CHAPTER 3. Entering Text and Moving Around

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 3 Entering Text and Moving Around Typing text is what word processing is all about. You can, in fact, create a perfectly respectable document by typing alone. Everything else all of the formatting that you can apply is icing on the cake. In this chapter, you first learn the basic principles of typing in a word processing program. After you know how to get text onto the page, you then practice moving around the document so that you can edit the text and apply formatting. Typing Text When you start Word, it gives you a blank document to let you start typing right away. Word makes some assumptions about how the document will look, so you don t need to worry about formatting at all unless you want to change the default settings. Here are the most important ones: 8 1 /2- by 11-inch paper 1-inch margins on the top and bottom of the page, and 1 1 /4-inch margins on the left and right sides of the page

2 46 Chapter 3 Single spacing Times New Roman, 12-point font Throughout the remaining chapters about Word, you learn how to change these formatting options. For now, you can just focus on typing. Typing Paragraphs and Creating Blank Lines The key to having a happy typing experience is knowing when to press Enter. Follow these two rules for typing paragraphs of text: When your text reaches the right margin, just continue typing. When Word can t fit any more text on the line, it automatically wraps the text to the next line for you. You should not press Enter at the ends of the lines within a paragraph. When you reach the end of the paragraph, you do need to press Enter. This brings the insertion point (the cursor) down to the next line. Figure 3.1 illustrates these two rules. FIGURE 3.1 Do not press Enter within a paragraph. Do press Enter at the end of the paragraph. Press Enter here. Do not press Enter at the ends of these lines. If you do accidentally press Enter at the end of lines within a paragraph, your line breaks go haywire as soon as you add or delete any text. If your paragraph has some lines that are much shorter than they should be (a telltale sign that you pressed Enter within the paragraph), follow the instructions in Seeing Your Paragraph, Tab, and Space Marks later in this chapter to hunt down the offending paragraph marks and delete them. When you press Enter, you actually insert a hidden character called a paragraph mark, which tells Word to end the paragraph. Word s definition of a paragraph may be a little broader than yours. It considers a paragraph to be

3 Entering Text and Moving Around 47 any amount of text that ends with a paragraph mark. So as far as Word is concerned, blank lines and short lines of text such as headings or the lines in an address block are separate paragraphs. To create blank lines between your paragraphs, press Enter twice between each paragraph, once to end the paragraph you just typed and once to create the blank line. If you need several blank lines, just continue pressing Enter. If you press Enter too many times and need to delete a blank line, press the Backspace key. You ll learn much more about deleting in Chapter 4, Managing Documents and Revising Text. Figure 3.2 illustrates when to press Enter to create short lines of text and blank lines. Press Enter to end these short lines. 3 FIGURE 3.2 Press Enter to end short paragraphs and create blank lines. Press Enter to end these short lines. In Chapter 6 s Paragraph Spacing section, you ll learn how to automatically add a blank line after each paragraph without pressing Enter a second time. As you type, you may see an occasional red or green wavy line under your text. These lines indicate possible spelling or grammatical errors. You ll learn how to use them (and hide them if they bother you) in Chapter 8, Correcting Documents and Using Columns and Tables. Inserting Tabs Word gives you default tab stops every one-half inch across the horizontal ruler. (If you don t see your rulers, choose View, Ruler.) Each time you press the Tab key, the insertion point jumps out to the next tab stop. Any text to the right of the insertion point moves along with it. Figure 3.3 shows the beginning of a memo in which the Tab key was

4 48 Chapter 3 pressed after the labels To:, From:, Date: and Re: to line up the text at the half-inch mark on the horizontal ruler. FIGURE 3.3 Press the Tab key to push text out to the next tab stop. Default tab stops The text lines up at the half-inch mark on the ruler. If you press the Tab key too many times, press the Backspace key to delete the extra tabs. You can also press the Tab key at the beginning of a paragraph to indent the first line by one-half inch. Figure 3.4 shows a document whose paragraphs are indented in this way. By default, when you press Tab at the beginning of a paragraph, Word sets a first-line indent for the paragraph. You ll learn much more about indentation in Chapter 6. What s important to understand now is that if Word applies this formatting, then when you press Enter at the end of the paragraph, Word automatically indents the next paragraph for you. If this default behavior has been turned off, just press Tab at the beginning of each paragraph. Seeing Your Paragraph, Tab, and Space Marks As you re typing your document, you may occasionally want to check whether you accidentally pressed Enter at the end of a line within a paragraph, or pressed Enter too many times between paragraphs. Or, maybe you think you may have pressed the Tab key one time too many, or typed an extra space between two words. You can use Word s Show/Hide feature to solve these mysteries. To turn it on, click the Show/Hide button on the Formatting toolbar (or press Ctrl+Shift+*). This is a toggle button, meaning that you click it once to turn it on, and again when you want to turn it off (see Figure 3.5). The Show/Hide feature uses the paragraph mark symbol to indicate you where you pressed Enter, a right arrow to show where you pressed the Tab key, and a dot to mark where you pressed the Spacebar.

5 Entering Text and Moving Around 49 FIGURE 3.4 Press the Tab key at the beginning of each paragraph to indent the first line. 3 Extra tab Extra space Show/Hide FIGURE 3.5 The Show/Hide feature lets you see your paragraph, tab, and space marks. Extra paragraph mark Figure 3.5 shows a document that has an errant paragraph, tab, and space mark. The user accidentally pressed the Tab key a second time on the From: line, typed an extra space between the words designating and Fridays, and pressed Enter at the end of a line within a paragraph. To delete any of these hidden characters, click immediately to the left of the character and press the Delete key. Figure 3.6 shows the same document after these three problems were fixed.

6 50 Chapter 3 Your document looks cluttered when Show/Hide is enabled, so you may want to turn it on just long enough to investigate and fix a mistake relating to hidden characters, and then turn it off. FIGURE 3.6 The extra paragraph, tab, and space marks have been deleted. Typing onto the Next Page As you re typing, Word calculates how many lines fit on a page. When the page you re on is full, Word automatically inserts a page break and starts another page. Figure 3.7 shows the break between two pages of text, as it appears in Print Layout view. (You ll learn about views in Chapter 5, Viewing and Printing Your Documents. ) FIGURE 3.7 Word breaks pages for you. Page break

7 Entering Text and Moving Around 51 As you add or delete text, Word adjusts the page break so that it is always in the right place. This type of adjustable page break is called a soft page break (or automatic page break). There may be times when you need to break a page even though it is not yet full. For example, you might want to start the next section of a report on a new page, or create a title page. To do this, you have to insert a hard page break (or manual page break). You ll learn how to do this in Chapter 6. Navigating Through Text As you re typing a document, you will surely want to revise what you ve written. Maybe you want to add a paragraph earlier in the document, change some wording, or delete a sentence or two. Before you can edit your text, however, you have to move the insertion point (navigate) to the location where you want to make the change. Word enables you to navigate with both the keyboard and the mouse. In the remainder of this chapter, you practice both types of navigation techniques. 3 It s important to differentiate between the insertion point and the I-beam (see Figure 3.8). The insertion point is the flashing vertical bar that shows where text will be inserted or deleted. When you navigate with the keyboard, the insertion point moves as you press the navigation keys. The I- beam is the mouse pointer that appears when you move the mouse over text. It does not show you where text will be inserted or deleted. In fact, its sole mission in life is to move the insertion point when you click. (If you re using the click-and-type feature, you need to double-click. This is discussed in Chapter 4 s Inserting Text section.) I-beam FIGURE 3.8 The insertion point shows you where text will be inserted or deleted; the I-beam lets you move the insertion point. Insertion point

8 52 Chapter 3 Navigating with the Mouse To navigate with the mouse, simply point to the location where you want to place the insertion point and click. If the location is currently offscreen, you need to use the scrollbars or the Browse buttons to scroll the location into view, as described in the next two sections. Using the Scrollbars Word provides a vertical scrollbar on the right side of the Word window and a horizontal scrollbar across the bottom of the window. You will frequently use the vertical scrollbar to scroll up and down through your document. By default, the entire width of your document is visible in the Word window, so you rarely need to use the horizontal scrollbar. When you use the scrollbar to scroll a document, the insertion point doesn t move to the portion of the document that you ve scrolled onscreen until you click. You can click the up and down arrows at either end of the vertical scrollbar to scroll approximately one line at a time. To scroll more quickly, point to the up or down arrow and hold down the mouse button. To move longer distances, it s faster to drag the scroll box along the scrollbar. As you drag, a ScreenTip tells you what page you are on, and, if your document has headings, what section of the document you re in (see Figure 3.9). FIGURE 3.9 Page 8 of this ninepage document is scrolled into view. Drag the scroll box to travel longer distances.

9 Entering Text and Moving Around 53 To scroll up one screen at a time, click directly on the scrollbar above the scroll box; to scroll down one screen at a time, click the scrollbar below the scroll box. Using the Browse Buttons Browsing is a fast way to move sequentially through your document. You can use several types of objects as the focus point for browsing including pages headings, graphics, and footnotes and you can change the browse object at any time. To browse, you use the three Browse buttons in the lower-right corner of the Word window (see Figure 3.10). FIGURE 3.10 The Browse buttons let you move sequentially through your document. Previous Select Browse Object Next 3 The default option is to browse by page, so the ScreenTips for the Next and Previous buttons are Next Page and Previous Page. Click the Next Page button to travel directly to the top of the next page; click the Previous Page button to go to the top of the previous page. If you want to browse by a different type of object, click the Select Browse Object button. Word displays a grid containing various browse objects (see Figure 3.11). Point to each square to see its description in the gray area at the bottom of the grid. Some objects, such as Field and Comment, are useful only if you have used certain features in your document. The two squares on the left end of the lower row, Go To and Find, display the Find and Replace dialog box. (Go To is described in Jumping to a Specific Page later in this chapter, and Find is described in Chapter 8 s Editing Shortcuts section.) Select the object that you want to use, and click OK. FIGURE 3.11 Click the Select Browse Object and choose an object to browse by in the grid. As soon as you choose a browse object other than Page, the Next and Previous buttons turn blue, and their ScreenTips change to reflect the currently selected object (Next

10 54 Chapter 3 Heading and Previous Heading, for example). Clicking these buttons now takes you to the next or previous instance of the browse object you selected. Navigating with the Keyboard You can, if you like, move the insertion point through an entire document by using only the four arrow keys (see the first four items in Table 3.1), but you won t get anywhere fast. To navigate more efficiently, use the keyboard shortcuts listed after the arrow keys in Table 3.1. Learning these shortcuts will save you huge amounts of time later as you re editing your documents. TABLE 3.1. Keyboard Techniques for Moving the Insertion Point Keyboard Technique Moves the Insertion Point Down one line Up one line One character to the right One character to the left Ctrl+ One word to the right Ctrl+ One word to the left Ctrl+ Down one paragraph Ctrl+ Up one paragraph End To the end of the line Home To the beginning of the line Page Down Down one screen Page Up Up one screen Ctrl+Page Down To the top of the next page Ctrl+Page Up To the top of the previous page Ctrl+End End of document Ctrl+Home Beginning of document Jumping to a Specific Page When you re typing a long document, you often need to get to a particular page to make a change. You can, of course, navigate to that page by using the standard mouse and keyboard techniques described in this chapter. However, it s often faster to use Word s Go To feature, which enables you to jump directly to any page in your document.

11 Entering Text and Moving Around 55 Jump to a Specific Page To use the Go To command to jump to a specific page, follow these steps: 1. Choose Edit, Go To to display the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. 2. Type the number of the page in the Enter Page Number text box (see Figure 3.12). FIGURE 3.12 Type the desired page number in the Enter Page Number text box. 3. Click the Go To button (or press Enter). Word jumps to the page you specified. (You can check the page number in the status bar to confirm this.) 4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 if you want to go to other pages. Otherwise, click the Close button. One unusual aspect of the Find and Replace dialog box (and a few other dialog boxes as well), is that you can click outside of the dialog box and edit your text while the dialog box is open. Most dialog boxes close as soon as you click the OK button, and you can t edit your document while the dialog box is displayed. Word leaves the Find and Replace dialog box open after you click the Go To button so that you can continue using the dialog box to jump to other pages in the document. If you need to edit text on the current page, click outside of the dialog box to deactivate it and activate the document. The dialog box s title bar turns gray to let you know that it no longer has the focus. Revise your text, and then click the title bar of the dialog box to activate it again. You can then use the Go To command to travel to another page. When you re finished using Go To, click the Close button in the dialog box. 3 As you can see in Figure 3.12, the Go to What list in the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box lets you go to other items besides pages. When you click a different item in this list Line or Footnote, for example the options on the right side of the dialog box change to enable you to tell Word which specific instance of the item you want to go to.

12 56 Chapter 3 Summary Typing in a word processing program is easy and straightforward. You now know how to type simple documents and navigate within them. Don t worry about editing your text and correcting mistakes yet. You will learn many ways to revise your documents throughout the rest of this book. The most pressing task at the moment is learning how to save your documents so that you can come back to them later. You ll learn this and other document-management and text-editing techniques in the next chapter.