Chapter 3: Changing the Appearance of Text

Overview

In this chapter you will learn to:

• Change the look of characters.

• Change the look of paragraphs.

• Create and modify lists.

• Format text as you type.

• Change the look of characters and paragraphs with styles.

The way your documents look helps them convey their message. You want the documents you create with Microsoft Office Word 2003 to look professional—well designed and polished—and you want the appearance of your text to reflect its contents. The format of your paragraphs and pages influences the appeal of your documents and helps draw the reader’s attention to important information. To enhance the appearance of your documents, you can format the text so that key points stand out and your arguments are easy to grasp.

In this chapter, you’ll improve the appearance of the text in a document by changing text characteristics. You’ll also change the appearance of the paragraphs in a document by indenting them and changing their alignment, and by setting tab stops for lines within paragraphs. You’ll also create and modify bulleted and numbered lists. Finally, you’ll see how to use Word features that format text as you type and that apply sets of formatting with a few mouse clicks.

See Also

Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries on pages xxxiv–xxxviii.

Important

On the CD Before you can use the practice files in this chapter, you need to install them from the book’s companion CD to their default location. See “Using the Book’s CD-ROM” on page xiii for more information.