Many of you have grown up in a world devoid of the technological marvel that is the typewriter. If you don’t know what a typewriter is, think of it as a computer keyboard hooked up directly to a printer. As you type, each letter would print. As you can imagine, it takes a great deal of forward-thinking to type a document without making mistakes. It also takes on a whole new meaning to making revisions.
Since the dawn of the computer, these tasks have been simplified. So why do I bring this up? The standard program to write documents today is Microsoft Word 2007. As advanced as the program is, few people use it to its full potential. Many people type as if it were still a modern typewriter. It is much more than that.
Pet peeve No.1: People who repeatedly use the “Enter” key to get to a new page. When in the midst of your document, realizing you need to start a new page, many people will just hit the “Enter” (or “Return”) key until the next page comes. The preferred method would be to insert a “Page Break.”
At the end of the text you’ve already entered on the page you would like to end and start a new one, simply click on the “Insert” ribbon, locate and then click on the “Page Break” button. This will end the page you were on and bring up the next new page. Why this is preferred becomes more evident when you come back and do some editing later. For instance, if you added a paragraph before the page break later on, your document would still look fine; whereas if you had hit the “Enter” key several times your document would end up looking strange.
Pet Peeve No.2: Text that doesn’t line up. Have you ever tried to make things line up, maybe with some numbers? This can be frustrating. There are several methods to get this done. The simplest would be to change your font to a “Courier” font. Most fonts you use today are dynamic in that the space that the letter “i” takes up is less than that of, say, the letter “m.” If you use a font like “Courier New,” the space an “i” takes up is the same as an “m.”
Other ways to take care of your alignment issues would be to either use custom tabs, which can be set on the ruler in Word, or to use a table. Either method is difficult to explain in an article like this one, but I encourage you to experiment with both.
If you’re using a table, which can easily be inserted by clicking on the “Insert” ribbon and then locating and clicking on “Table.” You can then click on “Insert Table” and specify how many rows and columns you would like in your table.
Something else to note is that while working with your table a whole new set of options are available in your ribbons. “Table Tools” shows up with “Design” and “Layout” ribbons that help you create the table you want. I recommend you keep in mind that your table is not required to have borders (or lines around each cell).
This last thing I’ll mention isn’t so much a pet peeve as is it a recommendation when editing your documents. Perhaps you’ve noticed the “¶” in the “Paragraph” section of the “Home” ribbon. Clicking this toggles the “Show/Hide” of paragraph and formatting marks. Essentially, this will visually represent spaces, paragraph returns, page breaks, etc. A·sentence·may·look·like·this.··¶ Notice the two spaces that precede the paragraph return. That is a sort of pet peeve. There’s no reason to have those two spaces there. It is usually the result of not realizing you want a new paragraph as you type. You may pause at the end of a paragraph, having already typed the two spaces anticipating the next sentence, but then decide to hit “Enter” to start a new paragraph.
Hopefully some of this will help you in writing more effectively and give your documents a more refined look.
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