No one needs to learn to type to use a word processor, but you do yourself a favor when you learn. My advice is to get a computer program that teaches you to type. I can recommend the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program, even though I don’t get any money from her and none of her children resemble me. I just like the name Mavis, I suppose.
Knowing how to type makes the word-processing chore a wee bit more enjoyable.
Text you compose in Word appears at the insertion pointer’s location. The insertion pointer looks like a flashing vertical bar:
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Characters appear before the insertion pointer, one at a time. After a character appears, the insertion pointer hops to the right, making room for more text.
✔ The insertion pointer moves as you type, but its location can be set to any location in the document. Chapter 3 covers moving the insertion pointer around in more detail.
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Pressing the spacebar inserts a space character into the text. Spaces are important between words and sentences. Withoutthemreadingwouldbedifficult.
✔ I'm serious! Back in the dark ages, typing instructors directed students to use two spaces between sentences. That extra space was necessary for readability because typewriters used monospaced characters. On a computer, however, the extra space does nothing and potentially leads to formatting woes down the road.
✔ Anytime you feel like using two or more spaces in a document, what you need is a tab. Tabs are best for indenting text as well as for lining up text in columns. See Chapter 12 for details.
When you make a typo or another type of typing error, press the Backspace key on the keyboard. The Backspace key moves the insertion pointer back one character and erases that character. The Delete key also erases text, though it gobbles up characters to the right of the insertion pointer.
See Chapter 4 for more information on deleting text.
In word processing, you press the Enter key only when you reach the end of a paragraph. Do not press the Enter key at the end of a line.
When your text gets precariously close to the right margin, Word automatically wraps the last word on the line down to the next line. This word wrap feature eliminates the need to press Enter at the end of a line.
✔ Don’t use the Enter key to double-space your text. Double-spacing is a paragraph format in Word. See Chapter 11 for more information.
✔ Don’t press the Enter key twice to add extra space between your paragraphs. That extra space is added automatically, provided it’s part of the paragraph format, also covered in Chapter 11.
✔ If you want to indent a paragraph, press the Tab key after pressing Enter. As with other word-processing rules and regulations, paragraphs can be indented automatically, provided that format is applied, as covered in (you guessed it) Chapter 11.
Stuff That Happens While You Type
As you madly compose your text, fingers energetically jabbing the buttons on the keyboard, you may notice a few things happening on the screen. You might see spots. You might see lines and boxes. You may even see lightning! All are side effects of typing in Word. They’re normal, and they’re presented to help you.
The reason it's the status bar is that it shows you the status of your document, updating information as you type. A collection of information appears starting at the left end of the status bar and marching right, as shown in Figure 2-2.
Figure 2-2: Stuff that lurks on the status bar.
The status bar information is updated as your document changes. Use the information to see, for example, which page and line you’re editing, the word count, and so on.
The info tidbits on the status bar are customizable. Chapter 29 explains how to control what information appears on the status bar.
As your document gains length, Word shows you where one page ends and another page begins. This visual assistance helps you keep elements on the same page, but also shows you how text flows between pages.
The visual clue for a new page is shown in Figure 2-3. In Print Layout view, the page break appears graphically. Text above the ethereal void is on one page, and text below the void is on the next page.
Figure 2-3: The page break in Print Layout view.
In Draft view, the page break appears as a line of dots from left to right across the document. And in other views, the page break may not show up at all. In that case, use the status bar to determine which page you're working on. For example, when the page-number indicator changes from 6 to 7, you’ve started a new page.
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✔ Don’t force a page break by pressing the Enter key a gazillion times! Instead, see Chapter 13 for information on inserting page breaks in Word.
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See Chapter 25 for a longer discussion of collapsible headers, as well as information on Word’s outline mode.
There’s no cause for alarm if you see spots – or dots – amid the text you type, such as
This•can•be•very•annoying.¶
What you're seeing are nonprinting characters. Word uses various symbols to represent things you normally don’t see: spaces, tabs, the Enter key, and more. These jots and tittles