Home

How to Format Basic Text in Word 2013

|
Updated:  
2016-03-26 15:31:52
|
Word 2010 For Dummies
Explore Book
Buy On Amazon

Word 2013 gives you lots of options for formatting your text. Word allows for very basic functions all the way up to advanced functions. You can change the format of your text in two ways:

Choose a text-formatting command first, and then type the text. All the text you type is formatted as chosen.

Type the text first, and then select the text as a block and apply the formatting. This technique works best when you’re busy with a thought and need to return to format the text later.

You use both methods as you compose text in your document. Sometimes, it’s easier to use a formatting command and type the text in that format. For example:

  1. Type this line: The cake was

    This is the beginning of the sentence. Next comes the formatted part.

  2. Press Ctrl+I to activate italic text.

    This will italicize the next thing you type.

  3. Type this word: really

    The word you typed after pressing Ctrl-I shows up in italics.

  4. Press Ctrl+I again, which turns off italic.

    Anything you type now will appear normal.

  5. Continue typing: salty.

    And salty. shows up with no italics. So, the final sentence looks like this:

    The cake was really salty.

For more complex formatting, type the text first, go back, mark the text as a block, and then apply the formatting: Type the sentence The cake was really salty, and then double-click the word really to select it. Press Ctrl+I.

About This Article

This article is from the book: 

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.