The Basics of Word Processing

by Lee Alexander

Rule One

Get it down . The first step is to enter the data. Whether the source is handwritten notes, neuronal activity of your brain, a quote from published material, or a message from your heart - put it in the program. Margins, style, font type and size, and other attention getting details can dress up your document later.

Generalities

Most word processing applications have much in common; from Windows' WordPad, through Microsoft's Works word processor, to the application I'm using for this topic, Microsoft's Word. When you open the program you are presented with a template . Characters, sentences, and paragraphs magically appear on your monitor screen as you hit keys on the keyboard. The template is a file, similar to the file that will be created when you save your document. For the purpose of this article, I will be using Word's terminology. Unless you choose otherwise, the document will be saved with the file type .doc . The default template for Word is normal. dot .

Location

As with any data in the computer, where you place files and folders is paramount to your ability to find them again. Simply hitting <Ctrl> S or a Save button will usually dump everything into that great big shoe box, My Documents. It is very important to place a new or modified template into the proper folder. A safe procedure is to use Save As (keyboard shortcut, F12) and check the file location. If you do not see the file normal.dot you are not in the specific template folder for the application.

Menus and Toolbars

The line of words (with certain characters underlined) is the entry point to the features of the program. The lines of buttons beneath the menu line are toolbars. If you click on View (or use the keyboard shortcut <Alt> V, the V being underlined) you get a drop-down menu including the word Toolbars. Clicking on Toolbars (another keyboard shortcut, hit t for the underlined T ) shows a second drop-down list of available buttons. The default and most useful toolbars are Standard and Format. The other toolbars can be very useful as occasion demands.

Format

The format menu may be invoked at any time. To format , in the sense of a word processor, is to perform an action on an object; therefore you must first select the object. The object can be a character, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or the entire document. Other objects can be pictures, tables, charts, and so forth. The format operations include choosing a font and its size for selected text, making that text bold, italicized, or underlined; adjusting the appearance of paragraphs as to indentations and line spacing; including columns for all or part of your document; and many other artifacts.

Toolbars

Let's take a look at the formatting toolbar of Word. The first button, the AA, opens the Style and Formatting dialog box in the Task Pane (one of eight choices in this sub window). Here you can create and edit the styles that appear in the next button's Drop-down list. The next two buttons offer drop-down lists for fonts and their size. The following three buttons are for bold, italicized, and underlined. They are followed by four buttons for text justification: left, center, right, and justified (kerning, the space between characters is adjusted to keep text lined up as in a column). The next button is for quick setting the line spacing. Note that you could select a paragraph and set its line spacing different from the rest of the document. We then have buttons for creating a numbered or bulleted list and adjusting indents. Border outlining, highlighting, and text color follow.

Other toolbars operate a similar fashion. When invoked they may be parked beneath existing toolbars or they may “float” on the screen.

TIP: Immediately undo an action by holding down the control key and hitting “Z.”

Views

Word encompasses four views of your document: Normal , Web, Print Layout, and Outline. There are four buttons in the lower left corner, just above the Status Bar, to quickly select a view. I suggest you start your documents with the Normal view. There are fewer distractions and your thoughts can flow seamlessly without regard to shape and style. When it's time to edit, switch to the Print Layout view and from the View Menu click on the Ruler. However, you cannot see any graphics in the Normal View; you will see a place holder.

The Ruler

In Microsoft Word, the Ruler is a very versatile tool. As previously mentioned, it is important to select the objects you wish the tool to modify. By dragging the pentagram icons you can adjust the margins and set indents. At the far left of the ruler is a box containing a tab stop. Clicking on the box will show you a variety of tab stops: left tab, center tab, right tab, and decimal tab (to line up a decimal numbers such as currency). To insert any of these tab stops, simply click on the desired position on the ruler. To remove a tab stop, click on it (on the ruler) and drag it away. The shaded areas at both ends of the Ruler show the left and right edges of the paper.

Page Setup

Under the File menu, you will find Page Setup and Print Preview items. Print Preview will try to show you what your printer will produce. If you end up with a multipaged document and/or one with complex graphics, it might be worth your time, ink, and paper to test print a draft page or two.

Within the Page Setup dialog box you will find three tabs: Margins, Paper, and Layout. The Preview graphic at the bottom of the box is quite helpful in showing you the effects of parameters changed. The Margin list boxes increment/decrement by tenths of an inch; however, you can override those values by typing in any Number. The Gutter is the area of the page set aside for binding. The Preview graphic will show its action.

OPTIONS

With 11 tabbed dialog boxes, this feature can be overwhelming. It is usually puzzling when, in a presentation, to bring up a like sub-topic. If presented at the very beginning, it's like asking the new car owner to read the manual before she sits behind the wheel. If left to the very end, the user may have gone through many steps that could have been automated. Assuming this is a good point in time, let's take a look at the features available.

Under the General tab dialog you can set up Autosave as insurance against losing your work; under Spelling and Grammar you can customize the feature to your style; the Edit dialog box allows rules selection for the way you work. Other Options abound and it is well worth your time to investigate them.

Columns

An entire document or just a section of it can consist of columns like a newspaper or a magazine. You can insert columns from the menu Format and the item Columns. By default there should be a button on the standard toolbar to generate columns. However the button is limited to a maximum of four columns. The menu item is much more versatile.

If you are going to use columns, there's a good chance you could have graphics in the document. Where and how you place a photo or a within a document can have a big impact. A menu item under Format will change depending upon the nature of the graphic. That last item could be Picture, Word Art, or Auto shape. The resulting Format dialog box has a tab, Layout. Here you can set the mode of text wrapping.

Tables

There is usually a button to insert a Table on the toolbar. It appears to be limited to a maximum of 4 x 5 cells, but you can drag the last cell to form any number of rows and columns. The Table menu provides a broader number of tools to create a table. Clicking the menu item Table Autoformat will bring up a dialog box with a variety of table formats. Once created, a Table is easily modified. Using the Table menu, you can add/remove columns and rows, adjust cell size to automatically fit contents, and much more. One of my favorite features is Convert . If you want to send the document to somebody who does not have a high-level word processor, you can use this feature to Convert Table to Text. It may not be as pretty but the recipient will get all the information. Conversely, if you don't want to fuss with getting data into cells, you can simply add to text and then use Convert | Text to Table.

List and Bullets

Two buttons on the formatting toolbar (usually there by default) allow you to number or mark by bullets indented paragraphs. The menu item Format | Bullets and Numbering has a wealth of tools with which you can play. When and and tune in and

Why and When to Use a Word Processing Program

Perhaps you would like to try your hand at Desktop Publishing. DTP programs can run into big bucks (QuarkXPress is over $1,000 and Adobe's InDesign is $700). The features in the upper tier of word processing programs can serve as a good introduction to the field.

Personally, I create most of my e-mail messages using Word, taking advantage of the program's many features. Under the General tab of OPTIONS there is a button for E-mail Options. Features presented here can automate many steps in personalizing your e-mail. You may wonder about using such a powerful application such as Word to create a simple message. Features like spell and grammar checking, ability to incorporate graphics, and the ease of saving the file in a variety of file types are tempting reasons to use the program. Many times, if it is a simple enough message, I will not even save the file, but simply copy the text to the clipboard and paste it in an e-mail message. I use the personal folder, Sent Items, to save such short messages.