Align “Paragraphs”

In “Word”, we have several ways to align “Paragraphs”.
Alignment refers to spacing of text on the left and right side of the “Paragraph”.
“Word” uses the left alignment as default.
We can change this by clicking the “Left align”, “Center”, “Right align” and “Justify” buttons.

We use the “Justify” for the last line of the “Paragraph”, that was never “justified”.
If we still want to justify this line, we place the cursor at the end of this last line, and click the “Shift” and “Enter” keys on our keyboard.

We can align “Paragraphs” by selecting the entire “Paragraph”, and then clicking on an alignment button.
Or place the cursor in the “Paragraph”, and then click on an alignment button.

The alignment of our text can be set even after we have typed the text, but if we want to set alignment before we start typing text, we click align button first and then start typing. We can also type the text, select it and click on an alignment button of our choice.

Paragraphs indented with and without a ruler

In “Word”, we have several options to indent “Paragraphs”.
We can use the “Tab” button on our keyboard or else use the “Decrease Indent” button  and “Increase Indent” button  in the “Formatting toolbar”.

To make use of them we select the “Paragraph”, and click the appropriate buttons.

Another way to indent our “Paragraphs” is to use the indent markers on the ruler.

To indent a full “Paragraph”, we place the cursor in the “Paragraph”, and we click and drag the box to the right.

To indent the top row of our “Paragraph”, we place the cursor in the “Paragraph”, and we click and drag the upper indent to the right.

To indent all but the first row of our “Paragraph”, we place the cursor in the “Paragraph”, and we click and drag the bottom right. This is called “Reverse polarity” indentation.

Paragraph and Line Spacing

In “Word”, we can control the spacing between lines and Paragraphs.
To view or set the distance between the lines and / or paragraphs, we place our cursor in the “Paragraph”.
We click on “Format” (“Format“) – “Paragraph” (“Paragraph“) in the menu bar.
The “Paragraph” dialog box opens:

In the “Spacing” (“Spacing“) section, we determine spacing before and after the “Paragraphs” and also the “Line Spacing”.
In the boxes for “Before”(” Before“) and “After” (“After“), we define the space between the “Paragraphs”, and in the boxes for “Line spacing” (“Line spacing“) and “At” (“At:“), we determine the spacing between the lines.

If we only wish to adjust the spacing between the lines, we can also use the “Line spacing”  in the “Formatting toolbar”.
This is only available in versions 2003 and XP.

In the dialog we also find the “Alignment” and “Indentation” section.
This allows us to achieve the same effects we discussed in the previous part of this lesson.

Note, when we make changes in the different parts of the dialog, the “Preview” (“Preview“) in the bottom of the dialog is automatically changed.

Copy the formatting of “Paragraphs”

As with the formatting of text, we can also copy the formatting of “Paragraphs”.
Select the “Paragraph” above and click the “format painter” button  in the “Standard toolbar”.
And click and drag the “Paragraph” to which you want to copy the formatting.

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