Understanding Word Columns

Word makes it easy for you to insert and format columns for newsletters, brochures , and other special documents. It gives you complete control over the number of columns, column widths, and the space between the columns. You can insert columns for the entire page run of a document or place columns only in a particular document section.

The columns that you work with in Word are called newspaper columns or "snaking columns." This means that if you have two columns on a page and fill the first column, the text snakes over into the second column and continues there. This format is typical of your daily newspaper's columns.

For Side-by-Side Columns, Use a Table If you want to create columns that allow you to place paragraphs of information side by side in a document, place the text in a table that is not formatted with a visible border. This gives you great control over the individual text blocks in the separate columns that you create (see Lesson 16, "Using Word Tables").