Home | Arts & Entertainment | Celebrities
Ask just about any computer user if they use or have used Microsoft Word and you can confidently expect the answer "yes". Word is everywhere, even on Apple Mac. So, most bosses automatically assume that their people know how to use it and they do, up to a point. But many casual Word users make some pretty basic mistakes. This article looks at the most common. * Are you ever guilty of pressing the Return key at the top of a document to move the cursor down, perhaps when creating a document to be printed on your company stationery? If so, this means that you are creating a document with unwanted characters at the start. Much better to click on File - Page Setup and change the top margin (in Word 2003) or click on Custom Margins in the Page Layout tab of the Word 2007 ribbon. * Leaving two spaces after the period which ends each sentence is another common error among users. In fact, one space is fine with modern typefaces since they are proportionally spaced (e.g., the letter "w" takes up more space than the letter "i"). The two space habit is a throwback to the days when people were using typewriters with monospace typefaces such as Elite and Courier. * The habit of pressing the Return key twice at the end of each paragraph is not a good idea because it creates a sea of extra white space on the printed page. Only one return should used to end the paragraph. Extra space can then be added using the paragraph spacing commands. To find these options, in Word 2003 or earlier, choose Paragraph from the format menu. In Word 2007, click on the Page Layout tab. * People who have never had any formal Microsoft Word training can perhaps be forgiven for not fully understanding how tabs work. You will even see some users attempting to align elements by using the space bar and, of course, when they print the document, nothing is properly aligned. As experienced users will know, the Tab key should be used; not the space bar. * Word, like most text handling software has default tab stops. So, a lot of users align their columns by pressing the tab key repeatedly if necessary to move to closest default tab. This leads to inconsistency in the number of tab characters between columns and should be avoided. It's much better to click on the Word ruler to set up your own tabs just where you need them. * Another common mistake among Word users is to manually format text in long documents or perhaps to user the Format Painter. Manually formatting text is fine for single page or short documents but with long documents, it's best to use Word's style feature. That way, if you need to modify the appearance of the document, all you need to do is to modify the attributes of the styles. * Then there's the question of who's in charge: Word or the user. You will often hear users complain that Word has a mind of its own: "It tries to do everything for you". Remember, almost any setting in Word that irritates you can be modified by going to Tools - Options in Word 2003 or earlier or choosing Word Options from the Office Button in Word 2007.
Article Source: http://article.selectionsguide.com
The author has been running training courses on Microsoft Word for many years. He is a trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent IT training company based in London.
Please Rate this Article
5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
