Microsoft Word tips for Authors: Indentation and Space Between Paragraphs

First line indentation and space between paragraphs.

In my role as Employment Consultant, on a daily basis I need to fix up a lot of client resumes; and one thing I have consistently found is that too many people use their word processor as if they were using a typewriter, that is manually inserting space in order to achieve a desired structural look rather than use features contained within the program that achieves it for them quicker, easier and applied more consistently.

Logically, I feel it is safe for me to assume that if such a high percentage of my clients consistently make this same mistake in trying to replicate how a document should be appear rather than using features to achieve it because they don't the feature exists or how to use it, then other users of Microsoft are possibly making the same operating mistakes in manually trying to produce documents as that of my clients.

So today, I am going to show writers and author’s how they can format a Word document to indent the first line of every new paragraph – which makes the text easier to read.

You will need to open up either a blank document, or an existing text based document.  

For a blank document, press Control + A to highlight the entire document, and then apply the changes.  

For an existing document, if you want to apply the changes to the entire document, then you can press Control + A to highlight the entire document too, and apply the changes in the same way as you can for a blank document.  

If you only want to make changes to certain paragraphs only, then only highlight the paragraphs with which you are going to apply the changes.

 

1. Press Control + A to highlight All (already done)
2. Move your mouse to the Paragraph options section on the Home tab ribbon.
   
3. Click on the X button which will bring up the Paragraph options menu (I don't know what this button is called, so I am calling it X button for this tutorial).
   
   
   
4. Click on Line Spacing Options...
   
   
5. Click on the Special drop down arrow box under Indentation Options (currently displaying ‘None’)
   
   
6. Click on First line. 
7. The ‘By’ section under Indentation Options will change to show 1.27 cm which is the current default setting for length of the indentation.  You can change this to make the indentation larger or smaller depending on publisher specifications.
8. Click on Ok to implement the changes and close the dialogue box.

Now, every time you hit the Enter key as you are typing, you no longer need to manually hit the TAB key to create a first line indent as Word will automatically apply the indentation for you.

Sometimes you will also want a gap between paragraphs.

1. Move your mouse to the Paragraph options section on the Home tab ribbon.
2. Click on the X button like you did earlier.

To attach extra space after a paragraph, click on the Add Space After Paragraph option, or

To attach the extra space before each paragraph, click on the Add Space Before Paragraph option.

Tip: You should only need to add space either before or after paragraphs, not both.

If you want to increase or decrease the space before or after paragraphs, click on the X button again and then click on Line Spacing Options... 

When the Paragraph Options dialogue box appears, under Spacing, you can increase or decrease the spacing by clicking on the up/down buttons to increase/decrease by 6 pts per click, or you can set your own pts value.  Once finished, click on the Ok button to return to your document.

Hope that helps.

If there is something you are struggling with in Microsoft Word and would like a tutorial on, then please let me know either in the comments section below or by using the Contact me page.

 

For Writers: How to use Microsoft Bookmark to navigate long manuscripts

Writing a book is a huge undertaking; although I am not (yet) a published author, I have still been writing storylines for the last ten years with a view of becoming published one day in the future. I also am one of a (rumoured-to-be) rare breed of users that like using Microsoft Word, which is the program I used in 2007 and 2008 to write a 120,518 word, or 417 double-spaced page, manuscript for a fantasy storyline (I have since revised and am will rework on once I complete my current project).

As you can imagine, as you are committed to typing so many words to electronic file and screen, navigating the document can pose quite a challenge, in a number of different ways.  Today, I am going to show the basics of how I work around one of those challenges, and then let you, the creative writer come up with more ways that this one feature can benefit you as you work on your manuscript.

So, what do you do when, for example, you are working on say Chapter Twenty Three and you need to add – immediately – say a bit of foreshadowing of [this], and you know the perfect place to add this must be included detail is way back in say Chapter Five, you know, in that scene, right where the character is [whatever]. One way many writer handle this is to scroll back through the pages, looking for that scene.  This method takes time, and can be frustrating, especially when you don’t find the section of text you want quickly, and you need to act upon writing the brilliant one line in that scene before the sentence slips from your memory never to return. And then, when you are done, you find yourself asking, ‘Where was I?’

Now, the above scenario isn’t too frustrating if you are working on a document of only a few pages, but it can be very hard to find text you are looking for (a sentence you could have written months ago, for example) if say you are working on – let’s pick page 352 of a now 416 page manuscript and you need to find the scene which you think might be somewhere around pages 60 through to maybe 90 IF you are remembering your own story and word count estimation correctly.  A number of things could happen:  you could concentrate so much on finding the text that once you find it you forget why you were trying to find it in the first place; you could find it easily, but then forget what you were doing before you returned to this part of the manuscript.

This is when Microsoft Word’s Bookmark feature – if used well – can come to your rescue.

So today I am going to provide step-by-step instructions on how to insert and how to use a Bookmark, and give some suggestions on how writers can use this feature to their advantage.

Now, before I leave what I’m writing I create a [return here] Bookmark, and only once that is done do I then go back and act on my idea to add foreshadowing of [this] earlier into the manuscript.  There are other ways of course, but this is quite easy.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Let’s pretend for this tutorial that this Microsoft Word document I’m using to type up this blog post for my blog is my novel manuscript, and let us also pretend that I am up to [Return Here] in my manuscript when I suddenly realise that to be fair to readers I can’t just fire this loaded gun without having foreshadowed the loaded gun in a much earlier scene.  As this I realise my responsibility to be fair to my readers, I also immediately know the perfect scene and moment within my storyline where all I need to add is one simple sentence and hey presto, problem resolved.

Now, when I first started writing my manuscript, I had a scenario something very close to that described above, and I immediately scrolled back through my document in search of that sentence so that I could attach my foreshadowing.  The trouble was, I was working on my story climax, and the scene where I could show my character taking the loaded gun with her was way back somewhere in the first third – the beginning – of my novel.  By the time I scrolled through 300+ pages in search of that scene and actually found what I was looking for, because I kept going past it, I forgot the words that I wanted to add to the end of that sentence. So to prompt me, I scrolled back and searched for the page I had just left, to reread the sentence that had caused me to realise I needed to foreshadow the gun, in the hopes that rereading the sentence again would re-spark the sentence wording again.

Now, through experience I am not so quick to start scrolling forward and back – until I have left myself a bookmark to return with ease. As soon as I realise I am going to have to scroll through the document, I press the enter key to take me to the next line and then type the words ‘Return Here’.

So, without further ado, here are the instructions to add a Bookmark to a Microsoft Word document:

1.      Type the words Return Here.

2.      Highlight the words [Return Here]

3.      Go to the Ribbon and choose the Insert Tab, and locate the Bookmark button

 

4.      You will get a pop up dialogue menu that looks like this:

5.      In the text box where it says “bookmark name”, I write the words ReturnHere (no spaces are allowed, so I capitalise any second words to make it easier for me to read – this is particularly useful when you have a lot of bookmarks). This is what I am calling my bookmark (ReturnHere).

6.      Click Add, and the bookmark will be created and the dialogue box will automatically close. 

7.      Now you are free to scroll back through your document and work on somewhere else within the document.

8.      When you are ready to return to your ReturnHere point, click on Bookmark on the Insert tab (instructions above)

9.      Click on ReturnHere within the list (as mentioned earlier, you can do multiple bookmarks in the same document, so the bookmark titles are listed alphabetically, or by location depending on how you sort the list).

10.  Once the bookmark is highlight, click on “Go To” and Microsoft Bookmarks will take you straight to the highlighted text, in this case, the words Return Here.

Now the above is a simple bookmark, but with a bit of creativity, you can use this feature within a large writing project so you can return to anywhere you like quickly and easily.  I am now in the habit of making bookmarks every time I start a new chapter; the first time a character appears, key scenes (e.g.  LauraInClass, LauraLeavingClassCrying, LauraMeetingTheWitch etc.)

It makes the list in Bookmarks long, but it is so much easier to search for key scenes in this way rather than scrolling through a very long document trying to find text - which can feel very much like looking for a needle in a haystack if you don’t recall what page it appears (and face it, in a document that is almost complete, you only have a rough idea where it is).

Well that’s how quickly and easily you can create a bookmark within your own manuscripts. Please use the comments section below to let me know if you found this tutorial helpful and to share any tips you use to navigate your way through long documents.

Char

Microsoft Word Tutorial: Jump Text Shortcut

 

As a writer, you often write bullet points or even sentences and paragraphs and then later realise that they are not appearing in the correct order (or sequence).

Most Word users simply try to resolve the situation during their edits by cutting and pasting the text.

But there is an easier way! Use Microsoft’s ‘Jump text’ shortcut (otherwise called Move Selected Text Up or Move Selected Text Down.  I use this shortcut all the time when I am working on resumes with clients, so I can jump more important tasks and skills higher up a bullet list because clients don’t usually list things in order of importance. I use it so often, it is my favourite shortcut!

How to use the “Jump Text” shortcut

1.      Open up Microsoft Word and type the following list exactly as it appears.  We are going to use this list to jump the text around without having to copy or cut and paste.

• ·Apple
• ·Orange
• ·Peach
• ·Pear
• ·Strawberry
• ·Mango
• ·Watermelon

Done?

2.      Okay, let’s pretend you are now up to revising the document you earlier typed up, and on further reflection, you need the text to appear in the following order instead:

• · Strawberry
• · Apple
• · Peach
• · Pear
• · Mango
• · Watermelon
• · Orange

But don’t do anything yet! 

Rather than cut and paste the text into the right order which most people immediately start to do, we are going to use the Jump Text keyboard shortcut to move the selection of text into the correct position.  Ready?

3.      First up, we are going to move the word ‘Strawberry’ up from being the fifth item in the list, to holding the number one position. We start by highlighting the word ‘strawberry’.  I assume you know how to highlight text, so do this in your Word document now then return to these instructions.

4.      Now we are ready to move the selected text up. Using your keyboard, find the Shift, Alt and Up Arrow keys. Found them?

5.      Press the Shift, Alt and Up Arrow keys at the same time.  If you need to, you can press and hold the Shift and Alt keys and then just strike the Up Arrow key.  Each time you use this combination of keys, the word ‘strawberry’ should jump up by one line, forcing the original line above it to automatically move down by one line, effectively swapping the two lines around.  Did it work?  Yes, great! Now move the word ‘strawberry’ all the way to the top. And by the way, Excellent!  Well done.

6.      Moving text down is a similar process. Except, instead of using the Up Arrow key, we will now use the Down Arrow key.

7.      Again, start by Highlighting the word ‘Orange’. Then, using the Move Selected Text Down shortcut, jump the word ‘Orange’ from its original second line position (but should now be the third option because we moved Strawberry up), and jump it down to being the last choice in our list.

There you go:  A quick and simple shortcut to help you move (jump) selected text up and down!

Now a few little pointers are in order.

You can only move whole lines of text, so if you highlight one sentence, but there are other sentences on the same line of text, then you will activate moving the entire paragraph rather than just the selected line of text.

You can’t jump text left or right, only up or down lines.  (I know, it would be great if they had of added this shortcut too).

Text does not have to be in a bullet or list for it to be jumped up or down.

Try another jumping text example:

·         Type in a couple of paragraphs of text, then highlight the middle paragraph and move it up to become the first paragraph.  If you have a manual blank line (by hitting the Enter key) to give you a gap between paragraphs, when you highlight the text, you will need to highlight that one blank row beneath your highlighted paragraph if you wish to keep your manual formatting of keeping that blank line of text between paragraphs.   See example in italics below:

Original...Blue arrows refer to manual blank lines created by Enter key

----->

Press the Shift, Alt and Up Arrow keys at the same time.  If you need to, you can press and hold the Shift and Alt keys and then just strike the Up Arrow key.  Each time you use this combination of keys, the word ‘strawberry’ should jump up by one line, forcing the original line above it to automatically move down by one line, effectively swapping the two lines around.  Did it work?  Now move the word ‘strawberry’ all the way to the top. Excellent!  Well done.
----->

Moving text down is a similar process. Except, instead of using the Up Arrow key, we will now use the Down Arrow key.
----->

Highlight the word ‘Orange’. Using the Move Selected Text Down shortcut, move the word ‘Orange’ from its original second line position (but should now be the third option because we moved Strawberry up), and move it to being the last choice.

Example, second paragraph moved without the blank text line below it – Arrows indicate the errors

Moving text down is a similar process. Except, instead of using the Up Arrow key, we will now use the Down Arrow key.
->Press the Shift, Alt and Up Arrow keys at the same time.  If you need to, you can press and hold the Shift and Alt keys and then just strike the Up Arrow key.  Each time you use this combination of keys, the word ‘strawberry’ should jump up by one line, forcing the original line above it to automatically move down by one line, effectively swapping the two lines around.  Did it work?  Now move the word ‘strawberry’ all the way to the top. Excellent!  Well done.
----->

----->

Highlight the word ‘Orange’. Using the Move Selected Text Down shortcut, move the word ‘Orange’ from its original second line position (but should now be the third option because we moved Strawberry up), and move it to being the last choice.

It is best to use the program’s Paragraph settings to automatically set space before or after a paragraph rather than manually entering blank lines of text by using the Enter key.  That way, if you need to jump full paragraphs, you won’t have the issue as occurring above.