Doing an Assignment with MS-Word
The purpose of this guide is to help you create a presentable assignment or essay for your course work. It is not a complete guide to Microsoft Word. However, it does cover the most common features you will use when creating your assignments. The instructions in this guide are for MS-Word XP.
This guide was written by the staff of the IT Service Desk at UNE.
Entering Text
Once you have opened MS-Word, entering text is very easy. All you have to do is type.
Making New Paragraphs
It is very easy to make a new paragraph. If you are at the end of a paragraph and want to start a new one, all you have to do is hit the <enter> key twice. The same applies when you want to divide one paragraph into two or more paragraphs. Place your cursor at the beginning of the sentence where the new paragraph starts, and press the <enter> key twice.
Correcting Errors
To correct mistakes you can use either the <backspace> key or the <delete> key. It all depends on the position of the cursor.
<Backspace> key: When deleting characters with the <backspace> key, the character to the immediate left of the cursor will be deleted.
<Delete> key: The delete key deletes the character to the immediate right of the cursor position. It looks like the characters are being dragged from the right.
Saving Files
Saving your work is very important. You should save and save often otherwise you could lose a lot of hard work. Never, under any circumstances, type a whole essay without saving as you go along. This is just asking for trouble.
- To save your document click on the File menu and then click on Save. This will open the Save dialogue box.
- Type a name for the file in the box labelled File name.
- Use the Save in menu to determine the location of the new Word document. To save a file to a floppy disk, choose 3 1/2 Floppy (A:).
You can also use the Tool bar to save. Click on the Floppy disk icon:
Font Formatting
To make your heading or any other text stand out, you can change its appearance by using the formatting features of MS-Word. To do this:
- Select the text you want to change.
- To change the font, size, style and appearance, click on the Format menu then choose Font.
- Choose a different font by scrolling up and down the box until you find one you want. When you click on the font name the example will change in the preview box.
- To make text bold, click on bold in the font style box.
- You can also make the font bigger or smaller by choosing a different size in the size box.
Tip: You can also use the Tool bar to change the font and various formatting features:
Changing Alignment
Text alignment refers to the way that the text lines up with the margins along each line. The choices are left, right, centred and justified. To change the alignment:
- Click on the Format menu then Paragraph.
- Under the Indents and Spacing tab you will find the alignment options.
- Click on the down arrow and select the required alignment.
- Click on OK.
Tip: You can also use the Tool Bar.
- Select the text first
- Click on the icon with the text alignment that is required
(The alignment options are the buttons with the lines on them that represent text).
Page Breaks
A very useful feature of MS-Word is the option to insert and remove your own page breaks. Word has two types of page breaks. The program itself inserts automatic page breaks. You cannot remove automatic page breaks. Word adjusts their position automatically as you add and remove text from a page. The second type of page break is called a manual page break because you place and remove them yourself.
To insert a manual page break:
- Place your cursor at the point where you went to insert the page break.
- Hold down the <control> key and press the <enter> key.
- A line across the screen will appear with the words Page Break. (If you don’t see the words go the “View” menu and choose “Normal”)
To remove a manual page break:
- Place your cursor immediately below the page break
- Press the <backspace> key
Page Numbering
As a general rule, always leave page numbering to the end, as this practice leads to fewer problems.
To insert page numbers:
- Go to the beginning of the document.
- Click on the Insert menu, then Page Numbers.
- You can change the position of the page numbers from the Footer to the Header.
- The actual position of the number can be changed to left, right or center within the header and footer.
Leave “show number on first page” turned on, unless your first page is a title page and you don’t want a number displayed.
Indenting Quotations
Lengthy quotations in an essay are normally displayed as an indented paragraph, with the indent equal from both left and right margins. To indent a quotation:
- Type the quotation as a normal paragraph.
- With your cursor somewhere in the paragraph click on the Format menu, then Paragraph.
- Click on the up (or down) arrow for the left and right until the required measurement is set.
- Click on OK to close the dialogue box
Footnotes
Being able to use the footnote feature of MS-Word is very important. Word allows you to enter a footnote and if necessary edit it later on.
A few points on footnoting:
- Check the style of footnoting that is required by the Department/Faculty you are enrolled in.
- Footnote numbering is automatic. They will start at number one and go on.
- Word will automatically adjust your footnote numbering if you insert an earlier one.
- However you can change the number of the first footnote, if you want.
- To view the footnotes you must be in page layout view.
- To edit your footnotes you must be in page layout view.
- Footnotes are always at the bottom of the page.
If they are at the end of your document they are endnotes. You cannot have both.
To insert a footnote:
- Place your cursor at the end of the text that is to be referenced.
- Click on the Insert Menu, go to the Reference menu and then choose Footnote.
- Make sure that Footnote and Numbering is set to Continuous and click OK.
- You will now be returned to your document in the footnote section.
- Notice the number of the footnote is inserted automatically.
- Type in your footnote.
- If you are in Page layout view, click back in the main text of your document to end the footnote.
- If you are in normal view, click on close to end the footnote.
- This will also close the footnote editing area.
Spell Checking
Spell checking and proof reading your essays are very important. Poor spelling and grammar will always detract from your essay and will, more than likely, end in a lower mark for the assignment. In fact, you should spell check and proof read your assignments a number of times.
To spell check your document:
- Make sure that you are at the very beginning of the document.
- Click on the Tools menu, then Spelling and Grammar.
As Word checks your spelling it will highlight (in red) any word that it considers incorrect. It will also display alternative spellings. Sometimes you will need to make your own suggestion.
When Word highlights an word, you can choose one of the following options:
- Ignore Once: skips over the word. Choose this option this when the word is a name or not in the program’s dictionary.
- Change: accepts the suggested spelling.
- Ignore all: skips all further occurrences of a word. This is useful for names.
- Change all: changes every occurrence of the same misspelt word.