In this post you'll discover how to format your text in multiple ways in Microsoft Word.
Used correctly, this helps to provide good visual structure, brings attention to important sections of your document and adds a professional finish.
RELATED POST:
7 ways that Word's paragraph formatting tools can enhance your document design
1. Overview of the text formatting tools in Word
Once you have written your basic document you can spruce it up with a just few clicks.
The process for formatting text is:
1. Select the text you want to format.
2. Apply the formatting.
Most of the tools that you need to make your document look professional are on the Home ribbon. They are collected together into the Font group.
Here’s a quick breakdown and each of these will be covered in this post.
2. Changing the font
The font is the name given to the text style - what the text looks like. Many newspapers and magazines use a font like Times New Roman for a formal look but there are other simpler fonts available like Calibri.
To change the font:
1. Select the text you want to apply the font to.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Single-left-click the Font drop-down list then single-left-click the font you want to use.
A sample of some popular fonts are provided below.
3. Changing the font size
To change the size of your selected text:
1. Single-left-click the Home tab
2. Click the Font Size drop-down list on the Font group.
3. Choose a font size.
You can also click one of the two 'A' icons, situated next to the font size drop down list.
The first A increases the text size by one standard size.
The second A decreases the text size by one standard size.
4. Adding bold, italic or underline for emphasis
To apply emphasis to a word or phrase, bold and italic are the quickest techniques to use. Here is a comparison:
There are 3 standard icons that you will find in every Microsoft Office program.
To change the underline style:
1. Click the drop-down arrow next to the U icon.
2. Select the underline type that you want – single, double, thick, dotted, dashed etc.
To change the underline colour:
3. Click Underline Color (at the bottom of the menu).
4. Choose a colour from the palette.
5. Changing the font colour
To change the colour of your text
1. First, select the text that you want to change the colour for.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Single-left-click the Font drop-down list in the Font group.
4. Single-left-click a colour from the palette.
RELATED POST:
Paragraph formatting tools in Microsoft Word
6. Striking through the text
Strikethrough puts a line through your text like this.
This is an example of text that has been struck through.
You can use this when you need to keep the text for historical reasons but clearly mark it as out of date, obsolete, no longer stocked of one of many other reasons.
To apply strikethrough to your text:
1. Select the text.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Single-left-click the Strikethrough icon in the Font group.
7. Superscripting or subscripting text
Superscripted text is little text that sits above the baseline, e.g. 360o, 42 or 16th.
Subscripted text is little text that sits below the baseline, e.g. H2O, CO2, H2SO4.
To apply superscript:
1. Select the text.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Single-left-click the Superscript icon in the Font group.
4. The keyboard short cut is Ctrl Shift +.
To apply subscript:
1. Select the text.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Single-left-click the Subscript icon in the Font group.
4. The keyboard short cut is Ctrl Shift =.
8. Changing the case
UPPER CASE WORDS stand out on a page. Some people describe it as SHOUTING. To change the case of your text:
1. Single-left-click the Home tab.
2. Click the Aa icon in the Font group.
3. Choose from Sentence case, lower case, UPPER CASE, Capitalise Each Word and tOGGLE cASE
Pressing Shift F3 cycles through the UPPERCASE, lowercase and Capitalise Each Word options. The other two options are not included in the cycle.
Here are what the different case options mean:
Sentence Case
Capitalise the first letter of the first word in the sentence.
lowercase
Make all the selected text lower case (i.e. un-capitalise everything).
UPPERCASE
CAPITALISE all selected text.
Capitalise Each Word
Capitalise the first letter of EVERY word.
tOGGLE cASE
Convert UPPER CASE letters to lower case and convert lower case letters to UPPER CASE.
The Toggle Case feature seems like an odd one and under normal circumstances you would never use it.
However, back in the day (gee, I sound old) guys like me who look at their keyboard as they type and only look up once every 30 minutes used to curse loudly when we found our CAPS LOCK had been on the whole time!
You may still stumble across an old legacy document where the case is all screwed up. If you do, you canquickly fix it with Toggle Case.
Fast forward to today.
Microsoft Word detects when the CAPS LOCK is on. After typing something in reverse case, as soon as you press space or ENTER, Word corrects the incorrect case and turns the CAPS LOCK off. Whatever you type next is in correct case.
10. Highlighting text
Just as you would take a highlighter pen to highlight certain portions of text in a book or report, you can add highlight to any section of text in Microsoft Word. Highlighting attracts attention.
Perhaps you have prepared a document for somebody and need to point out the important sections.
Perhaps you are reviewing somebody else’s work (or even your own) and want to mark sections to revisit later.
There are 2 ways to use the highlighter tool.
Method 1 (for a one-off highlight):
1. Select the text you want to highlight.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Click the ab Highlight icon in the Font group (to use default yellow).
4. If you want to choose your own highlight colour, click the drop-down arrow on the icon, then choose one of the highlight colours in the palette. Stick with the lighter colours.
Method 2 (for multiple highlights)
1. Single-left-click the Home tab.
2. Double-left-click the ab Highlight icon in the Font group.
3. The regular mouse pointer will change to a highlighter icon.
4. Select the first portion of text that you wish to highlight. The highlight is added but the highlighter tool is still active.
5. Select as many other portions of text as you want.
6. When you are done, press Escape or single-left-click the the ab Highlight icon again
Reset highlighted text
1. Select the highlighted text.
2. Single-left-click the Home tab.
3. Click the drop-down arrow on the ab Highlight icon in the Font group and choose No Color.
11. Creating a pretty title or heading
WordArt is a feature that has been around for many years. The conventional way to create WordArt is to choose the tools from the Insert ribbon, choose a style, type some text and then play with the settings.
In Word, there is a second tool that lets you select some existing text and apply WordArt Styling to it.
Here’s the process:
Here are some samples of text effects and typography:
12. Key Takeaways
13. what next?
I hope you found plenty of value in this post. I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway in the comments below together with any questions you may have.
Have a fantastic day.
About the author
Jason Morrell
Jason Morrell is a professional trainer, consultant and course creator who lives on the glorious Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.
He helps people of all levels unleash and leverage the power contained within Microsoft Office by delivering training, troubleshooting services and taking on client projects. He loves to simplify tricky concepts and provide helpful, proven, actionable advice that can be implemented for quick results.
Purely for amusement he sometimes talks about himself in the third person.
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