Word 2000 in a Nutshell

Chapter 1. Word Overview

You can find a better program to perform almost any single function that Word offers. Excel is better at graphs and expressions, Illustrator is better for creating images, and many programs are better for creating web pages. However, it’s hard to find another program that offers as much broad-ranging utility as Word.

To start with, it’s certainly good at word processing, a phrase that means a lot more today than it did just a few years ago. Word provides professionally designed templates for creating business and personal letters, proposals, reports, newsletters, flyers, and even brochures. Layout and formatting tools are better than ever. Word can also create drawings, tables, HTML, forms, and even custom programs.

And that’s really the design philosophy behind Word. It is a tool that is meant to put a host of different features into the hands of people who mainly need to do simple word processing, but also need extra features occasionally.

This chapter is like an information desk for the rest of the book. It examines the Word interface in general and briefly shows how to type, edit, and format documents. It also includes a task list that covers the common uses and keyboard shortcuts for all of the Word menus and shows you where in the book to go for more detail.

The Word Interface

At first glance, you won’t notice many significant changes in Word 2000 from previous versions of Word. Aside from the fact that the default setting now combines the Standard ...