Word Processing
- Backing Up
- Spaces After Punctuation
- Block Indents
- First-Line Indents
- Tables
- Multiple Carriage Returns
- Words That Must Stay Together
- Using Styles
- Font Selection
- Spellchecking
- Automatic Correction
- Outlining a Document
| Backing Up |
You have a lot more than a bottle of whiteout and a backspace key to help you fix mistakes in your word processor. The most important thing to remember when you make a mistake is don't panic!
You have undo, revert to saved, and moving Blocks of Text
| Spaces After Punctuation |
Those of you who (like me) took typing in high school were probably taught to put two spaces after each period or colon. On the computer, this is wrong! It looks ugly and it confuses any proportional font. All the good fonts are proportional.
| Block Indents |
Do not use tabs and carriage returns to indent a block of text. Grab the left end of the ruler and move it to the right, and grab the right end of the ruler and move it to the left. Your computer will take care of wrapping the words in the correct place.
| First-Line Indents |
Do not use tabs or spaces to indent the first line of a paragraph. The left side of your ruler has two parts. The "greater than" part is the left edge of everything except for the first line. The bar is the left edge of the first line. You can drag one part without dragging the other part, and create indented first lines, or hanging indents.
| Tables |
Do not use spaces to create tables! This was never correct even on the typewriter. Set your tab stops and use tabs. Or, if you're using a modern word processor, just create a table on it's own.
Tabs come in four types: left tabs (the normal, typewriter variety), right tabs, centered tabs, and decimal tabs.
| Left | Right | Centered | Decimal |
| Apples | Macintosh | December | $55.45 |
| Oranges | Naval | October | $182.33 |
| Pears | Indian | May | $5.21 |
Under a left tab, text aligns with its left side at the tab location. Under a right tab, text aligns with its right side at the tab location. Text is centered beneath a centered tab, and the decimal point is directly beneath a decimal tab (if there is no decimal point, different word processors may treat it differently).
| Multiple Carriage Returns |
You should never use multiple carriage returns. Any changes you make 'above' the carriage returns require you to go through the entire document looking for carriage returns stuck at the top of pages, or places where you have to add yet more carriage returns. You'll never find them all.
You can tell some word processors to "make sure this entire paragraph is always on the same page" and to "make sure this paragraph is always on the same page as the next paragraph".
All word processors allow you to insert page breaks and column breaks.
All word processors also allow you to specify that there must be at least a certain number of lines (or points) above a paragraph, and a certain number of lines or points below a paragraph.
All of these options can be made part of the paragraph's style.
| Words That Must Stay Together |
You can also use "hard" spaces and "hard" hyphens to keep the word processor from wrapping the line at the space or hyphen. If you use a carriage return to force a line break, you're going to end up with a broken line the next time you edit the document.
| Using Styles |
Styles make it very easy for you to change the look of your document. You can quickly change from a conservative look to a flashy look; you can change the font of all of your headings in a few seconds.
There are two major types of styles: character styles and paragraph styles. A character style makes changes only to the characters you have selected. a paragraph style changes the entire paragraph where your selection resides.
The word processor remembers which styles are applied where. If you make a change to the style's definition, all text with that style will be changed.
Most, if not all, word processors only allow one character style and one paragraph style to apply to any particular character.
You can base styles on each other. For example, your "heading 2" should be based on your "heading 1". When you change the font used in heading 1, heading 2 will automatically receive that change, if heading 2 previously used the same font. If you make a change that was already different in the "lower" style, the change will not follow through.
| Font Selection |
For most simple documents, you will want two fonts: a body font, which will be a serif font, and a heading font. The heading font can be anything, although headings are commonly 'sans serif' or 'decorative.'
In general, you should choose one font for all of your body, and one font for all of your headings. This increases the readability of your document.
If you have a separate cover page, and you are not using a decorative font for your inside headings, you might use a decorative font for your cover title.
| Spellchecking |
A wise man once said "it's a damn poor man who only knows one way to spell a word." Your document, however, is going to be received much better if you let the computer run over possible spelling irregularities.
Most spellcheckers have a "custom" dictionary that you can add words to. Most dictionaries will not know certain important words within your particular field of expertise. At the very least, it isn't going to know all of the last names in your department. When the spellchecker runs into a word it doesn't recognize, you can:
- Ignore it (or 'Skip' it)
- Learn it (or 'Add' it)
- Change it (or 'Replace' it)
Most word processors will also let you type in your own change.
Word processors will not find common spelling mistakes that happen to be another word! You'll still find "they're" , "their", and "there" used incorrectly all through your document.
| Automatic Correction |
Some word processors will automatically correct certain errors or types of errors. If your word processor has automatic correction, you can tell it to always replace 'i' with 'I', always capitalize the first word in a sentence, always replace 'teh' with 'the', or automatically replace any other word that you commonly mistype in a predictable way.
| Outlining a Document |
Microsoft Word 6 allows you to view your document as an outline, if you have used the "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc., styles to set your headings. By viewing your document as an outline you can easily subordinate certain parts to other parts. You can drag entire sections or specific chapters into other areas. And you can see the entire document at a glance.
