Add some formatting

Our document is okay for a rough draft, but we can’t really call it finished without some formatting.

Formatting is all about adding visual touches to a document to make it easier to read and look more appealing.

Let’s start by doing something to make the heading stand out.

Select the heading. Then, right-click the selection, or just point to it, and the mini-toolbar pops up.

This is the quickest way to add formatting because it is right where you are working.

To find out what a button does, just hold the mouse over it.

Let's click Bold, and then, move up to this button, and Increase Font Size.

If you want more formatting choices, you’ll find them on the ribbon.

Here you can add a Strikethrough, format the text as a Subscript or Superscript, and over here you have Paragraph formatting.

There are many choices, but in general the best and easiest way to format text is to use a Style.

Hold the mouse over an option to see a preview.

Styles are easy because you can apply a number of formatting options with one click.

And they are the best way to format, because they help you apply formatting consistently throughout your document.

The Paragraph group has some useful options, like Bullets and Numbering.

If you want to check them out, just select some text and click the buttons.

You won’t hurt anything, because you can always click the button again — to turn the option off.

These commands adjust paragraph alignment.

Let’s see what they do. Go to the second paragraph and click it three times to select it.

Now the paragraph is aligned Left. Watch what happens when I align it to the Center — now to the Right.

This last button justifies the text on both sides.

Let’s try one more formatting option. Click here to adjust Line Spacing.

The default Line Spacing is 1.15.

But you can single-space it, double-space it, or even triple-space it.

What if you want to change the spacing of the whole document?

Well, the best way to do that is to go to the DESIGN tab, and click Paragraph Spacing.

This does more than simply adjust line spacing to improve the overall look of your document.

I have one last button to show you, and it’s up here in this row of buttons called the Quick Access Toolbar.

It’s called Undo. It’s actually my favorite button, because it lets me experiment and make mistakes.

And all I have to do to bring it back to the way it was before is, click Undo.

There’s also a Redo button.

Up next, we’ll insert some things in the document.