1.3 Developing a New Document

Normally when you first open or use a word processing program, you need to develop a document. Perhaps you have a homework assignment or a research paper that needs to be done. In those cases, it is important to use all the formatting and grammar tools available. On the other hand, you may be writing something more informal, such as a letter to a friend. Or perhaps you want to create an attractive and engaging resume to send out. If you are employed, you might need to create documents for training or contracts, or even marketing material like flyers or brochures.

Obviously, content is the most important aspect of the document, but presentation is also important. Microsoft Word has many features that will help you enhance the appearance of your documents and increase your productivity. In this section, we begin with the most basic skills. However, we also include tips and shortcuts that will enable you to be much more productive. Many people just “get by” using Word. You should take the time to learn the capabilities and techniques available in Word so that you are a knowledgeable and effective user.

In this first section, we will review the most basic skills to create a new document. You probably already have many of these skills, but this will be a good review for you and will teach you some shortcuts and techniques that you may not already know.

To create a new document, open Microsoft Word and select one of the templates to start entering your content. As you learned from Figure 1.2, the first thing you do is choose a template. Let’s start with the first template shown—a blank document.

Styles: Documents, Paragraphs, Lines, and Words

When you create a new document, Word uses default values to know how to create the document. Default values for such items as the page layout, paragraph format, line spacing, font, and font size, among many other formatting options, are set using a style template. You will learn more about templates in Lesson 2.

The standard default template used by Word is called Normal style. Notice in the “Style” area of the “Home” ribbon that “Normal” has a blue box around it. This indicates that it is the selected style. We will discuss the other styles Word provides in Lesson 3.

By default, Word uses the values in the Normal style to control how the text is entered and how the document is displayed. Figure 1.21 shows some of the page, paragraph, line, and font styles that are part of the Normal style.

Normal style includes page margins of one inch. The font face is Calibri and the font size is 11 point. Line spacing is set at 1.08, which inserts a small amount of white space between lines. Paragraphs are left aligned with 8 points of white space after each paragraph.

Changes to line spacing, paragraph alignment, space between paragraphs, and so forth can be changed using the icons in the “Paragraph” group on the “Home” ribbon. Changes made with those icons affect an entire paragraph. Figure 1.20 shows the drop-down for the “Line” and “Paragraph Spacing” options. These options can be used to set the line spacing to a standard size or a custom size, and to increase or decrease the spacing before or after the paragraph. In Figure 1.21, the second paragraph is double-spaced.

Two other paragraph formatting options used frequently are the Paragraph, Increase Indent and Paragraph, Decrease Indent functions.

The Paragraph, Indent function indents the entire paragraph a standard amount, usually ½ inch, with each click on the “Increase Indent” icon. Clicking the “Decrease Indent” icon removes one indent stop with each click.

It is not necessary to highlight the entire paragraph to make these changes. It is only necessary to have the cursor located somewhere inside the paragraph when clicking on the “Paragraph” icons.

Changes to fonts and font sizes can be made using the icons in the “Font” group. Those changes affect only the text that has been highlighted. Figure 1.21 shows some text that has been highlighted and changed to bold.

Typing Text

Entering text into the Word environment is simple: type the text you would like to store in the document (see Figure 1.21). When you first type a document, the text is entered paragraph by paragraph. Once you have finished entering a paragraph, press the Enter key. The cursor skips some space and positions itself for the next paragraph.

Let’s take a second and define several terms: the mouse pointer and the cursor. The mouse pointer is the small image that is controlled by the mouse and can be moved anywhere on the screen. The computer knows exactly where the mouse pointer is and it will carry out actions based on the location of the mouse pointer. For example, hovering the pointer over a hot spot will cause some action to occur, such as a tool tip appearing. The pointer image also changes depending on its location. For example when the pointer is over the ribbon it is a pointer, but when it is over some text, it becomes an I-beam.

The cursor is the small vertical line that defines the location where the text is entered as you type. That point is also called the insertion point for entering text. To change the location of the cursor, or the insertion point, move the mouse I-beam to the desired location and left-click.

The “Font” group displayed in Figure 1.21 has several icons that are frequently used to modify the text. Three common ones are the tools to emphasize the text with bold, italics, or underline. Other icons allow you to increase or decrease the font size, change the case of the text, change the color of the text, or add a highlight color. Another icon allows you to cross out text, which does not delete it, but does put a line through it. Other types of fancy graphic modifications can also be made to the text.

To modify text, first highlight the text you wish to change, and then make the changes to that text. Highlighting text can be done either with the mouse, by holding down the left button and dragging across the words to be selected, or with the keyboard, by positioning the cursor either in front of or behind the text, then holding down the shift key and pressing the appropriate arrow key until the desired words are selected. Another term that is synonymous with highlighting text is selecting text.

Using Backspace and Delete

Sometimes novice users get confused between the Backspace key and the Delete key. Both can be used to delete characters, words, or sentences from a paragraph. The major difference between the two keys is when you are deleting single characters or characters next to the cursor. To delete a few characters using the Backspace key, position the cursor to the right of the characters to delete. The Backspace key deletes characters to the left of the insertion point. To delete characters using the Delete key, position the cursor to the left. The Delete key deletes characters to the right of the insertion point.

To delete entire words, sentences, or even entire paragraphs, first select the text to be deleted (see the above tip about selecting text), then press either the Backspace key or the Delete key. All the text that was selected will be deleted.

In the following figure, Figure 1.22, we show a paragraph with a duplicate word. In part (a) the word is selected. Pressing either the Backspace key or the Delete key will remove the duplicate word and close up the blank spaces correctly as shown in part (b).

Undoing Your Work

As you edit a document, you may decide that you really don’t want to keep what you just did. You could just delete what you typed using the Backspace key. However, a quick and easy way to return the document to a previous state is to use the “Undo” feature.

There are two primary ways to undo the changes you made: One is to press Ctrl+Z until the document is back to the state you want. If you prefer to use your mouse, the second method is to click “Undo” in the Quick Access Toolbar, in the upper-left corner of the Word window.

After using the “Undo” feature, you may decide you really did want the text or change you just undid. To quickly return the document to how it was before you used “Undo,” press the “Redo” button on the Quick Access Toolbar or use Ctrl+Y. Both “Undo” and “Redo” can be applied multiple times.

Autocorrect Spelling and Grammar Checking

For many people, one of the biggest advantages of using Word is its ability to check the grammar and spelling of a document as you type. Text underlined in blue indicates that Word has identified a grammar error. Text underlined in red indicates a spelling error.

By default, Word checks grammar and spelling as you type. If you see an error while you type, the quickest way to correct the error is to right-click on the word and select the correction from the suggested list. Keep in mind that not all words underlined are actual grammar or spelling errors.

Figure 1.23 illustrates this autocorrect feature. The blue underline indicates that the period is not next to the e in stove. The red underlines are misspellings. The drop-down menu illustrates the pop-up that displays when you right-click on the misspelled word.

Rechecking the Entire Document

If you don’t correct the grammar and spelling errors as you type, you can check the whole document at one time. It is also a good idea to do a final spelling and grammar check after you finish working on a document. Clicking the “Spelling & Grammar” button on the “Review” ribbon will open the “Spelling and Grammar” window.

From this window, you can choose “Ignore” or “Change” for each word. If the word is found frequently in the document, you will see the “Ignore All” and “Change All” options. You can also use the “Add” button to add a word to the dictionary if it is spelled correctly but isn’t currently in the Word dictionary.

Using the Thesaurus

Another feature on the “Review” ribbon is the thesaurus. The thesaurus will help you make word choices in your document. As you work with a document, you may find a word that doesn’t really describe what you want to say, but you may not know what word you want to use. Or, as your English teacher has taught you, it may be better to use alternative words rather than to repeat yourself too many times in a document. The thesaurus is a great tool to assist you. Simply place the cursor within the word you would like to research and click on the “Thesaurus” icon in the “Review” ribbon. Figure 1.25 illustrates the thesaurus. This window shows other words you can use in the document.

Saving a File

There are multiple ways to save a file in Word. The quickest way is to click the “Save” button in the Quick Access Toolbar. “Save” and “Save As” are also available on the “File” tab. Saving a file before you start editing a document will give your file a name you can remember and also place it in the correct folder on your computer. After you save the file for the first time, any additional selection of the “Save” button will update the file.

The first time you save a file, the “Save As” screen displays. On that screen, you must first select a location—a folder on your computer or in the cloud—where you will save the file. Then the “Save As” dialog box opens up. There are three important pieces of information that you must provide:

1. The location where the file is to be saved

2. The name of the file

3. The format or type of file that is to be used

Figure 1.26 illustrates the “Save As” dialog box. The text box displays the path and folder that you selected and where the file will be saved. If you need to change the path and folder, you can do it here. There is also a text box where the name of the file is entered. Beneath that is a drop-down box to select the file type. The .docx file type is the latest Microsoft Word format. However, remember in Figure 1.9 that you saw many other available file formats. File types include files for previous versions of Microsoft Word, .pdf files, .html files, plain text files in .txt type, and even .xml files.

One of the dangers of working with technology is that sometimes, although only once in a while, a computer or a program will crash. When that happens, it is possible to lose all your work from the last several hours, or since the last time you saved your work. The first solution, obviously, is to save your document frequently. Microsoft Word also has an automatic save feature to save your document automatically in a backup folder. The location and frequency of saving is set using the “Save” features found under “Options” in the “File” tab. Microsoft Word comes configured to automatically save your work in one of its system folders at a frequency of every 10 minutes.

If your computer crashes, when Word opens up again, it will try to recover your work from this backup folder. Word will ask you if you want to use the recovered file. There have been several times when this feature has saved me many hours of rework.

Closing a File

There are two ways to close a file when you have completed your work. The close option is on the “File” menu. If only one file is open, this command will close the file and Word. If multiple files are open, it will close only the active document. A quick way to close the active document is to select the red button in the top-right corner of Word.