, and pasting. Compared to actually using scissors and paste (which is what writers and editors did in the pre-PC era), Word makes manipulating text almost effortless. You're free to experiment, moving words, sentences, and paragraphs around until you've got everything just right.

By now, you've probably figured that most Word functions can be done in at least two ways—by keyboard and by mouse. That's certainly the case when it comes to the basic editing functions, as shown in the table. If you're typing away and don't want to take your hands off the keyboard, then you'll probably want to use the keyboard shortcuts, which can all be performed with a flick of your left hand.

Command	Ribbon Command	Ribbon Icon	Keyboard Shortcut
Cut	Home → Clipboard → Cut	Scissors	Ctrl+X
Copy	Home → Clipboard → Copy	2 pages	Ctrl+C
Paste	Home → Clipboard → Paste

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Scanning every word of your 400-page novel to find the exact spot where you first mentioned Madame DeFarge is drudgery with a capital D. Fortunately, Word performs this task quickly and without whining or demanding overtime pay. What's more, it's just as easy to find and then replace text. Suppose you decide to change the name of the character from Madame DeFarge to Madame de Stael. Simple—here's how to do a Find and Replace:

Open the Replace dialog box (Figure 2-20). For example, press Ctrl+H.

You have many ways to open the Replace dialog box, as explained in the box in Section 2.6. If your hands are on the keyboard, then Ctrl+H is the fastest.

When the dialog box opens, you see tabs at the top for each of the panels: Find, Replace, and Go To. The controls and options under the Find and Replace tabs are nearly identical. The main difference is that the Replace tab includes two text boxes—"Replace with" as well as "Find what."
In the "Find what" box, type the text you want to find, and, in the "Replace with" box, type the replacement text.

For example, type Madame DeFarge in "Find what" and Madame de Stael in "Replace with."

The "Find what" is a drop-down box that remembers your past searches. So the next time you go to this box, Madame DeFarge will be there waiting for you.
If you wish, click More to reveal additional Find options.

When you click More, the box expands, and you see a number of additional controls that can fine-tune your search. For example, if you're searching for "Madame DeFarge" but you don't know how it's capitalized, then make sure the Match Case checkbox is turned off. That way, Word finds every occurrence even if you didn't capitalize it the same way throughout. For an explanation of all the Search options, see the box in Section 2.6.

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Suppose your company has an extremely long name and an even longer address (complete with 9-digit Zip code). Now say you type in the name and address about three times an hour. Wouldn't it be great to just type address and have Word fill in the whole shebang? That's exactly the kind of magic you can do with Word 2007's Quick Parts feature. You can have Word memorize whole chunks of text, and then spit them back out when you type an abbreviation word followed by the F3 key.

Quick Parts evolved from the AutoText feature found in earlier versions of Word. AutoText was one of the program's most overlooked and underused features. Quick Parts work like this: You store text, graphics, or anything else you've created in Word in a Quick Part and give it a name, preferably something short and memorable. When you want to retrieve the Quick Part, simply type that name, and then press F3. Word replaces the name with the entire contents of the Quick Part. Few keystrokes, mucho text.

Computers are dumb. They don't know that, if you type bird in the Find dialog box, you're looking for flying things, not some Mr. Birdley. So Microsoft gives you the Find and Replace dialog boxes with some options to help you make them smarter.

Here's what the options do when you turn on their checkboxes:

Match case. Find shows you only words that exactly match the uppercase and lowercase letters of your search entry. So, DeFarge finds "DeFarge" but not "defarge."
Find whole words only. Find only shows you complete words that match your entry. For example, if you enter some, the search shows you the word "some" but not the word "somewhere."

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Your document makes a first impression before anyone reads a word. The paper size, color, and borders give the reader an overall sense of the document's theme and quality. Margins, the text layout, and perhaps a watermark send further visual clues. Making the right choices about your document setup helps you send the right message to your readers. Say you're working on an invitation; using a smaller, elegant paper size and adding a subtle border lets your recipients know right away that they're in for a sophisticated event.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to set and change all the page layout features that people notice first, starting with paper size, orientation, and margins. You'll also learn how to adjust margins and make changes to the headers and footers. Finally, you'll learn how to work with multiple columns and how to control Word's hyphenation inclinations.

When you edit a document in Word, what you see on your computer screen looks almost exactly like the final printed page. To get that correct preview, Word needs to know some details about the paper you're using, like the page size and orientation. You have two different ways to change the page settings: using the Page Layout tab (Figure 3-1) or the Page Setup dialog box (Figure 3-2). When you click the Page Layout tab, the ribbon's buttons and icons change to show you options related to designing your page as a whole. Your options are organized in five groups: Themes, Page Setup, Page Background, Paragraph, and Arrange.

Word gives you two ways to set options: through ribbon menus and dialog boxes. In general, the ribbon's drop-down menus give you access to quick, predesigned solutions, while dialog boxes give you greater control over more details. Menu options usually focus on one or two settings, while dialog boxes are much more complex affairs, letting you change several settings at once.

The Page Layout → Page Setup → Size menu, shown in Figure 3-1, lets you choose a standard paper size with one click. But what if you're not using one of the standard paper sizes on the Size menu? In that case, click More Paper Sizes (at the bottom of the Size menu).

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When you edit a document in Word, what you see on your computer screen looks almost exactly like the final printed page. To get that correct preview, Word needs to know some details about the paper you're using, like the page size and orientation. You have two different ways to change the page settings: using the Page Layout tab (Figure 3-1) or the Page Setup dialog box (Figure 3-2). When you click the Page Layout tab, the ribbon's buttons and icons change to show you options related to designing your page as a whole. Your options are organized in five groups: Themes, Page Setup, Page Background, Paragraph, and Arrange.

Word gives you two ways to set options: through ribbon menus and dialog boxes. In general, the ribbon's drop-down menus give you access to quick, predesigned solutions, while dialog boxes give you greater control over more details. Menu options usually focus on one or two settings, while dialog boxes are much more complex affairs, letting you change several settings at once.

The Page Layout → Page Setup → Size menu, shown in Figure 3-1, lets you choose a standard paper size with one click. But what if you're not using one of the standard paper sizes on the Size menu? In that case, click More Paper Sizes (at the bottom of the Size menu).

The Page Setup dialog box opens to the Paper tab (Figure 3-2). Here, you can customize the page size—by entering numbers in the Width and Height text boxes—and tweak other paper-related settings. These other settings, such as the Paper Source settings (which let you tell your printer which tray to take the paper from), are typical of the fine-tuning controls you find in dialog boxes.

On the Margins and Layout tabs, you can control your document's margins, orientation, headers, and footers. You'll learn more about all of these settings later in this chapter.

If you want to quickly change the page size to a standard paper size like letter, legal, or tabloid, the Page Layout → Page Setup → Size menu is the way to go (Figure 3-1). With one quick click, you change your document's size. If there's text in your document, Word reshapes it to fit the page. Say you change a 10-page document from letter size to the longer legal-size page. Word spreads out your text over the extra space, and you'll have fewer pages overall.

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Page margins are more than just empty space. The right page margins make your document more readable. Generous page margins make text look inviting and give reviewers room for notes and comments. With narrower margins, you can squeeze more words on the page; however, having too many words per line makes your document difficult to read. With really long lines it's a challenge for readers to track from the end of one line back to the beginning of the next. Margins become even more important for complex documents, such as books or magazines with facing pages. With Word's margins and page setup tools, you can tackle a whole range of projects.

Word's Margins menu (Page Layout → Page Setup → Margins) gives you a way to quickly apply standard margins to your pages. The preset margins are a mixed bag of settings from a half inch to one and a quarter inches. For most documents, you can choose one of these preset margins and never look back (Figure 3-4).

Figure 3-4: The Margins menu provides some standard settings such as the ever popular one inch all the way around. Word calls this favorite of businesses and schools the Normal margin. If you've customized your margins, your most recent settings appear at the top of the menu.

For each of the preset margin options you see dimensions and an icon that hints at the look of the page.

Normal gives you one inch on all sides of the page.
Narrow margins work well with multicolumn documents, giving you a little more room for each column.
Moderate margins with three-quarter inches left and right let you squeeze a few more words in each line.

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While every document has a paper size, orientation, and margins, Word has some specialized formatting features that you'll use less frequently. You'll find the options for watermarks, page color, and borders in the middle of the Page Layout tab. These tools let you get a little fancy.

A true watermark is created in a process where a water-coated metal stamp imprints a design into the paper's surface during manufacture. The design is usually a paper company's logo. The presence of a watermark can also indicate a document's authenticity. Word can't create a real watermark, but it can replicate the effect by printing one faintly on the page, seemingly beneath the text (Figure 3-6). A watermark could be your company logo, or it could be words like CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, or DO NOT COPY, emblazoned diagonally across the page.

Figure 3-6: In Word, a watermark is often a word that tells your reader something about the document such as Confidential, Draft, or Sample.

Suppose you'd like to have your company logo appear as a classy watermark on your document. Using your logo picture file as a watermark takes just a few steps:

Go to Page Layout → Page Background → Watermark.

When the Watermark menu drops down, you see a dozen predesigned watermark options. You can choose one of these options, or you can take a few more steps to customize your watermark.
At the bottom of the menu, click Custom Watermarks to open the Printed Watermark dialog box (Figure 3-7).

The Printed Watermark box has three radio button options arranged vertically: No watermark, Picture watermark, and Text watermark.

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Headers and footers are where Word puts the bits of information that appear at the top or bottom of every page of most multipage documents (Figure 3-12). They remind you of the page number, chapter title, and so on, as you read along. For business memos and reports, headers are a great place to repeat the document's subject and publication date. (If you're the author of the report and want your boss to know, consider adding your name under the title.)

Word's fields are bits of text automated with the help of some behind-the-scenes computer code. You can insert fields into your document to show information that's likely to change, like today's date or a page number. Because it's a field, this text updates itself automatically.

Unlike some of the other features in this chapter, the header and footer tools are on the Insert tab (not the Page Layout tab). As you can see in Figure 3-13, three menus appear in the Header & Footer group—Header, Footer, and Page Number. Each of the menus provides predesigned page elements, known in Word-speak as Building Blocks. So, for example, if you select a header Building Block, it may add text and several graphic elements to the top of your page.

Figure 3-12: Document headers give the reader additional information that's not found in the text. For example, the header for a business memo can include the subject, date, and page number. Word lets you enter this information manually or with the help of fields that automatically update the information.

Figure 3-13: The Header, Footer, and Page Number menus help you insert predesigned page elements, known as Building Blocks, into your document. You can see what each one looks like right on the menu. At the bottom of the menu, you find options to create (or remove) custom headers, footers, and page numbers.

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Word makes it easy to work with multiple newspaper-style columns. Instead of your having to use tabs or spaces to separate the column one line at a time, Word lets you set up the column guidelines and then type away. When you type text in a multicolumn layout, your words appear in the left column first. After you reach the end or bottom of the column, the insertion point jumps to the top of the next column and you begin to fill it, from top to bottom.

To use multiple columns, go to Page Layout → Page Setup → Columns, and then click one of the following options:

One. Whether you know it or not, every page in Word has a column layout. The standard layout is one big column stretching from margin to margin.
Two. With two columns, your document begins to look like a pamphlet or a school textbook.
Three. Three columns are about as much as a standard 8.5 x 11-inch page can handle, unless you switch to Landscape orientation. In fact, you may want to reduce the body text size to about 9 or 10 points and turn on hyphenation. Otherwise, you can't fit very many words on a line.
Left. This layout has two columns, with the narrower column on the left. The narrow column is a great place to introduce the text with a long heading and subheading or a quote pulled from the larger body text.
Right. The mirror image of the Left layout, this option uses two columns with a narrow column at right.
More Columns. Use the More Columns option to open the Columns dialog box (Figure 3-17) where you can create a customized column layout.

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Line numbers are a favorite feature of lawyers and screenwriters. Just as page numbers keep count of a document's pages, line numbers help you keep track of your line count (Figure 3-19). Suppose you mail a printed copy of your short story, with line numbering, to an editor on the other side of the country. The editor can call you on the phone with comments and refer to specific lines and words. Line numbering is also helpful for students and journalists who have to write pieces of a certain length.

To turn on basic line numbering, choose Page Layout → Page Setup → Line Numbers → Continuous.

Figure 3-19: With line numbers, it's easy to refer to a precise spot in a document. Word's line numbers count titles and headings as well as text, but they don't include page headers and footers. If your document has newspaper-style columns, the line numbers count the lines in each column.

Word also gives you some tools to set up your line numbers just the way you want them. Go to Page Layout → Page Setup → Line Numbers to see the Line Numbers menu (Figure 3-20).

Line numbers appear only in Print Layout view and Full Screen Reading view. If you're expecting line numbers but don't see them, make sure you're in one of these two views.

None (Alt+P, LN, N). Don't show any line numbers.
Continuous (Alt+P, LN, C). Show line numbers throughout the document.
Restart Each Page (Alt+P, LN, R). The first line on every page is line 1.
Restart Each Section (Alt+P, LN, E). The first line of each section resets the line count to 1.

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Without hyphenation, if a word is too long to fit on the line, Word moves it down to the beginning of the next line. If a word is particularly long, it can leave some pretty big gaps at the end of the line. Justified text is aligned on both the left and right margins, like most of the text in this book. If you have justified text and no hyphenation, you often get large, distracting gaps between words, where Word is trying to spread out the text along the line. When used properly, hyphenation helps make text more attractive on the page and easier to read. In most cases, you can relax and let Word handle the hyphenating.

You just have to choose one of three basic hyphenation styles from the Page Layout → Page Setup → Hyphenation menu (Alt+P, H), as shown in Figure 3-22:

None. No hyphenation at all. For informal letters, first drafts, and many reports, you may choose not to use hyphenation. It's a good-looking choice for documents that have fairly long lines (60 to 80 characters) and left-aligned text.
Automatic. Word makes hyphenation decisions based on some simple rules that you provide. Consider using automatic hyphenation for documents that have line lengths of about 50 characters or less, including documents that use newspaper-style columns.
Manual. In this scheme, Word asks you about each word it wants to hyphenate, giving you the final decision. Use manual hyphenation when you need to be particularly scrupulous about your grammar and when you need to be certain that you don't hyphenate a company name, a person's name, or some other equally important word.

It's easy to turn on automatic hyphenation. Just choose Page Layout → Page Setup → Hyphenation (or press Alt+P, H). Still, you may want to assert some control over how and when Word uses hyphenation. To do that, open the Hyphenation box (Figure 3-23) by choosing Page Layout → Page Setup → Hyphenation → Hyphenation Options (Alt+P, HH). This box has two important options that let you control hyphenation:

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Formatting is the fine art of making your documents effective and attractive. Good formatting distinguishes different parts of your text and helps your readers take in your message. You can apply formatting to just about every element of your document, from a single character to entire paragraphs. Body text needs to be readable and easy on the eyes. Headings should be big and bold, and they should also be consistent throughout your document. Important words need to resonate with emphasis. Quotes and references should be set off from the other text.

This chapter starts with the basics: how to format individual characters and words—selecting fonts and making characters bold, italicized, underlined, or capitalized. You learn how to format paragraphs with indents and spacing, and how to control the way Word breaks up the words in a line and the lines in a paragraph. Finally, you find out how to copy and reuse formatting with tools like the Format Painter and style sets.

Word deals with formatting on three levels encompassing small and specific on up to big and broad—through characters, paragraphs, and sections. You apply different types of formatting to each of these parts. Character formatting includes selecting a font, a font size, bold or italics, and so on. At the paragraph level, you apply indents, bullets, and line spacing. For each section of your document (even if there's only one), you set the page size, orientation, and margins, as described in the previous chapter. Sometimes it helps to think of the parts of a document as Russian nesting dolls: Characters go inside paragraphs, which go inside sections, which fit inside your document.

Each type of formatting has its own dialog box, giving you access to all possible settings. You can also apply most types of formatting via the ribbon, the mini-toolbar, or the keyboard shortcut.

Characters. Use the Font dialog box (Alt+H, FN) to format characters. Letters, numbers, and punctuation marks are all printable characters and, as such, you can format them. Once you select a character or a group of characters, you can apply any of the formatting commands on the Home tab's Font group (Alt+H). You can choose a font and a size for any character in your document. You can make characters bold, underlined, superscript, or change them to just about any color of the rainbow.

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Word deals with formatting on three levels encompassing small and specific on up to big and broad—through characters, paragraphs, and sections. You apply different types of formatting to each of these parts. Character formatting includes selecting a font, a font size, bold or italics, and so on. At the paragraph level, you apply indents, bullets, and line spacing. For each section of your document (even if there's only one), you set the page size, orientation, and margins, as described in the previous chapter. Sometimes it helps to think of the parts of a document as Russian nesting dolls: Characters go inside paragraphs, which go inside sections, which fit inside your document.

Each type of formatting has its own dialog box, giving you access to all possible settings. You can also apply most types of formatting via the ribbon, the mini-toolbar, or the keyboard shortcut.

Characters. Use the Font dialog box (Alt+H, FN) to format characters. Letters, numbers, and punctuation marks are all printable characters and, as such, you can format them. Once you select a character or a group of characters, you can apply any of the formatting commands on the Home tab's Font group (Alt+H). You can choose a font and a size for any character in your document. You can make characters bold, underlined, superscript, or change them to just about any color of the rainbow.

Prior to the use of computers, groups of letters, numbers, and punctuation of a certain style, such as Helvetica or Bodoni, were called typefaces. The term font was more specific, referring to variations within a typeface such as bold, narrow, or italic. Today, the terms are interchangeable. Word uses the term font, probably because it's shorter and therefore easier to fit into a dialog box.
Paragraphs. Use the Paragraph dialog box (Alt+H, PG) to format paragraphs. You can set formatting for text alignment, indents, line spacing, line breaks, and paragraph breaks. You don't have to select a paragraph to format it; just click to place the insertion point within a paragraph. Because characters are part of paragraphs (remember those Russian nesting dolls), every paragraph includes a basic font description. When you select characters within a paragraph and change the font settings, you override the basic font description in the paragraph's style.

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Every character in your document is formatted. The formatting describes the typeface, the size of the character, the color, and whe

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