Formatting means changing the appearance and layout of your text and document. Formatting tools are found on the Home tab of the ribbon and are there to help you make your content more readable. This article explains what each one does.
Clipboard tools
These tools are to do with copying and moving content such as a cut, copy and paste.
Cut, copy and paste
These are tools to copy and/or move content.
- Cut: This removes the content from the page and places it on the clipboard which acts as Word's short term memory. You can then paste it elsewhere. It's a way of moving content around your document.
- Copy: This copies the content to the clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere, letting you duplicate it.
- Paste: This duplicates content copied to the clipboard by cutting or copying it first. There are different types of paste options depending on what you cut or copy which are explored more in the Intermediate version of thi article.
- First item
- Sub-item
- Sub-sub-item
- First item
- Sub-item
- Sub-sub-item
- First item
- Sub-item
- Sub-sub-item
- Sub-item
- Font options
- Paragraph options
- Styles (for headings)
Format Painter
This is a really useful tool which lets you apply the formatting/look of some selected text onto other text in your document. This is much faster than manually applying the same formatting each time.
Note: If you're wanting to format headings you should use styles (explored here: Styles). With heading styles you can use the format painter to apply it to other text to make it a recognised heading in Word.
Font tools
The tools help format your text in various ways, take a look at the examples below.
| Formatting Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Bold | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Italic | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Underline | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Strikethrough | |
| Font | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Font size | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Font colour | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Highlight | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. |
| Change case |
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet. LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET. |
| Subscript | H2O |
| Superscript | E = mc2 |
You can click the bottom right corner button to bring up further Font options.
Paragraph
Paragraph formatting tools let you change the look of content on the page. Take a look at the examples below.
| Formatting Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Bullet list |
|
| Numbered list |
|
| Multi-line list |
|
| Indents | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet |
| Align left | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet |
| Align centre | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet |
| Align right | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet |
| Align justified | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. |
| Sort | Sort is useful to order text in different ways in lists and tables: alphabetically A-Z, reverse alphabetically Z-A, by number, by date, ascending/descending, and multiple levels of sorting orders. |
| Line spacing |
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. |
Where to now?
Now you've got the basics of formatting tools try experimenting with them on text in a document, it's the best way to learn how they work. For more font and paragraph options take a look at these articles:
