WORD 2016

WORD 2016
CHAPTER 2
WORD 2016
Word processing is about using a keyboard. It’s typing. That’s the way
computers were used for years, long before the mouse and all the fancy
graphics became popular.

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USING THE PC KEYBOARD
I’m sure you can easily recognize a computer keyboard, but do you know the
official terms that refer to its various keys?
Relax: No one does.
Rather than look at all 100+ keys as a marauding hoard, consider how the
keys are clustered into groups. To best use Word and understand how the
keyboard is referenced in this book, it helps to know the general keyboard
areas illustrated in the figure.

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Of all the keys, a few play important roles in the word-processing task. They
are
Enter: Marked with the word Enter and sometimes a cryptic, bent-arrow
thing, this key is used to end a paragraph of text.
Spacebar: The only key with no symbol, it inserts a space between words and
sentences. Yes, just one space.
Tab: This key inserts the tab character, which shoves the next text you type
over to the next tab stop. Using this key properly is an art form.
Backspace and Delete: Use these keys to back up and erase text. Yes, erasing
text isn’t a job always left to the editor.

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Keys on the numeric keypad can be number keys or cursor keys. The split
personality is evident on each key cap, which displays two symbols. When the
Num Lock key’s lamp is on, the keys generate numbers. When the lamp is
off,the keys serve as duplicate cursor keys.
Cursor keys control the cursor, which is officially known as the insertion
pointer in Microsoft Word. The cursor keys include the four arrow keys (up,
down, left, right), and also the keys Home, End, PgUp (or Page Up), PgDn (or
Page Down), Insert, and Delete.
Ctrl is pronounced “control.” It’s the control key.
The Delete key may also be labeled Del on the keyboard.
The modifier keys, Shift, Ctrl, and Alt, work in combination with other keys.

WORD 2016
UNDERSTANDING THE MOUSE
POINTER
Though word processing is a keyboard thing, you will eventually lift your
hand from the keyboard to fondle the computer mouse. The mouse is used to
choose commands, move around the document, and select text. Specific
information on these tasks is found throughout this book

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 For now, it helps to understand how the mouse pointer changes its look as
you work in Word:
For editing text, the mouse pointer becomes the I-beam.

For choosing items, the standard 11 o’clock mouse pointer is used.

For selecting lines of text, a 1 o’clock mouse pointer is used. The mouse
pointer may change its appearance when click-and-type mode is active:
Teensy lines appear to the left, right, and below the I-beam mouse pointer.
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KEYBOARD DOS AND DON’TS

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FOLLOWING THE INSERTION
POINTER
Text you compose in Word appears at the insertion pointer’s location. The
insertion pointer looks like a flashing vertical bar:
|
Characters appear before the insertion pointer, one at a time. After a character
appears, the insertion pointer hops to the right, making room for more text.
The insertion pointer moves as you type, but its location can be set to any
location in the document.

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WHACKING THE SPACEBAR
Pressing the spacebar inserts a space character into the text. Spaces are
important between words and sentences.
Withoutthemreadingwouldbedifficult.
The most important thing to remember about the spacebar is that you need to
whack it only once when word processing. Only one space needs to appear
between words and after punctuation. That's it!

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Back in the dark ages, typing instructors directed students to use two spaces
between sentences. That extra space was necessary for readability because
typewriters used monospaced characters. On a computer, however, the extra
space does nothing and potentially leads to formatting woes down the road.
Anytime you feel like using two or more spaces in a document, what you
need is a tab. Tabs are best for indenting text as well as for lining up text in
columns.

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BACKING UP AND ERASING
When you make a typo or another type of typing error, press the Backspace
key on the keyboard.
The Backspace key moves the insertion pointer back one character and erases
that character.
The Delete key also erases text, though it gobbles up characters to the right of
the insertion pointer

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PRESSING THE ENTER KEY
In word processing, you press the Enter key only when you reach the end of a
paragraph. Do not press the Enter key at the end of a line.
When your text gets precariously close to the right margin, Word
automatically wraps the last word on the line down to the next line. This word
wrap feature eliminates the need to press Enter at the end of a line.

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WATCHING THE STATUS BAR
The reason it's the status bar is that it shows you the status of your document,
updating information as you type. A collection of information appears starting
at the left end of the status bar and marching right.

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The status bar information is updated as your document changes.
Use the information to see, for example, which page and line you’re editing,
the word count, and so on.

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OBSERVING PAGE BREAKS
As your document gains length, Word shows you where one page ends and
another page begins. This visual assistance helps you keep elements on the
same page, but also shows you how text flows between pages.
In Print Layout view, the page break appears graphically. Text above the
ethereal void is on one page, and text below the void is on the next page.

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In Draft view, the page break appears as a line of dots from left to right across the
document. And in other views, the page break may not show up at all. In that case,
use the status bar to determine which page you're working on. For example, when
the page-number indicator changes from 6 to 7, you’ve started a new page.
You can change the gap between pages in Print Layout view. Point the mouse at the
gap. When the mouse pointer changes, as shown in the margin, double-click to either
close or open the gap.

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DEALING WITH SPOTS AND
CLUTTER IN THE TEXT
There’s no cause for alarm if you see spots — or dots — amid the text you
type, such as

What you're seeing are nonprinting characters. Word uses various symbols to
represent things you normally don’t see: spaces, tabs, the Enter key, and
more. These jots and tittles appear only when you’ve activated the
Show/Hide feature.

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To use the Show Hide feature, follow these steps:
1. Click the Home tab.
2. In the Paragraph group, click the Show/Hide command button.

** To hide the symbols again, click the command button a second time.

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Why bother with showing the goobers?
Sometimes, it's useful to check out what's up with formatting, find stray tabs
visually, or locate missing paragraphs, for example

* The keyboard shortcut for the Show/Hide command is Ctrl+Shift+8. Use

the 8 on the typewriter area of the keyboard, not the numeric keypad.

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UNDERSTANDING COLORFUL
UNDERLINES
When Word underlines your text without permission, it’s drawing your attention to
something amiss. These special underlines are not text formats. Here are a few of the
underlines you may witness from time to time:
Red zigzag: Spelling errors in Word are underlined with red zigzags.
Blue zigzag: Grammatical and word-choice errors are flagged with a blue zigzag
underline.
Blue underlines: Word courteously highlights web page addresses by using blue
underlined text in your document. You can Ctrl+click the blue underlined text to visit
the web page.
Red lines: You may see red lines in the margin, underneath text, or through text. If so,
it means that you’re using Word’s Track Changes feature.
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