Writing Program
Using Microsoft Word to Write Papers
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Terminology:
Stuff on Your Screen From Top to Bottom, or, What is that Blinking Thing Called?
Title Bar: When you are in an active Word document, at the very top of the document you will see a blue Title Bar, with the Word icon appearing at far left. The blue color indicates that this is the active document. Next to the Word icon you will see the filename you gave the document. At the far right of the Title Bar are three buttons - a dash, two boxes that represent windows, and an X. If you hover your cursor over these buttons, you will see that they perform the functions Minimize, Maximize, and Close, respectively. Minimizing an active document will keep it open but in the background, represented by a button on the Taskbar, which can be clicked on to reopen the window. Maximizing an active document makes it occupy the entire screen. Using the X to close a document is not recommended!
Active Window: The window or Dialog Box that is "on top," in which text can be entered or other functions performed.
Default Settings: The way Word's features and actions behave before you have changed them in any way. This affects many areas: where files are saved, how and when spelling and grammar are checked, the appearance of your document workspace, and so on. Some of the tips in this site explain how and when to modify default settings. If you are using a multi-user workstation (rather than a home or office computer), you may have to adjust these settings each time you launch Word, and some changes are specific to an individual document.
Menu Bar: Below the Title Bar in any Windows document (assuming you have not customized its appearance) you will see a line that begins with the word File. This is the Menu Bar. Each word on this Toolbar is an active element, meaning that when you click on it something happens. Hover the cursor over one of the words on the Menu Bar and you will see that it appears to become three-dimensional - again, a sign that this is an active element. Single-click on the word and a drop-down Menu will appear with a list of commands. You will notice that one letter of each Menu word is underlined; this indicates a keyboard version of the command, activated by pressing and holding the Alt key and the letter indicated.
Dialog Box: Dialog Boxes are the smaller active windows that open when you click on Menu or Toolbar items, or on certain buttons or other active elements. Dialog boxes allow the user to push buttons, select options from menus and lists, enter data, and otherwise select and customize features. Dialog boxes are active windows and so often have their own Title Bars (i.e. the Format, Paragraph Dialog Box is titled Paragraph); you will notice that when a Dialog Box is open, the Title Bar of the document on which you are working turns gray to indicate that this document is no longer the active window. Once you have completed your action and closed your Dialog Box (usually by clicking on the Okay button), the document will become active again, with its Title Bar turning blue. Some Dialog Boxes have Tabs, which when clicked on open different versions of the Dialog Box with different options.
Toolbars: Below the Menu Bar in a Word document you will typically see two Toolbars side by side: the Standard Toolbar, which begins at left with the icon for New Document (it looks like a piece of paper with a corner folded down) and the Formatting Toolbar (this one begins at left with a Pull-down dialog box Menu for choosing typeface). You will notice that each Toolbar has a vertical line at its left margin; the three-dimensional appearance of this line tells you that this is an active element. Move the mouse so that the cursor hovers over this line and you will see a cursor appear that looks like a compass rose (arrows pointing in four directions). This cursor indicates that an element can be clicked on and dragged to any part of the screen. Toolbars can be moved in this manner to wherever you find them useful. At the right margin of the Standard and Formatting Toolbars, you will see two arrows pointing right; these are also active elements and indicate that part of the Toolbar is hidden. Clicking on this More Buttons button will display the rest of the Toolbar's functions.
Other Toolbars are available from the View Menu on the Menu Bar. Click on the View Menu and then slide the cursor down the Drop-down list to Toolbars. This item has next to it a right-pointing arrow, indicating that another Drop-down Menu will open when the cursor stops on this item (a cascading Menu system). Choosing View, Toolbars allows you to open and close various Toolbars that control different aspects of Word. Clicking on a specific Toolbar item on the View, Toolbars Menu will launch a task-specific Toolbar; you will notice that a checkmark appears on this Menu by any open Toolbar.
Active Element: Anything on screen that performs a given function when you place the cursor over it and click a mouse button. Many active elements change visibly, or display a small pop-up window giving a function, when the cursor hovers over them.
Rulers: Your Word document has at least one ruler visible (two if you are in Print Layout View). The Horizontal Ruler indicates the margins of your page; at the left margin of this ruler is a Tab Button that looks like a letter L. This sets various kinds of tabs within a given paragraph of your document. Clicking on this button changes the type of tab in a sequence from the default setting (left tab) to a center tab, a right tab, a decimal tab, etc. Once you have the type of tab you want, clicking on the ruler will add that tab to the paragraph in which you left the insertion point cursor. The sliding active element immediately to the right of the Tab Button controls initial indents, including the hanging indent; however, this aspect of your paragraph is easier to control from the Format, Paragraph Dialog Box.
Document Workspace (Active Workspace): area within the Word document where text, images, etc. can be entered. This represents the printable version of your document.
Cursor: That blinking thing that you move with the mouse. It comes in two basic flavors: insertion point (directs where type etc. appear in documents) and pointer (used to select lines of text, click on buttons, etc.). Cursor behavior and appearance vary in a context-sensitive manner; to see what this means, go into a Word document and move the mouse so that your cursor passes ("hovers") over the menu bar, the margins of your page, etc. Try moving the cursor to the left margin until it becomes a right-pointing arrow; then single-click. You will see that this selects ("highlights") a whole line of text. You will also notice that the insertion point cursor can be controlled by the moving cursor (wherever you click in the active workspace, the insertion point appears) but that the two also operate independently.
Right-Click and Double-Click: When instructions tell you to "click" on something, it means to depress the left mouse button once and then release. Right-clicking (using the right mouse button) is distinct from "clicking" (or left-clicking) because this button typically calls up different options or performs different functions. Double-clicking (depressing and releasing the left mouse button twice in quck succession) is often used to activate icons or performother more advanced functions).
Select ("Highlight"): There are multiple ways to perform this crucial function, which tells Word that a given portion of text is to be acted upon (i.e. moved, copied, reformatted, etc.). To Select (or "Highlight") a small portion of text or other elements in the active document workspace, position the cursor directly over the text to be selected, and then click and drag until the whole selection is highlighted. If the portion to be selected is more substantial, you can also select it from the margins. Try moving the cursor to the left margin until it becomes a right-pointing arrow; then single-click. You will see that this selects ("highlights") a whole line of text. For really long blocks of text, click to position the insertion point at the beginning of the selection, then scroll to the end of the selection, hold down the Shift key, and click again at the end of the selection. Finally, Edit, Select All from the Menu Bar will select all of the text in the document.
View Buttons: Directly underneath the Document Workspace at the left margin are four buttons that control the various viewing options for the active document: Normal, Web Layout, Print Layout, and Outline. Print Layout view is useful for previewing the way text will look when printed, including features like Headers, Footers, Columns, and Tables that do not display correctly, or at all, in Normal View. Web Layout and Outline View are for more specialized usages; refer to Word Help for details.
Scroll Bars and Select Browse Object Button: The active Word document displays a Horizontal Scroll Bar at the bottom of the Document Workspace and a Horizontal Scroll Bar at the right margin of the Document Workspace. Both are click-and-drag features. The Vertical Scroll Bar has at its bottom three buttons: two sets of double arrows pointing up and down, on either side of a button with a black dot on it. The two arrow buttons have as their default function Page Up and Page Down. The central button is the Select Browse Object Button; clicking on it launches a dialog box that allows the user to change the function of the Up/Down Buttons. Buttons in this dialog box include: Browse by Field, Browse by Endnote, Browse by Footnote, Browse by Comment, Browse by Section, Browse by Page (the default setting), Go To, Find, Browse by Edits, Browse by Heading, Browse by Graphic, and Browse by Table. Each of these commands allows the user to search the entire document, up or down, for specific elements, including words. Select Browse Object, Find launches the Find and Replace Dialog Box, which has Tabs allowing the user to find and replace all instances of a misspelled word or other error. Once the Select Browse Object Button has been set to a function other than Browse by Page, it retains that function until changed; the Up and Down arrows turn blue when they are set on any function other than Browse by Page.
Status Bar: Below the Horizontal Scroll Bar is the Status Bar, which displays various bits of information about the active document: pages and sections; cursor position; the active or inactive status of macro recording, Track Changes, Language Bar functions, and the use of the Overwrite function; and the status of Spelling and Grammar checking.
Task Bar: The very bottom of your screen displays the Task Bar, which is independent of the active window or program. To the far left of the Task Bar is the Start Button. The Task Bar also displays a button for each program that is running, and allows the user to switch between windows by clicking on these buttons. A number on the button (i.e. 2 Internet Explorer) followed by an arrow indicates that multiple windows are open in that program and allows the user to select between these windows. Right-clicking the button will allow the user to close all the open windows and the program; a Save prompt will appear if needed. The Task Bar also displays controls for audio equipment, virus scan, and other features, and displays the time at far right.