4.3. Applying Page Borders A tasteful, properly applied border can add a certain flare to your document. However, an inappropriate border can make your document look cheesy (Figure 4-6). Enough said? | | Figure 4-6. The Page Layout Page Background Page Borders menu lets you add a simple line border around a paragraph, picture, or page. You can also add an art border, but dont get carried away. This cake border is a bad choice for Marie Antoinette and most other adults. | |
Okay, now that you've been warned , here's how to add page borders: -
Choose Page Layout Page Background Page Borders to open the Borders and Shading box . The Borders and Shading box has three tabs. Make sure you're using the Page Border tab. (The first Borders tab puts borders around paragraphs, pictures, and other objects on the page.) -
On the left, choose a setting to define the border . Start with the five settings on the left, to define the border in broad strokes ranging from no border to drop shadows. You can select only one of these settings. -
Choose a line style, color , and width, or choose an art border . If you're going with a line border, choose a line type from the Style drop-down menu. You can choose from more than two dozen lines, including solid, dotted , double, and wavy. Then use the drop-down menus to choose a Color and Width (Figure 4-7). If you want an art border-trees, hearts, pieces of cake, and so on-select your design from the Art menu (just below the Width menu). Note that some of the art styles use different patterns for different sides of the page and for the corner design. | | Figure 4-7. If you choose a line border, you can choose a color as well as a style.Selecting from the Theme Colors palette ensures that your color coordinates with the document's current theme. The Standard Colors palette gives you access to several basic, bright colors. Preview the border, and then select the sides of the page that will have borders. | |
Note: Whether you choose lines or art for your border, you can adjust the width. You can increase line widths to a thick 6 points and art widths to 31 points.
WORD TO THE WISE
A Colorful Background | | The Page Color option lets you fill in the entire background of a page. Avoid the temptation to use this feature to create a pretty background. Nothing screams "Amateur designer!" more than loud background colors and patterns that fight with the text on the page. Printing a colored background also drinks up gallons of expensive printer ink, so if you just want a colored background, print your document on colored paper instead. In truth, Microsoft intended the Page Color feature more for those rare birds who use Word to create Web pages, rather than for printed documents. However, you may occasionally use a background color (with heavy stock) to create postcards, colored covers, business cards, and so on. If you use a dark text color, make sure you use a light page color and vice versa. Avoid extremely busy background patterns, textures, and images that make it hard to read your text. Choose Page Layout Page Background Page Color, and youll see a drop-down menu of options as shown previously in Figure 4-7. If you move your mouse over a color (without clicking), then you see the page change color, immediately giving you a preview. In fact, if you're previewing a very dark page color, Word's smart enough to change the text from black to white. That doesn't mean it's impossible to come up with some garish page color options. When you settle on a color, click to choose it. | The Preview on the right side of the Borders and Shading box shows what sides of your page will have borders. Click the borders to toggle them on or off. Using this technique, you can choose to show a border on a single side of the page or on any combination of sides. -
In the lower-right corner of the box, use the "Apply to" control to set the pages that will have borders . Maybe you want your first page to have a different border from the rest of the document. If the first page of your document uses letterhead, you may want a first page with no border at all, so select "This section - all except first page." Or, to put a border around the cover page but no other pages, choose the "This section - first page only" setting. As with paper size and other page layout settings, Word lets you apply borders differently in different sections of your document. See the tip. -
Click OK to accept the settings and to close the Borders and Shading box . |
