Unit 9. Basic word processing skills

Topic D: Formatting

Click play on the following audio player to listen along as you read this section.

Bold, Italic, and Underline

  • Bold – a typeface that makes a character thicker than the regular one. Boldfacing is often used for emphasis, headings, subheads, highlight keywords, etc.
  • Italics – a type style with characters that slope to the right. Italic is often used to emphasize a particular word, sentence, or particular part of a document.
  • Underline – add a line underneath the text, in order to show its importance and draw attention to the text.

Make text bold

  1. Open the document you wish to format.
  2. Select the text for which you wish to bold.
  3. Click Bold icon on the Home tab (or press Ctrl/Cmd + B).

Make text italic

  1. Open the document you wish to format.
  2. Select the text for which you wish to make italics.
  3. Click the Italic icon on the Home tab (or press Ctrl/Cmd + I).

Underline text

  1. Open the document you wish to format.
  2. Select the text for which you wish to underline.
  3. Click the Underline icon on the Home tab (or press Ctrl/Cmd + U).

Line Spacing

Line spacing – the space between lines of text in a paragraph.

  • Most users use either single-spaced lines (one-line height) or double-spaced lines.
  • Line spacing can make a document look cleaner and easy to read.

Set line spacing

Method 1

  1. Open the document you wish to edit.
  2. Select the text you wish to change the line spacing.
  3. Click the Line Spacing icon on the Home tab in the Paragraph group.
  4. Choose a line-spacing value from the drop-down list.

Method 2

  1. Select the text you wish to change the line spacing.
  2. Click the Paragraph dialog box launcher button (in the lower right corner of the “Paragraph” group). Or right-click anywhere in the document and then click Paragraph.
  3. Click the Indents and Spacing tab.
  4. Choose a desired Line Spacing option.
  5. Click OK.

Method 3

Use keyboard shortcuts to set line spacing:

  • Single-spacing: Ctrl/Cmd + 1
  • Double-spacing: Ctrl/Cmd + 2
  • 1.5-spacing: Ctrl/Cmd + 5
  • 1.15-spacing: Ctrl/Cmd + 0

Use Help Features

Help menu / button – the user can click help button in Word to initiate a search, display the help resources, and aid the user in their task.

Access help

  • Method 1: Click the Help button on the title bar.
  • Method 2: Press the shortcut key F1 to open the Help window.
  • Method 3: Use help tutorials. Click out this blog post: Word 2016 – Tell Me Tool
  • Method 4: Get help in the form of a Screen Tip.

Screen Tip (Tool Tip) – a small text box (a hint) appears when the mouse point rest on a command, icon, button, etc. It displays the name of the item and sometimes a brief description of its function and the shortcut key for the command.

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Key Concepts of Computer Studies Copyright © 2020 by Meizhong Wang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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