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BASIC WORD
PROCESSING SKILLS
What is a wordprocessing application?
Word processing applications are
computer programmes, which enable
you to create, modify, format, save,
copy and print various types of textbased documents. There are a
number of word processing
applications and programs including;
Given the fact that the principles of
word processing are the same, and
that Microsoft Office Word is the
most popular application on the
market, throughout this tutorial we
will use Microsoft Office Word,
running on the Windows operating
system, to demonstrate how to use a
word processor.
Create a Document and Add
Information and Save
Microsoft Word
Open Office Word
Open Office
Presuming you are working on
Google Docs
windows, click on: Start (at the
bottom left of your screen)
Most word processors are available
as part of a word processing package
Click on Microsoft Word
made up of a suite of applications
tailored towards business and
personal related document
formatting. Word processors are
commonly used when creating:
If you don’t see Microsoft Word,
click on: All programmes then
Microsoft Office, then Microsoft
Word.
Agendas
Letters
Memos
Minutes
Basic Tables
Research Documents
Academic Essays
Various forms of non-fiction or fiction
articles and documents
At a basic level, most word
processing packages perform similar
tasks and functions. Microsoft Office
Word and Word Perfect both need to
be purchased and installed before
you can use them, whereas
OpenOffice.org is free to download
and install. Google Docs is an online
(or “cloud based”) application,
accessed via the web, which means
you don’t actually need to install any
software on your computer, unlike the
other three. You simply need a
Google account; and an active
Internet connection and you will be
able to access the applications at
Google.com (see setting up a Google
account)
This will bring up the default blank
template (page). The blinking cursor
shows where your words will appear
if you were to begin typing. You could
now start creating your document.
To help with learning the formatting
tools of Microsoft word you will need
some text on your page to modify.
Type the following: (including the
spelling mistakes)
My Story
The Horse and the Dog.
One day there was a Horse called
Sargent. He was big and brown and
strong. He was so strang in fact
theat no other horses on the farm
wanted to play with him. He was
very lonely and would sing to himself
a lonely little song.
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“Im a lonely little horsey in the big hay patch,
The big hay patch, the big hay patch,
I’m a lonely little horsey in the big hay patch
Won’t somebody play with me.”
One day a Dog called Bailey was brought to the farm. He
was alos very lonely and had come from a farm where he
had lots of friends to play with. Most of the horser on the
farm would not play with Bailey because he was a dog,
but not Sargent. He was happy and excited. He asked
Bailey to play chasy with him around the paddock. At first
Bailey wa a bit scared because Sargent was so big but he
decided to give it a try. The two animals played for hours
and by the end of the day they were the best of friends.
Now you have some text to work with you can learn to edit
and format it.
Editing and Formatting your Document
Office Word comes with a range of powerful editing tools,
which will help us format our document. It is important to
understand which tools perform which functions and
importantly, how and where to access them.
The Word Toolbar is where all our editing features and
menus are found. The toolbar (also called the ribbon in
newer versions of Word) is made up of seven tabbed
Font
Your document’s title is “The Horse and the Dog”. To
highlight our title we need to write it in capital letters and
keep it on its own line.
To write in CAPITALS, simply hold down the shift key on
your keyboard as you type your word or press down the
Caps Lock key (remember to turn it off again to begin
typing in lower case again).
To begin typing on a new line, press enter.
It is often useful to format our titles further so as to
separate them from the rest of the document. One way to
do this is to increase the font size and make the title Bold.
To do this,
menus. They are:
• Highlight your word by clicking and dragging your
mouse over it (double clicking will also highlight the
whole word)
• File
• Click on the Home tab to bring up the font tools
• Home
• Ensuring your word is still highlighted, click once in the
box with font size number in it
• Insert
• Page Layout
• References
• Mailings
• Review
• View
Type in your new font size, remembering most letters are
written in sizes 10-12, so any fonts size 14 -20 will work
well for our titles. We’ll choose 16 for our story.
These menus are in turn made up of a number of button
groups, such as font and paragraph.
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To make your title Bold, highlight your word again, and this
time click on the B button.
In general, remember to click on the B button again before
typing the next word or paragraph. This will remove the
bold highlighting.
If you want a word italicised or underlined, then use the
same method, but this time click on the I or the U. For our
story highlight the words of the song and put them into
Italics.
To change the format of a word or sentence that has
already been typed select the word by double-clicking on
it, or triple-clicking if you wish to select the whole
paragraph. Choose your formatting button e.g. B, I, U and
the selected text will be formatted.
Changing font colour
Paragraphs and line spacing
You may wish to change the alignment of a line or
paragraph, such as aligning it to the left, right, or centering
it in the middle of the page. To edit the alignment of your
paragraph
Click on the Home tab
Highlight the paragraph or line of text that you want to
realign, in this case the title “My Story”
Click on one of the alignment buttons in the Paragraph
group to see where each button places your title. Finally
choose the centering button.
Remember that the entire paragraph will have its alignment
adjusted.
To change the colour of your word, highlight the word
using the “double click”, or “click and drag” methods used
before, then click on the drop down arrow next to the font
colour symbol. Click once on the colour you wish to use.
Line spacing refers both to the size of the space between
the lines within a paragraph, as well as the size of the
space between paragraphs themselves. To edit the line
spacing within the paragraph:
• Click once on any word in the paragraph
Practice using the Undo and Redo buttons to undo or
redo work you have done.
• Click on the drop down arrow next to the line spacing
icon
• Click on one of the numbers, remembering that the most
common sizes to use are 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0
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Use the Indent buttons in the Paragraph group to indent
your paragraph, or increase/ decrease the space from the
margin.
(TIP: Use the TAB key to as a quick means to change your
Indent size)
Borders
Borders can be useful if you wish to segment sections of
your document, or enclose a body of text, or an object in a
border
• Select the text and click on the Border button within the
Paragraph group on the Home tab
• From the drop down menu choose where to place the
border by clicking on the relevant button.
Cut/copy and paste
Cut/copy and paste are valuable formatting tools that can
speed up the creation and editing of most documents.
Very often you will find you wish to use a sentence, or
complete paragraph in a new part of your document. This
is when cutting and pasting is useful. If you wish to repeat
a word, or a sentence a few times in a document, you may
wish to copy and paste it. The methods are very similar.
In our script example, we will highlight the body of the
story and choose Outside Border.
• Highlight the word or piece of text you wish to cut or
copy.
• To cut it, click on the home tab, then, in the Clipboard
button group, click on the scissors icon
• To copy it, click on the copy icon .
• Insert your cursor where you wish to paste the word to
and click on the Paste button.
The clipboard will store up to 24 items.
Spell Check
(TIP: When a word is highlighted, you can quickly copy it
by pressing “CTRL + C”. You can cut it by pressing “CTRL
Use spell check to review your document before printing,
or sharing it. Click on the ‘Review’ tab, then click
+ X”. Paste it by pressing “CTRL + V”)
‘Spelling’ at the top left hand side.
Similarly text can be highlighted from another active
document, (another Word document, email, web page etc.)
then copied and pasted into your own document.
The program will automatically identify words it thinks are
spelt incorrectly and then you will need to choose whether
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to ignore the error, or change to an alternative word that
the program gives you.
Your Word files will be saved by default as a Doc (these
are called file extensions) file but you can select to save it
in another format, for example as a PDF, RTF, SXW, CSV,
text file or as an HTML page.
To save your document in one of these formats, for
example as PDF so as to share your work with someone
who doesn’t have Microsoft Office Word on their computer
and only wishes to view the document not edit it.
• Click file
• Click Save As
• Click on the ‘Drop down Arrow’ on the right of Save as
Type
There are a number of spelling errors in the story so work
with Spell Check to fix them.
Saving Your Document
If you want to keep your document to access it later you
need to Save it. There are many ways and many places to
save your document. Most commonly you will save it to
your computer in the default Office Word format that will
allow you to make changes at a later time. To do this
• Click on the File tab
• Click on Save, (or Click the Save icon
on the Quick
Access Toolbar)
• Enter a file name if you are saving it for the first time eg
my story
• Select a folder into which to save it ie My Documents
• Click Save
When you click the save icon, or press file>save in future,
you will not need to specify the file name, or the file
location.
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depending%on%the%program%that%was%used%to%create%them.%%File%
extensions%are%a%way%of%labelling%the%names%of%files%so%you%and%your%
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• Select your file type then click Save.
Using a template
Another useful way to begin creating specific types of
documents is to use a template.
Microsoft Word comes with a range of useful and
customisable templates. Templates are useful in that,
when creating a specific type of document such as a
memo, or an agenda, or a professional letter, most of the
formatting is already done for you and all you need to do is
customise the details to suit your needs. This leaves you
free to focus on the important elements in the document,
namely the content.
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To open a template, click on:
• File
• New
• Then choose from one of the many templates displayed
in the large window to the right
Formatting Tables
You can change the cells, insert or delete columns and
rows, format your table or choose a given table style.
• Click in your chosen cell then click on the Layout tab.
From here you can select your cell size, the alignment of
the data within the cell, split or merge cells.
Creating Tables
Word processing programmes are also able to create
tables in your documents. First click in your document at
• Using the Select tool, you can select cells, rows,
columns or the entire table.
• In the Rows and Columns Group you can insert or
delete rows or columns.
the place where you wish to insert your table. Microsoft
Word has three ways to draw a table:
• Click in your table and the Design menu will open.
1.
shading, the line and colour style of your chosen borders.
Choose from the gallery of pre-formatted table
templates. From the Insert group click Table, then
Quick Table, click on the one you want to use and
From here you can choose Table Styles, the colour of your
replace the data in the template with your own.
2.
Use the Table menu to specify the number of rows
and columns that you want. From the Insert group,
click Table then drag to select the number of rows
and columns that you want.
3.
Use the Insert Table dialog box.
Click on Table then Insert table and in the dialogue box
enter the number of rows and columns you want.
Complex tables can be manually drawn by selecting Draw
table in the table menu. Your pointer will change to a
pencil. Start by drawing the outer table boundaries, and
then drag the pencil to define your chosen columns and
rows. You can now type in your data in whatever cell you
click on.
To erase a line
• Click on Table Tools on the Design tab that will be
visible only when you are working in a table
• Click on Eraser, then click on whichever line you want
removed.
Adding Images
Microsoft Word allows you to add images from the clip art
gallery, from a webpage or from another file.
Clip Art
On the Insert tab in the Illustrations group click on Clip
Art
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In the Clip Art task pane that opens up type a word or
phrase to describe the art you are looking for in the
On the Page Layout tab in the Page Setup group click on
Margins. Here you can choose a given margin style or
Search for text box.
customise the margins to suit yourself.
To include art on the Web click on the Include Office.com
content checkbox.
Orientation selects either portrait or landscape.
To limit the search results click the arrow in the Results
should be box and select only the type you are looking for
– illustrations, photographs, videos or audio.
Click Go
In the results click your chosen clip art to insert it.
To resize your inserted clip art, click on the art then drag a
square sizing handle away from or toward the centre and
watch the image change size. If you wish to maintain the
object’s proportions, press and hold Shift while you drag
the sizing handle.
Columns allows you to insert columns into your document
(not the same as Tables as there are no borders).
Line Numbers, Breaks and Hyphenation give you the
options of breaks in your text, adding line numbers and
various hyphenation options.
Page Background allows you to choose a page colour,
borders around your page and watermarks.
Printing
Once you have made all the formatting changes to the
document that you want you are ready to print your
document.
Preview
When you have finished creating your document and are
ready to print it, the first thing to do is preview your
document.
• Click File
Pictures
• Click Print
To insert a picture from another file on the Insert tab in the
Illustrations group click on Pictures, choose the location
of the file you wish to insert (for example it might be a
photograph that you have filed in My Pictures), double
click on the image and it will be automatically inserted into
your document.
Resize it in the same way as described for Clip Art above.
To insert a picture from a webpage, right click on the
picture, select Copy Image from the drop down menu,
click where you want it inserted in your document, right
click and select Paste. Remember that most images on
the web are copyright, only use images non-copyright
or Creative Commons images where the owner has
expressly granted permission.
Page Layout and Printing
You can make changes to the layout and look of your
document.
Page Layout
The large image on the right hand side of the screen is a
preview of your document.
If your document is longer than 1 page, you can scroll
through the various pages by clicking on the right and left
arrows at the bottom of the screen.
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Remember you can get help for any problems you incur by
clicking on the help icon on the top right corner of your
screen -
Printer Options
Below Printer click on Printer Properties to bring up a
dialogue box with a number of printer settings and
options.
Each printer brand will have slightly different options you
can customise, but generally click on the Paper/Quality tab
to select your paper size and print quality settings.
Here you can select various printing options such as
printing all pages, only selected text, current page only,
odd or even pages, or pages specified by you, number of
copies, orientation, paper size etc.
If your printer supports it, you can print on both sides of
the page by selecting Print on Both Sides and following
the prompts.
On the Colour tab you can select if you wish to print in
colour or in grey scale.
When finished, click “OK” to close the dialogue box.
To print a selection, under settings, select a page number
for your first page in the box next to Pages: and a page
number for your end page in the box next to ‘to’.
Click Print.
Closing documents and the word processing program
Once you have finished editing and printing your
document you can close both the document and the
program.
Make sure you have saved the document by following the
instructions earlier in the tutorial. When the document has
been saved go to File and then scroll down and click on
Close. This will close the document.
To close down the word processing application go to the
top right hand corner and click on the red cross. This will
close the program.
Help