Enough of theory! Now let us start working on our first document in Word. On the previous page you see Word Exercise I. We shall now learn how to create a document that looks exactly like this exercise.
Click once the on the Start button, highlight Programs, highlight Microsoft Office and then click once on Microsoft Word option. Or simply click once on the Word icon form the MS the MS Office toolbar, which is normally displayed at the top right hand corner of your screen.
You will see MS Word sign on banner briefly and then Word’s main screen would be displayed. This screen has already been explained on page no 4. The white blank area that you see is the page where you would be typing your matter. Notice the toothpick cursor at the beginning of first line, when you start typing, your matter would appear from this point on wards.
So let’s begin. Start typing the text given in Exercise 1. Type only till “Wide Area Networks, and much more” as shown below:
While typing do not bother how your text looks, simply go ahead and type in continuity. One of the basic features of Word is word wrap. This feature allows you to type in continuity without bothering about your line running out of right margin of your page. When you type as soon as you approach the end of a line (right side of your paper), Word automatically figures out whether the last word that you have typed, can fit within the current line. If it will, fine, otherwise Word automatically picks up the whole word and places it in the next line. When you reach the end of a paragraph or a paragraph heading (like – what is Internet after all?) press Enter to place your cursor in the next line. If you need a blank line then press Enter once more to create some blank space between two paragraphs.
This point is so important that I am going to repeat it once again. Never press Enter after every line, but only at the end of a paragraph or a paragraph heading. You can also split a single paragraph into two by placing the cursor at the end of the sentence after which you want to create a new paragraph and pressing Enter. For instance, if you want to split this paragraph itself into two and want to start the second paragraph with the sentence “You can also split a …”, place the cursor after the full stop of previous sentence “…or a paragraph heading.” And press Enter. Press Enter once again to create a blank line. You will see the results as.
While typing if you make any mistakes use the Backspace and Del key to delete the incorrect text. Backspace key deletes a character to the left of the current cursor position whereas Del key deletes character to the right of the current cursor position. As has been explained in previous pages, use the Insert key to alternate between Insert Mode and Overwrite Mode, as and when required.
After you have typed till the text shown above, if you see the remaining text in Word Exercise 1, you will notice that the subsequent text is a repetition of the same points about Internet, which have been briefly explained in the next section. This brings us to an interesting and very useful group of commands—Cut, Copy and Paste. Through Cut command you can move a block of text from once place to another. Through Copy command you can copy a block of text from one place to another such that the text appears at both the places. Paste command is used to insert the block of text, which has been either Cur or Copied. In the present example we will use the Copy and Paste command to copy the Internet features. Highlight all the Internet points by placing the cursor before “E-Mail”, clicking on the mouse’s left button, keeping it pressed and rolling the mouse till the end of “Wide Are Networks, and much more.” Release the mouse button now. This highlighted text, called a block can be either cut or copied. At the moment, since we want to copy, click once on Copy icon. Press Enter twice to come to a new paragraph and click once on Paste icon to get the same block of text here.
Now that you have a second block text, you can place the cursor after each point and type a brief explanation about it. Take care not to press Enter after the end of each point, otherwise a blank line would be inserted between points.
Now finally the typing work is over and we can begin work on improving the look of this document and making it look exactly like the sample exercise page. This process involving changing the font type, font size, alignment of text, applying shades and colors etc. is called formatting. So let us now start from the top of the document and move our way down.
Place the mouse pointer before 'W' of 'Word Exercise 1', click once, keep the mouse button pressed and roll the mouse to highlight this block of text, release the mouse button after reaching the end of the text (after '1'). You will see that the text (called block) is highlighted in black and the text appears in white color.
Now we have to make this text bigger, thicker and aligned to the right side. This would be done by three commands
• Increasing the font size,
• Applying Bold font style, and
• Right Aligning, respectively.
Click here once to see a pull down list of font sizes available. The bigger the font size, the bigger would be the text.
Click once on the Bold icon to apply bold style on the selected text.
Click once on the Right Align icon to align the text with the right margin of the text.
Now let us use the same technique to:
• Change the font,
• Increase the font size,
• Italicize the selected text,
• Underline the selected text, and
• Center the Heading horizontally between the pages.
Fonts are like different handwriting scripts available to you. Just as different people write the same alphabets differently, similarly using the font facility of MS Word, you can choose the way in which your alphabet script is displayed and printed. You can have the same font for the entire document or you could apply different fonts for different pieces of text to make your document appear more interesting and appealing.
Highlight the document heading "Internet - The world at the touch of a button!" using the technique explained earlier to mark a block.
Click here once to get a pull down list of all the fonts available to you. Choose the Impact font by clicking on it.
A Notice that each font is displayed in its own unique font style, so before you apply the font you can get to see what it looks like.
Click here once to increase the font size to 20.
Now since we want to Italicize only "The world at the touch of a button!" and not the entire heading, highlighted only this portion, leaving out the word "Internet", and click once on the Italics icon.
Now highlighted the entire heading once again and click on the Underline icon to apply underline style.
The next thing to be done on this heading is that it has to be centered between the left and right margins. The block is already highlighted, just click once on the Centre Align icon.
Now finally let us see how we can change the colour of this text. For this click once on the Font Colour icon and select the desired color - in our case Grey 50% by clicking on it.
Now let us move ahead. You would have noticed that typically the first line of a paragraph is slightly indented i.e. it begins not from the extreme left but slightly ahead. For doing this, place the cursor at the beginning of the first paragraph and press Tab key. You will see that the first line has got indented. Take care not to use the Space Bar to create this space, since this is not only more tedious and time consuming but may also result in different paragraphs having different indent spaces.
Let us now highlighted the paragraph heading "What is Internet after all?". Click here once, use the scroll bar to scroll down to the font "Helvetica", click on it to apply it to the selected block.
Click here once to get the font size pull down list and select point 14 by clicking on it once. Notice, the text would become bigger.
To give a highlight effect to any block of text, highlighted the text and click here once and select the desired highlight by clicking it.
Now move to the next paragraph heading "What can Internet do?" and use the same techniques just learnt to increase the font size, change the font and apply the highlight effect on this text as well.
Now let us learn how to create "bulleted lists". Frequently you have a number of points about a specific topic that you want to present separately. For this you can use bullets. No, not the ones that you put in a revolver but typographical bullets. These bullets are small marks at the beginning of each new point.
For applying bullets to points that already exist, highlight all the points (like in our case, starting from "E-Mail" and ending with "Wide Area Networks, and much more") and click once on the Bullets icon.
Alternatively you can also have bullet marks appear automatically when you begin a new point. For this places the cursor in a new blank line and click once on the bulleted list. Now type your first point, the moment you finish a point and press Enter the cursor will go to the next line a which will automatically have a bullet mark. When you have finished typing your last point, press Enter to go to a next line and click once again on the Bullets icon to turn the bullet list off. Bullet icon like most other icons on the Formatting Tool bar is a "toggle switch", which means that if you click on it once, it becomes On and if you click again on it becomes Off.
Similar to the bulleted list is the numbered list. In case of a numbered list each point starts with a point number (1,2,3... or A,B,C.. I,II,III... etc.) instead of a bullet mark. The procedure for this is similar to that of bullet list. Highlight all the points and click once on the Numbered List icon.
As we can see here that Word is taking the next matter as a part of the above matter, therefore it is showing the numbered list as sub-points of the above bulleted list. To correct this you indent these points to the left, click once on the Left Indent icon you will notice that all the points have moved to the left by one tab position. In case you want to further Indent click on the Left Indent icon again. If not satisfied with the results you can always use the Right Indent icon to bring back the text by one tab position at a time.
Notice all the points have a running number against them and the matter starts from a neatly aligned straight line. Try doing this manually by typing the numbers and using spacebar to create perfectly aligned text and it might take you more than fifteen minutes to achieve this perfectly, whereas through Numbered List icon it is a matter of seconds. Remember computers are all about saving time!
Now take a look at the Exercise 1 format given and apply Bold and Italics formatting on all the points
Congratulation! With this step you have completed your first exercise in MS Word. It may have taken you a bit of time to do it the first time but with practice you would become much more faster, efficient and hopefully more innovative.
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