Aligning paragraphs:

Let me first explain what a paragraph is, in Word.

Any text that is entered, followed by the Enter key on your keyboard, automatically becomes a paragraph.

This means that the title you’ve entered, will also be treated as a paragraph in Word.

By default, the “Align text Left”, option is set in Microsoft Word.

If we now want to change the alignment, place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph, and click the “Center”, “Align text Right”, or “Justified” buttons.
If you wish to align several paragraphs in the same position, first select the paragraphs to be aligned and, then click the alignment button.

The “Justified” alignment is usually used in newspapers or magazines, and gives, both, the left and the right side of our text, a straight alignment.
In order to do this, Word will add extra spaces between words.

The “Justify” alignment will, therefore, have little use if our line consists of only one paragraph, for example, our title.

All these buttons can be found in the “Paragraph” group on the ribbon, under the “Home” tab.

Tip!

You can also align text but, for this, you first have to start typing.
Select the alignment button first, in the ribbon, and, only then start typing.
A second way is to double-click the alignment (left, right or center) in the document and, only then start typing.

 

Paragraph Indent and Spacing:

In Word, we have several ways to place an indent for text.
Whichever option you choose, you have to first place your cursor in the paragraph in which you want to place an indent.

One way is by using the “Decrease Indent” and “Increase Indent” buttons, on the Ribbon, under the “Home” tab.
Each time you get the “Increase Indent” button, the indentation of the paragraph is increased by 1.25 cm.
This is the same for the “Decrease Indent” button. Each time you click this button, the indentation will decreased by 1.25 cm.

A second way is by using the buttons that are found at the top of the horizontal ruler.

Click and drag these buttons to the desired position.

The top button (1),will place an indent only on the first line of our paragraph.

The middle button (2),or “Hanging indent”, will change all lines except the first line of our paragraph indent.

And the last button (3) will indent the entire paragraph.

On the right side of our ruler, we have the “Right Indent” with which we can place an indent to the right of the paragraph.

A third way is to click on the downward pointing arrow next to the “Paragraph” group.

This opens the “Paragraph” dialog box.

 

In this dialog box, we can enter all the settings for our paragraph.

We can specify the alignment (1), several options for the indentation (2), the distance between paragraphs (3), and the distance between lines (4). At the bottom of the dialog box, you have another example (5).

So, if you wish you to change all the settings for your paragraph (s) in one go, this is the place to go to.

 

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