Word Processing Basics - Highlighting & Fonts

As requested, for the next few posts we are going to review some WORD PROCESSING BASICS:

SELECT TO EFFECT (highlight)

When you want to edit/change text (add Bold, Italic, Underline, Delete, change color, cut, copy, past, change font size or style and lots of other "formatting options") remember to "select the text first/highlight it" and then click the button of your choice..  

TIP: To highlight everything in a document, whether 1 page or 100 pages: use SELECT ALL or CTRL + A (keyboard shortcut)

BASIC SCREEN: Insertion Point “I” vs. Work Bar, Title Bar, Menu Bar, Toolbars, Ruler, Scroll Bars (right & bottom), Status Bar & Task Bar

BOLD, ITALIC, UNDERLINE: B – I – U Highlight text, use icon on formatting toolbar OR Menu Bar, Format, Font

DON'T PANIC WHEN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE - Use your "Undo" & "Redo" buttons

FONT STYLE:  The design of your characters – letters – numbers

FONT SIZE: the size of your characters – letters – numbers

STANDARD  BUSINESS FONT & SIZES

Commonly used in business:

Times New Roman, 12pt.

Arial, 14 pt.

STANDARD INTERNET/WEB PAGE FONT STYLE & SIZES:

Verdana or Tahoma – 8 pt, 9 pt or 10 pt.  (smaller than normal business prints)

What do DIFFERENT font sizes mean?

A 72 pt. Is always equal to 1" inch high Upper Case Letters

so a 36 pt = to 1/2" inch high; 9 pt = 1/8" inch high 

Printing Tips – Extend your cartridge life

Printer Cartridges are expensive - so here are a few tips we've discussed in class to help you save money by conserving your ink and toner..

Print in draft mode – Draft Mode is what I typically use in all class handouts – which helps save money by using less ink. To do this you want to change the default printing mode in your printer’s “preferences” – Go to start, printer/faxes, and when you choose your printer – choose “preferences” and then find the option list for printing preferences which vary on every printer. Yours might say: “draft mode” , or “economde or “ink/toner-saving mode”.. Don’t use Grayscale-it uses colored ink.

Use a thin “sans-serif” font – Set your default font, to a clean style such as Arial, Calibri or Comic Sans, versus “serif” fonts, such as Times New Roman, Baskerville, Bookman


Use your color ink sparingly – I firmly believe that almost everything we print works just as well in black & white, vs. color…So be sure to set your default setting for black and white – vs. automatic which will print whatever color is on the page you are printing..


Send photos out – It is much less expensive (and quality is so much better) when you have your photos printed by a retailer and you can upload them from home for one hour or 3 day delivery, to hundreds of retailers such as Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart, Snapfish, Shutterlfy, AAA, AARP, etc…


InkJet or laser – No question for anyone who prints a lot – laser is less expensive in the long run…


Shake That Cartridge – When you think your ink is running low – take the cartridge out and give it a good shake, and do this until you can’t print… Remember most cartridges will warn you the ink is low when they are still 30-35% full, so don’t replace it until you have to!!

How to easily enlarge what you are looking at in a document

If you zoom in and out of your documents quite a bit, you may get tired of using the pull-down zoom control on the toolbar or ribbon.

If you have a mouse that has the wheel between the two buttons, you can do a neat trick. All you need to do is hold down the Ctrl key as you turn the small wheel.

Each click of the wheel, up or down, increases or decreases the zoom factor by 10%.

Remember the zoom does not impact/change the actual font size - it simply changes the magnification of what you are zooming up and or down on...This is true anywhere in any application or browser software (word, excel, PowerPoint, etc) that you use on your computer...

How can I replace an "X" throughout my document with a "Check Mark"

Q: How can I replace an X throughout my document with a Check Mark?

A: It’s easier than you think to replace any word, number, phrase or character in a document without doing it one at a time.  You can do it quickly and easily by using your Find and Replace Dialog Box.  In this case you will be finding the capital X in your document and replacing it with a check mark character.

ü                     Note: you can find the check mark character " ü "   that I used in the Wingdings font.

There are several ways you can go about the task, but they all follow these general steps:

1. Press Ctrl+H to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Click the More button, if it is available and  the Find and Replace dialog box will appear.
3. In the Find What box enter an uppercase X.
4. Make sure the Match Case check box is selected.
5. Place the insertion point in the Replace With box.
6. Click the Format button and then choose Font. Word displays the Font dialog box.
7. In the Font list, select the Wingdings font.
8. Click OK to close the Font dialog box. The insertion point should still be in the Replace With box, and the font specification you made should appear just under the box.
9. Type the character you want to use for your check mark. (More on this in a moment.)
10. Use the control buttons in the dialog box (Find Next, Replace, or Replace All) as desired to make your replacements.

The confusion sometimes occur in Step 9, so there are several ways you can specify the check mark character.

One way is to copy the check mark to the Clipboard before you start the steps. Just type the check mark into the document, as desired, and then use Ctrl+C to copy it to the Clipboard. Then, in step 9, you can either press Ctrl+V to paste it into the Replace With box or you can use the ^c characters to tell Word you want to use the contents of the Clipboard as your replacement.

Or remember that all characters, such as the check mark or any style bullet have specific "character codes" in Word, Word Perfect and other Word Processing programs..  If you can find out the character code for the check mark (it is available in the Symbol dialog box if you use that method of creating the check mark), then you can use the code in the Find and Replace dialog box. 

The character code for a check mark ü  is 252, which must be entered using four characters and a carat mark, like this ^0252 in the Replace With box. When you do the replacement, you'll see the check mark (which corresponds to the character code) appear in your document.

Websites to find new font style designs - free

What’s a font you ask?? Fonts are the design style of what we type – letters, numbers, characters… and there are countless design styles to choose from and new ones being developed as we speak…

Over the years many of us have made the mistake of “purchasing” software so that we could add more font design style choices to our computers – or we have downloaded thousands and then wondered why our word processing program was running so slowly….

Personally I enjoy using different fonts when I’m creating maybe a new invitation or writing a story or new flyer or designing a new power point presentation… Instead of installing all of them to my computer, I have a list of websites in my favorites – in a folder named free fonts – that I then visit when I’m looking for a new font style design… here they are in alphabetical order.. once I find a few that I’d like to try, then I download them…

http://www.ddfont.com/

http://www.fonts.com/

http://www.fonts500.com/

http://www.searchfreefonts.com/

http://www.typenow.net/

Word Processing Tips

MICROSOFT WORD – is the #1 word processing program used in the world today – remember once you learn the feature commands and corresponding icons for these commands, they are the same in any other software you might learn
Special Note: All Microsft Office 97-2003 Program (including Word) use toolbars; whereas Office 2007 Programs, incuding Word use the new Tab/Ribbon Format

SELECT TO EFFECT (highlight)
When you want to edit/change text (add Bold, Italic, Underline, Delete, change color, cut, copy, past, change font size or style and lots of other "formatting options") remember to "select the text first/highlight it" and then click the button of your choice.. TIP: To highlight everything in a document, whether 1 page or 100 pages: use SELECT ALL of CTRL + A

BASIC SCREEN: Insertion Point “I” vs. Work Bar, Title Bar, Menu Bar, Toolbars, Ruler, Scroll Bars (right & bottom), Status Bar & Task Bar

BOLD, ITALIC, UNDERLINE: B – I – U Highlight text, then use icon on formatting toolbar OR Menu Bar, Format, Font

DON'T PANIC WHEN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE - Use your "Undo" & "Redo" buttons

FONT STYLE: The design of your characters – letters – numbers

FONT SIZE: the size of your characters – letters – numbers

STANDARD BUSINESS FONT & SIZES
Times New Roman - 12 pitch
Arial-14 pitch
Note: 72 pitch always = 1" high

WANT THE RULER ON OR OFF YOUR SCREEN?
Click "View" - Activate or deactivate the ruler.. choice is yours