Text Formatting

In order to make changes to text, we use the “Formatting toolbar”. This bar is visible by default in “Word”. If this is not the case, click on “View” – “Toolbars”- “Formatting” (“Formatting”) in the menu bar.
Or we use the “Font” dialog box.

To format already typed text, we select the text first, and then we click on the buttons in the “Format” toolbar.
Or we we select the text first, and then choose the options that we want in the “Font” dialog.
We can also check our settings for formatting font, and then start typing.
But most of us just select the font and font size, before typing. The rest of the formatting is done after the text is typed.

The “Formatting toolbar “

The “Formatting toolbar” is displayed by default in “Word”, because it is an important and frequently used tool.
Some of the most used buttons for formatting our text:

The “style” allows us to to apply any pre-defined “style”. We will come back to this later when we create “Table of contents”.
Clicking on the arrow next to the font box, gives us the different fonts, from which we can make our choice.
In the ’97 version, these are all displayed the same. In version 2000, 2003 and XP, we see this as the real difference.
We also find the “font size” box. When we click on this arrow, we can select the size of our characters.12 is the most commonly used for ordinary text.
We also have the “Bold”, “Italic” and “Underline” buttons. These need little explanation.
We also consider the “alignment” buttons, which are used to align paragraphs, we will come back to these later in this course.
In versions 2003 and XP we have the “line spacing” button.
This is intended to set the distance between the lines for the selected text.
This is further discussed in a later lesson on how to format paragraphs.
The next two buttons are the “Bullets” button and the “Numbering” button.
These are simple “symbols” that we use, to apply or remove bulleting or “numbering” .
The “Decrease Indent” and “Increase Indent” buttons are next.We use the left margin of the paragraph to be increased or reduced. Again we will come back to this in the lesson on how to format paragraphs.
Clicking on the arrow of the “border layout” gives us a dropdown menu, from which we can make a choice for the edges of the selected text.
With the next button, “text background”, we determine the background color of selected text.
And last we have the “Text Color”. This also requires no explanation, I think.

The “Font” dialog box

We determine the font formatting features with the “Font” dialog box.
To open it, we choose “Format”- “Font” in the menu bar.

As you can see above, there are several possible effects for the visual improvement of our text.
Some of these are not available in the Formatting toolbar, and others do.
When you are satisfied with your settings, click OK.

“Change Case”

Sometimes, it can happen that the “Shift Lock” button on our keyboards has been pressed accidentally.
And if you’re like me, and cannot type with ten fingers, it may be that you’ve typed a whole paragraph in all caps.
Then you may curse sometimes, should I type everything again.
No, “Word” has a solution for people like me.
Select the paragraph and click “Format” – “Change Case” in the menu bar.

Here you have choice:

• Fancy formatting (beginning with a capital letter)
• lowercase
• CAPS
• Title formatting
• uppercase words beginning with a lowercase letter

make your choice and press OK

The format for text copyig

If we want to repeat the formatting of our text, we can copy formatting.
We can use the “format painter” button in the “Standard toolbar”.
First, we select the formatted text, click the “format painter” button and then select the text that we want to copy the formatting.
If we wish to provide this format for multiple pieces of text, then we double-click the “format copy / paste” button, we click and drag on the first text, the second text and so on …
To turn it off , we again click the “strong” button.

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