5. Technology
Microsoft Word - Not a Typewriter
Different Levels of Formatting
Character formatting
Everyone is familiar with character for-
matting. If you select the “Format ->
Font...” window in Microsoft Word you can
change the font, it’s style (bold, italic, regular), size, color, and many other characteristics.
Manual typewriters similarly had char-
acter formatting. When you purchased a
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6. typewriter you had in essence purchased a
single font; what ever font was on the typebar.
Under the “Advanced” tab in the font
window you can adjust other characteristics (usually not needed for normal layout)
such as spacing and other typography.
Paragraph Formatting
Paragraphs also have formatting op-
tions; accessed by selecting “Format ->
Paragraph...” from the menu. This allows a
variety of changes from alignment, indentation, spacing and tabs.
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7. Styles
Much less well know are styles. For
most users styles are not critical in word
processing. They simple type there document, print, and they are finished.
However for anyone working in pub-
lishing styles are critical. And for any project or document that has a specific structure, styles can be a huge timesaver.
An example is the US Army Memoran-
dum format governed by Army Regulation
25-50. There are over ten pages of instructions concerning spacing, margins, numbering and placement of specific structures as well as a dozen examples.
Similarly a paper prepared using the
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) standards follows detailed instructions concerning spacing, margins, numbering and placement of
specific structures in a paper.
In both cases, as well as dozens of
other applications, styles make defining,
applying, and modifying these structures
much easier. Styles are the collecting of formatting instructions that identify specific
elements of your structure.
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