MS WORD

USAGE BASICS
& PRACTICALITIES

Michał Pietrusiński Process Controller, Customer-to-Cash

Poznań CSS May 2019
TOPICS TO COVER
1. What is typography? – definitions, basics, and context
2. Uses of MS Word – what to write in Word, what not to write in Word?
3. Formatting options.
4. Style options.
5. Pictures & other imagery.
6. Various tables of contents.
7. Additional symbols & equations.
8. Researcher.
9. Homework!

2
WHAT IS TYPOGRAPHY?
DEFINITIONS, BASICS, AND CONTEXT
In simple words, typography is a technique of making
written text legible, readable and visually appealing. It
involves selecting typefaces (*fonts), point sizes, line
length, line-spacing (leading), letter-spacing (tracking) and
kerning.

Typography is by no means a dead art. Modern companies
use typography for branding purposes, and the legibility of
a text is only more important in times where we are
overflooded with information that has to be interpreted
quickly.
Typography has always been important for identity. The above
sample demonstrates Antiqua typeface, associated with Romance-
speaking areas. The sample below is a sample of Fraktur, most
commonly seen as German „gothic script”, although in the past very
common in Northern and Central Europe, including Denmark and
Poland.

Microsoft Word is one of the most common text editors

that allow for typographic processing. It is, however, one
of the least understood tools of the Office package,
surpassed by MS Access only, as per 2016 user research.

3
WHAT IS TYPOGRAPHY?
EXAMPLES

Example 2: Different font sizes (to scale).

Example 4: Leading, kerning, and tracking.

Example 1: Multiple typefaces in one

document.

Example 3: Different line lengths.

4
USING MICROSOFT WORD
DOCUMENTS FOR WHICH MS WORD IS DESIGNED

conclusion reports resumes & job case studies

descriptions

analytical insights
contracts

research papers summaries & minutes

news articles

literary works documentation &

policies
academic theses &
schoolwork design documents

5
USING MICROSOFT WORD
DOCUMENTS THAT SHOULD LAND ELSEWHERE

MS Excel MS PowerPoint MS SharePoint MS Visio

calculations – both simple and business & personal
requiring functions to presentations – guided and
calculate properly, sequential,
automated processors organisational structures,
(macro), low-complexity dashboards,
charts based on structured executive summaries of
data, insights, data, etc.,
financial reports, budget keynotes, idea banks, one-
tracking, and the like, slider meeting support, and
checklists, trackers, low- similar,
complexity project planners. vector art.
It’s a trap! It’s a trap!
MS PowerPoint is known to divert
Excel is often abused in corporate
attention from the speaker to the
environments as an all-purpose tool,
presentation. It was also targeted as
for example as database, workflow
giving an illusion of control and
manager, budget planner, password
understanding. It is also often used
manager, invoice template,
where Word, Power BI, Project, or
dashboard… There are other tools
even Excel are more appropriate – use
suited much better for that task!
responsibly!
as intranet, process maps,
content management, sitting plans,
collaboration hub, integrating complex organisation charts.
documents prepared in other
Office365 apps,
document sharing, MS Project
safekeeping, and archiving,
Wikipedia-like sites for project planners and trackers,
corporate purposes, resource allocation plans.
simple workflows.
It’s a trap! MS Access
databases.
If managed improperly, SharePoint
can expose its flaws all at once – it
has a long learning curve and its
basics are poorly understood by a
Power BI
broader audience. Responsibility for
maintaining SharePoint sites should dashboards processing large
therefore be limited to people with amounts of data.
adequate skillset.

6
FORMATTING
BASIC OPTIONS – ACCESSIBLE FROM THE RIBBON
The ribbon is a feature of
all Office365 apps, as well
as of most of Microsoft
business software in
general.
The top-bar contains all
functionalities of an app,
with the pre-selected
heavy-use ones
highlighted, and the rest
accessible upon clicking on
the small arrow icon in the
bottom-right corner of each
section.
Functionalities accessible
directly from the ribbon are
here defined as basic.
7
Increase or
Choose a typeface
and its size.
decrease the size of
Toggle case
Erase all formatting Create a numbered, Change indentation
the text. (returns to the bulleted or for the whole
Mark first to apply
Mark first to apply
(capitalisation).
default). multilevel list. paragraph. Mark
or use before Mark first to apply.
writing.
or use before Mark first to apply. Use before writing. first to apply.
writing.
Sort options – for
Basic font formatting lists and tables.
options: bold, italics, Mark first to apply.
underline, strikethrough, lower
and upper indices.
Mark first to apply or use
before writing.
It’s a trap!
Add text effects
Some typefaces come with (shadow, highlight, Text alignment
Fill and border Show or hide
Leading (line options for formatting symbols
separate styles for bold and colour, etc.). (left, centre, right,
spacing) options. background colour – useful for more
italics, often with varying Mark first to apply justify).
intensity. If there is such an or use before Mark first to apply.
Mark first to apply. and highlighting. advanced edition
Mark first to apply. tasks.
option, change typeface writing.
rather than use the basic font
formatting. Carlsberg Sans is
a notable example, where
Try it yourself!
you should rather use
Carlsberg Sans Bold over Lorem Ipsum Open the linked file to experiment with the functions.
regular bold text.
FORMATTING
IN DEPTH – FONT OPTIONS (I)

Font menu allows for additional formatting of how the text looks like. It provides the following
options:
1. Change typeface – you can choose any typeface you have installed on your computer.
Keeping +Body and +Headings options will allow for automatic switching between them
when a style is modified.
2. Font style – generic bold and italic options. Note that underline and strikethrough are not
font styles.
3. Size – size of the text in point sizes. Note that 12p is recommended for printout, while 16p –
for online documents, such as websites.
4. Colour – choosing «Automatic» will adjust the text colour to the one predefined by the
design (template) you use. Alternatively, you can choose any colour you want.
5. Underline options – here you can choose one of many underline styles, as well as its colour.
The «Automatic» option works as above.
6. Text effects – these can be used to further enhance the visual appeal of the text. Small caps
and all caps can be used to highlight various sections, headwords, and similar.
7. Preview shows how the text will look like after applying the formatting. If you did not mark
any text in your document, the font name will be used as a default display.
8. Set as default allows you to apply your settings to the default template, meaning that any
unformated text will now follow these formating rules.
9. Text effects (cont.) – additional text formatting options, such as shadows, outlining, and
similar.C

8
FORMATTING
IN DEPTH – FONT OPTIONS (II)

The advanced options allow you to introduce more advanced typographical features into the text
you are editing, such as lining, kerning, and ligatures.

All spacing options are grouped under the character spacing (10) section. These include:
 scale, which allows you to change how large the particular characters are, allowing you to fit
more into a line
 spacing, which allows you to change how much space there is between the characters,
 position, which allows you to raise or lower the text in relation to the line,
 kerning, which allows you to apply chatacter overlap.
Spacing, position, and kerning can be controlled through «By/Points and above» fields which
allow for larger customisation of formatting.

OpenType features work only with OpenType fonts. Carlsberg Sans family belongs to the
OpenType fonts, and thus you can control if your text should contain ligatures (originally
shorthands, currently fixed connections of two letters, like æ) amd treat numbers in a different
manner than the rest of the text.

Again, the Preview field is available for you to check how the text will look like after applying
your changes to formatting.

9
FORMATTING
IN DEPTH – PARAGRAPH OPTIONS (I)

Paragraph menu allows for giving the text more appealing structure through formatting how the
various sections of text look like.
1. Alignment is essentially setting up an invisible line to which the text will align to. Left text
alignment is the default one for any left-to-right writing system, including the Latin and
Cyryllic alphabets to be found in Carlsberg documents.
2. Outline levels allow you to organise the text in levels, which is useful for creating table of
contents.
3. Indentation makes it possible to move the alignment lines away from page margins.
4. Special indentation options allow you to create conditional indentations, like paragraph
indentations which should only occur in the first line.
5. Spacing allows for a break space between two paragraphs, something often wrongly
achieved by pressing enter key multiple times.
6. Line spacing adjusts how much space there is between two lines in the same paragraph.
7. If you so choose, you can adjust paragraph spacing so that it only occurs between
paragraphs of different styles.
8. Preview will allow you to see how the text will look like after you apply your changes.
9. Tabs menu, which we will not look deep into, permits to define the distances between tab
markers in your texts, i.e., how much space there will be between consecutive presses of tab
key.
10. Set as default allows you to apply your settings to the default template, meaning that any
unformated text will now follow these formating rules.

10
FORMATTING
IN DEPTH – PARAGRAPH OPTIONS (II)

The line and page breaks options allow you to introduce more advanced typographical features
into the text you are editing, such as pagination.

Pagination options are about how the paragraph looks like in relation to a page it is on. These
include:
 widow and orphan control – prevents from the last line of the paragraph to be moved to the
next page, and from the first line of the paragraph to stay on the previous one,
 keep with next – forces the two paragraphs to remain on the same page
 keep lines together – prevents from breaking the paragraph into two parts over a page break.
 page break before – forces the paragraph to be moved to the next page indifferently of its
possition on the page.

Formatting exceptions are useful when reviewing the text, while the textbox options are only
available if using textboxes and allow them to fill the frame with text better to use the space to
the maximum available.

Preview section will allow you to see how the paragraph will look like, but its functionality is
limited here if you do not mark your own text.

11
FORMATTING
IN DEPTH – EDITING OPTIONS
Replace will pop up an
additional window in
which you can type
what you should
replace with what.

Find will open an

additonal pannel to the
right where you can
type in whatever you
might look for in a
document. Word will
locate all instances of
that phrase in your text.
Select menu allows for
quick editing of all
objects (images,
captions, etc.) and text
with similar formatting.
This is especially useful
if you want to check
consistency in
formatting and shape
management.

12
STYLES
OVERVIEW

Styles allow not only for structuring your text content-wise, but also for making quick changes to how your
text looks like, with no regard to its length. Well-defined styles can make your life much easier, as you do
not need to remember about keeping the same indentations, micro-managing embeded text and tables,
highlighting, etc., and you will be able to create automated tables of contents, lists of images, and similar.

While common practice in MS Word shows that styles are often not used by an inexperienced editor, the
features they provide are very helpful and could save a lot of time, especially with longer documents.

13
STYLES
CREATING & CHANGING A STYLE

TO CREATE A STYLE TO CHANGE A STYLE

14
PICTURES, ICONS & SHAPES
NEVER WHERE YOU WANT THEM?

15
TABLES OF CONTENTS
AUTOMATIC & MANUAL

16
SYMBOLS & EQUATIONS
WHEN YOU WANT TO EXPRESS YOURSELF MORE PRECISELY

17
RESEARCHER
A STUDENT, ANALYST, AND LEARNER’S BEST FRIEND

18
THANK
YOU