In the "Font" panel, let's take note of the buttons/menus. In the top row, from left to right:

• Font Face: Choose the font face from a drop-down WYSIWYG menu.
• Font Size: Choose the size of the font in "point" size.
• Font Size Increase/Decrease: Clicking on either button will increase or decrease the size of selected characters to pre-set font size increments.
• Erase Formatting: Returns text to the base font format style (e.g., Calibri 11 pt.)..
  

In the bottom row, left to right:

• Bold
• Italic
• Underline
• Strike-through
• Subscript: creates low-hanging small text, as seen in expressions like H₂O
• Superscript: creates raised small text, as seen in expressions like E=mc²
• Highlight: Create highlighted text, as if with a colored highlighter pen. If text is selected, the clicking this button will highlight that text only. If no text is selected (if, instead, you have a blinking cursor), then the mouse cursor will change to a highlighter cursor, and any text you select will be highlighted--until you click the Highlight button again to turn it off.
• Font Color: Choose a color from the pallete, or from "More Colors."

You can also click the dialog box button (lower right) to get this dialog box:

Extra features:

• Underline Style: Choose from a variety of different underlines
• Underline Color: Choose a color for the underline which is different from the text
• Double Strikethrough
• Shadow / Outline / Emboss / Engrave: Try them.
• Small Caps: A special style where all letter are CAPITALS. However, when you type a Shift-Capital, "Small Caps" shows it as larger; characters typed as lowercase appear as smaller capital letters. For example: "These Are Small Caps" becomes "THESE ARE SMALL CAPS."
• All Caps: All letters, no matter if they are typed as Shift-Capitals or as lwercase, appear as same-sized capital letters.
• Hidden: This hides any selected text from view. The text can then only be seen if someone "unhides" all the text by turning off the feature in this dialog box.

If you click the dialog box tab "Character Spacing," you will see this:

The features include:

• Scale: makes selected text thinner or fatter.
• Spacing: increases (expand) or decreases (condense) spacing between letters. In some special cases (such as with a resumé), expanded text is considered stylish.
• Position: raised text appears above other text; lowered text appears lower. This is similar to subscript / superscript, except here the font size is not changed, and you can control exactly how much the text is raised or lowered.
• Kerning: This is an automatic functiuon that corrects spacing between certain characters. For example, when a an uppercase "A" is followed by a lowercase "w," there is too much space between them. Kerning brings them slightly closer together, as seen below:

The top letters have Kerning; the bottom letters do not.

REMEMBER:

The "Default..." button will take any changes you made and will install them into the "NORMAL Template," so that all new blank documents will have these new changes.

Paragraph

This section of the Home tab on the Ribbon deals with (mostly) Paragraph-Level Editing Changes. This panel is somewhat different from PowerPoint:

Top row:

• Bullet List: Make a list like this one.
• Numbered List: Make a list which is automatically numbered.
• Multilevel List: Choose different types of numbered/lettered lists.
• Decrease/Increase Indent: Move paragraphs to the left and right by 0.5" jumps
• Sort (Descending): If you select more than one paragraph (as in a list), this feature will arrange the paragraphs in alphabetical order:

• Show/Hide Invisible Characters: spaces, tabs, and "Enter"s will become visible as dots, arrows, and "¶" marks.

Bottom row:

• Alignment: Left, center, right, or justified
• Line Spacing: Choose the amount of spacing between lines
• Shading: Choose the color background behind the characters (like highlighting); this is usually a Table feature, but can be used with regular text.
• Borders: Choose the border to surround the text; this is usually a Table feature, but can be used with regular text.

The last two features--Shading and Borders--are usually used with Tables. In regular text, they are character-level changes.

You can also click the dialog box button (lower right) to get this dialog box:

Here you can choose the paragraph alignment (never mind about "Outine level" right now), and the type/size of indents.

Extra features:

• Spacing - Before/After: Create extra space at the top and/or bottom of a paragraph. If you do not use indents to show a new paragraph, the extra spacing before or after a paragraph will do the same thing. This is often called "block style."
• Line Spacing: Control the exact spacing between lines of text. In an MLA-format essay, lines should be double-spaced. There are a few extra spacing options:
  • At Least: Creates a line spacing which can become bigger if there are larger characters in the line
  • Exactly: Creates a line spacing which will not change, no matter what size characters exist in the line
  • Multiple: Creates spacing "x" times the font size

In the "Line and Page Breaks" tab:

The most important feature:

• Widow/Orphan Control: In English typing, if a paragraph starts on one page and continues to the next, it is considered bad style if only one line of the paragraph appears on one of the pages. See the example below:

GOOD STYLE

BAD STYLE

If there is a single line at the end of one page, it is called a "widow." If there is a single line at the start of a new page, it is called an "orphan."

If you turn "Widow/Orphan Control" on, then MS Word will automatically correct this situation.

• Double Spacing: Japanese double spacing is a bit wider. If you use this, your American teacher may think you are trying to cheat by increasing the spacing and therefore creating "extra" pages. SOLUTION: set line spacing to "Exactly" 28 Point. This is the same as American double-spacing.
• Alignment: MLA Style calls for Left Alignment, except for titles. Japanese MS Word automatically uses Justified Alignment; in fact, the "Left Alignment" button may not even be on the toolbar! SOLUTION: Change to Left Alignment, using the Paragraph dialog box if necessary.
• Widow/Orphan Control: Japanese MS Word has Widow/Orphan Control turned off by default. SOLUTION: turn Widow/Orphan Control on. CAUTION: this is a paragraph-level change, so you must select ALL PARAGRAPHS in your document before doing this!
• Paper Size: In Japan, A4-sized paper is used. In America, "Letter" (8.5" x 11") sized paper is used. Be careful to use the right setting depending on what paper size you use.

All of the above will happen again and again, every time you make a new document. To make these changes permanent, use the "Default..." button at the lower left corner of the Page Setup/Paragraph/Font dialog box.

For example, let's say that you are writing MLA essays often. MLA essays call for certain styles. All text must be in Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced. Other than that:

• At the top of the first page, your name, class, teacher's name, and the date must be left-aligned, no indent
• The title of the essay and the "Works Cited List" title must be center-aligned, no indent
• All body paragraphs must be left-aligned, with a 0.5" first-line indent
• All Works Cited citations must be left-aligned, with a 0.5" hanging indent
• Quotes which are more than 4 lines long must be left-aligned and have a left indent on one inch

Usually, you would have to select each paragraph or set of paragraphs and set each format point separately. That could take a lot of time. However, if you take the time to establish Styles, it could be a lot easier.

Here's how. Let's say that you want to set the body paragraph style for an MLA essay.

1. First, set all of the formatting in some text you have written. Set the font to Times New Roman, 12 point, 0.5" first-line indent, left-aligned, double-spaced, Widow and Orphan Control turned on.
2. Next, select the paragraph that you just formatted.
3. Right-click on the selected text, and from the pop-up menu, click "Save Selection as a New Quick Style..."
4. You will see the dialog box below. Click "Modify."
   
   
   
   
5. In the dialog box below, change the name to whatever you like. Make sure all the settings are correct; if anything is not right, you can change the formatting here; if you can't find the right place to change it, click on the "Format" button at lower left and get it from there.
   
   AN IMPORTANT POINT: if you want this Style to appear in ALL of your documents, click "New documents based on this template" at the bottom!
   
   
   
   
6. When you are finished, click "OK."

From that time onward, you will be able to see the "MLA Body" Style in the Style section of the Home Tab. To apply the style, just select the text and click the correct style button.

If you do this for all five of the different MLA Styles, then formatting an MLA paper should be easy in the future!

The "Find" dialog box has three main parts:

1. These shapes at the top of a dialog box are called "tabs" (don't confuse them with tabs on the ruler). Each one will show a new set of choices in the dialog box, like different layers or pages.
2. The text window. Type what you want to find in this box.
3. Buttons. If you click the one that says "More," you can get more choices for finding text.

The "Find" dialog box is very simple, really. Type in the text string you want to find, and click "Find Next." If you want to find the same text string again, just click "Find Next" again.

This is not case-sensitive (though you can change that in the "More" area). You can type part of a word, a whole word, or several words.

To REPLACE:

If you would like to change a text string into something different, you can use this feature. For example, if you want to find every time you wrote the word "America" and replace them all with "the United States" you would use this. In the illustration below, we are changing the word "apple" to the word "orange":

1. This is the text that you want to change
2. This is the text you want to put into the place of the old text.
3. This will replace the next text string, one at a time.
4. This will replace all of the text strings in the whole document.

To get more choices, just click on the "More" button:

1. Match Case - With this option on, only words with the same upper-case and lower-case pattern will be found. For example, if you try to find "Hello" then the word "hello" will not be found."

2. Find Whole Words Only - Usually, if you type "the," then Find or Replace will look for any word that contains those three letters, including "the," "then," "there," "weather," "tithe," and so on. If you choose this option, then the same search would ONLY find the word "the" and ignore the others.

3. Use Wildcards - This allows you to use special characters for a search--for example, the wildcard "?" means "any letter." That is, if you search for "t?n" then MS Word will find the words "ten," "tin," "ton," and "tan."

4. Sounds Like - If you are not sure of the spelling of a word, you can search for something that sounds like it. For example, a search for "tone" would find the word "tune."

5. Find all word forms - This will find words that are the same meaning, but are different word types. For example, a search for "go" will find "went," "goes," and going."

6. Format - This allows you to find or replace using formatting (see below).

7. Special - This allows you to find or replace using special terms (see below).

To use "Format," just select what you would want to change. For example, let's say that you want to find the word "home" but only when it is colored red and is 18 point. Since text color and size is under "Font," you would choose the font command.

Similarly, you can use formats when you Replace something. For example, let's say that you want to find every word spelled "apple," and make them 12 point and bold. You click on the "Format" button, select "Font," and then choose "Bold" and "12 point." When you close the "Font" window, you will see this:

Notice the words after the word "format" under "Replace with" (1). You can see that it now says "Font: 12 pt, Bold."

It is IMPORTANT to remember that the formatting of a FIND or REPLACE text string will only affect the one you have clicked in. To change the format of the "Replace with" text, you have to first click in the "Replace with" box and then click on "Format," and so on.

With things set up this way, MS Word will find the word "apple," and replace all of them with the same word at 12 point and bold.

You can use many other settings (font color, underline, indents, margins, etc.) to select only some of the instances of a word.

If you want to "undo" the formatting of the FIND or REPLACE text, just click in that box, then click on the "No Formatting" button (2).

Next is the "Special" button:

This allows you to find or replace special typing, such as a paragraph or tab--these are things you cannot type directly into the boxes for FIND and REPLACE. If you hit the "Enter" button, for example, it will simply be the same as clicking the "Find Next" button. If you hit the "Tab" key, it would simply move you to the next box or button in the dialog box.

Each of these special typing points has a code. For example, a paragraph is written as "^p" and the tab is written as "^t".