Improving the Appearance of Text in Columns

Improving the Appearance of Text in Columns

In addition to the standard font and paragraph formatting you learned about in Hour 6, "Formatting Characters," and Hour 7, "Formatting Paragraphs," Word gives you a few other choices for formatting text in multiple columns.

Follow these steps if your columns need to be a specific width or if you want to add a vertical line between the columns:

1. Click anywhere in the multiple-column text, and choose Format, Columns to display the Columns dialog box (see Figure 15.4).

   Figure 15.4. You can make changes to your column formatting in the Columns dialog box.

   

2. If you see a format under Presets at the top of the dialog box that matches what you want, click it.

3. If you have specific requirements for column widths, first clear the Equal Column Width check box. Then enter the desired settings for each column under Width and Spacing . ( Spacing refers to the amount of space between columns.)

4. To add vertical lines between your columns, mark the Line Between check box.

5. When you have made all your selections, click OK .

To quickly adjust column width, drag the Column Width marker (see Figure 15.2). If you want to see the precise widths of the columns, hold down the Alt key as you drag.

Columns sometimes look better if the text is justified so that it has a straight right edge. If you do justify your text, it will probably look best if you hyphenate it as well to reduce gaps between words. To apply hyphenation, choose Tools, Language, Hyphenation, mark the Automatically Hyphenate Document check box, and click OK.

If you need to force a column to break in a particular place, move the insertion point there, choose Insert, Break, mark the Column Break option button, and click OK. Word shifts the text beneath the break to the top of the next column.

To balance the length of your columns on the last page of a document, insert a continuous section break at the very end of the document. Press Ctrl+End to move to the end of the document, choose Insert, Break, mark the Continuous option button, and click OK.