Word Tips

This is a subject you'll see from time to time on this blog. We've all used Microsoft Word on the job and probably at home, too. We know how to do the basics, and some of us are pretty advanced users. But working in WriteRAP puts us in touch with Word in a way we probably never imagined. I hope you never imagined it, anyway - there are much nicer things to imagine.

Many "WriteRAP" questions are actually questions about how to do things in Word. In this recurring blog entry, we'll talk about some of the ways to accomplish some things in Word that you might have been wondering about, and that we hope will make your life with Word easier.

Change the units of measure. This is under your Word > Preferences (Mac) or Tools > Options (Win). Click on the General tab, and at the bottom you will notice a drop-down menu for Measurement Units. Select what you want...and stop having to convert between inches and picas!

Break a Page without Adding Hard Returns. If you add hard returns to make a page break, and then do some editing above it, those line enders will stay with you and move around if you continue to edit. Insert a page break instead. Go to Insert > Break and select Page Break. For WriteRAP, note that if you have a head that always starts a new page, that page break can be made part of the style!

Viewing Invisibles. Of course, if you have put a page break in, that could travel too if the edits are heavy, and sometimes you'll want to get rid of it. In order to do that, you need to be able to see it. For this and other reasons, you will want to be able to see invisible characters in your Word document, and sometimes you'll want to turn off those invisible characters to get a better look at the page. If you have your Standard Toolbar showing, you will see a little paragraph mark as a button (¶), which you can toggle on and off. You can also go in through your Word > Preferences (Mac) or Tools > Options (Win). Click on the View tab, and under Nonprinting Characters (Mac) or Formatting Marks (Win), click on the checkbox next to All. You can also turn on Text Boundaries on either platform from this dialogue box for full visibility.