Documents, editing and formatting

A word processor is application software used to create, edit, format, store and print text documents. Examples: MS Word, LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs, WPS Writer.

Features.

1. Editing — text can be inserted, deleted, moved and copied freely at any time, unlike a typewriter where a mistake means retyping the page.

2. Formatting at three levels — character (font, size, bold, italic, colour), paragraph (alignment, indentation, line spacing, bullets) and page (margins, orientation, headers and footers).

3. Find and Replace — locating text anywhere in the document and substituting it, optionally throughout in one action.

4. Spelling and grammar checking, with a thesaurus and AutoCorrect.

5. Tables, images and objects — inserting and formatting tables, pictures, charts, shapes and equations within the text.

6. Mail merge — producing many personalised copies of one letter from a data source.

Others: styles and templates for consistent formatting; automatic table of contents and page numbering; track changes and comments for review; multiple views and zoom; saving in several formats including PDF; and print preview before committing to paper.

On the first save of a new document the two behave identically, because there is no existing file to overwrite — Word must ask for a name and location. From then on they differ.

When Save As must be used.

1. To keep the original. Editing last year's report to make this year's: Save would destroy last year's version, Save As keeps both.

2. To change the file format. Saving a .docx as .pdf for submission, as .doc for an older version of Word, or as .txt for plain text.

3. To change the name or location of a document already saved — to move it into a project folder, or to give it a clearer name.

4. To create a working copy before a risky change, such as a large Replace All across a long document.

Practical rule: Save often while working; Save As whenever the earlier version still matters.

Formatting operates at three levels, distinguished by what the command applies to.

1. Character (font) formatting — applies to the selected characters only, so text must be selected first.

Examples: font name and size; bold, italic, underline; font colour and highlighting; superscript and subscript.
Also: strikethrough, change case, character spacing, small caps.

2. Paragraph formatting — applies to the entire paragraph containing the cursor. No selection is needed, and selecting only part of a paragraph still formats the whole of it. A paragraph is all the text up to the next press of Enter.

Examples: alignment (left, centre, right, justified); indentation (left, right, first line, hanging); line spacing (single, 1.5, double); bullets and numbering.
Also: spacing before and after, borders and shading, tab stops, widow and orphan control.

3. Page formatting — applies to the whole document, or to a section of it.

Examples: margins; orientation (portrait or landscape); paper size (A4, Letter, Legal); headers and footers with page numbers.
Also: columns, page borders, watermark, page and section breaks.

Why the distinction is worth knowing. It tells you what to select before issuing a command. Trying to make one word bold without selecting it does nothing; trying to centre only half a paragraph is impossible, because centring is a paragraph property. And to change page settings for part of a document you must first insert a section break, since page formatting otherwise applies to everything.

A style is a named set of formatting instructions — font, size, weight, colour, alignment, spacing, indentation — that is applied to text in a single action. Word supplies built-in styles including Normal, Title, Quote and Heading 1 to Heading 9, and users can create their own.

Why styles beat direct formatting.

1. One change updates everywhere. In a report with forty section headings all set to Heading 1, deciding that headings should be dark blue and 14 pt means modifying the style once — all forty change. Formatted by hand, it would mean forty separate edits, and experience says one will be missed.

2. Guaranteed consistency. Applying a style gives exactly the same result every time. Formatting by hand, the tenth heading acquires 13.5 pt instead of 14, or bold but not the right colour — differences nobody notices until the document is printed.

3. Styles carry structure, not just appearance. This is the deeper reason. Applying Heading 1 tells Word "this is a top-level heading". Making text big and bold by hand tells Word nothing — it merely looks like a heading. Consequences of real structure:

• Automatic table of contents. Word builds it from heading styles, with correct page numbers, and updates it when the document changes. Without styles, the contents page must be typed and maintained by hand.
• Navigation pane — jump straight to any section.
• Cross-references — "see Section 3.2" stays correct when sections are renumbered.
• Outline view and the ability to collapse and reorder whole sections.
• Accessibility — a screen reader announces headings, letting a blind reader navigate the document.

4. Speed. One click or shortcut against five or six separate commands, on every heading in the document.

5. Templates. A set of styles saved as a template gives every document in an organisation the same appearance, without anyone remembering the specification.

The summary. Direct formatting records what text should look like; a style records what the text is, and derives the appearance from that. Everything automatic in a long document depends on the second.

Three habits, each of which fails as soon as the document changes.

Problem 1 — a hand-typed table of contents.

Every page number in it is a guess frozen at the moment it was typed. Inserting one paragraph on page 5 shifts every subsequent page, so all the numbers below become wrong at once, and the student must recheck forty entries by hand — before every reprint. Renaming a section means editing it in two places, and sooner or later the contents page and the heading disagree.

How it should be done: apply Heading 1/2/3 styles to the headings, then References → Table of Contents. Word generates it with correct page numbers, and Update Table (or F9) corrects the whole thing in one action.

Problem 2 — blank lines made by pressing Enter.

Each press creates an empty paragraph, not spacing. This causes:

• Gaps that move. When text reflows, the empty paragraphs travel with it, so a gap intended before a heading can end up in the middle of a page or, worse, as blank lines at the top of the next page.
• Uneven spacing. Some gaps are one Enter, some two, some three, so no two sections are spaced alike.
• Wrong spacing when the font changes. An empty paragraph's height depends on its font size, so changing the body font changes every gap by a different amount.
• Broken numbering and contents. Empty paragraphs are counted as paragraphs; they interrupt numbered lists and can appear as blank entries.

How it should be done: set Spacing Before and Spacing After in Paragraph settings — ideally as part of a style, so every heading gets identical space automatically and it stays attached to the heading wherever it moves. Also tick Keep with next so a heading can never be stranded at the foot of a page.

Problem 3 — headings formatted individually.

• Inconsistency is certain: over forty headings some will differ in size, colour or spacing.
• Any change means forty edits, and one will be missed.
• No structure exists. Word does not know these are headings, so the navigation pane is empty, no table of contents can be generated, cross-references are impossible, and a screen reader cannot navigate the document.

How it should be done: apply heading styles, and modify the style when the appearance needs to change.

The common cause. All three mistakes come from formatting what the text should look like rather than declaring what it is. Once structure is declared — this is a heading, this paragraph needs space after it — appearance follows automatically, and stays correct when the document changes. The extra effort is a few minutes at the start; the saving is every reprint thereafter.