Many documents include a range of headings and they are generally used to provide structure and to improve readability. Essays may not use them but reports on experiments and field investigations will almost certainly do so, as will projects produced in History, Geography, Computing, and so on.
One of the first things to learn, therefore, is the use of Styles, and Heading Styles in particular. You should be aware of the need to plan a document around headings and these should be defined at various levels so that the document has a clear structure and organisation.
A lengthy report should probably have at least three levels of heading, possibly four or five, and these should be defined in a word processor so that they form a clear visual hierarchy. Font size and other attributes should be used to give strong visual clues to the reader about where they are in a document and the relative importance of each section. For example:
Heading 1: Major section headings (e.g. P, O, A, E in GCSE Science)
Heading 2: Sub-Headings within major sections
Heading 3: Sub-sub headings, if required, or captions for tables & charts
You might begin a lengthy document by entering major headings (from a plan!) and setting them to the appropriate styles in the word processor. To do this, type in the headings and then select each one in turn and choose the style from the drop-down list in the top left corner of the word processor.
The appearance of the headings can then be fine-tuned with Format/Style/Modify. With each heading set appropriately the appearance of a heading at a particular level can be changed throughout a document using Format/Style, rather than having to modify each one separately. This approach also forces you to work within a pre-defined structure rather than making this up as he goes along.
You should know that levels of heading are arranged according to rules, in particular level 1 should be followed by level 2 and not level 3, though level 3 may be followed by level 1 (where a new section begins).
When a document is well under way the headings may be less easy to see because they become separated by blocks of text and pictures. To keep a check on the structure of a document the user can switch to Outline View, which can be set to specific levels of headings, so that he can check on the broad progress of the document. In Outline view heading levels can be changed and blocks of text moved around.
You should not use a Heading style for the title of a document, this should be formatted separately. When a project is finished, if you have used headings from the drop-down list, as described above, you can add a table of contents from Insert/Index and Tables. This produces a list of the headings in a document and the pages on which they are to be found, adding what every such document should have, a guide to its contents.
You can set the level of the headings included in the table but you should not include the title of the piece, as this would typically be placed above it. You could also generate an index, though this is probably not required at school level (there are sophisticated products available for bibliography and citations for undergraduate level and above).
As well as Heading styles you should set the Normal style as well, especially if you want something different from the default setting. For some sorts of documents, for example a play script, you may want to develop text styles for purposes other than headings.
In a play script there are conventions such as stage instructions, name of speaker and words spoken, all of which will benefit from formatting in a pre-defined style rather than having to format each one manually. In this case one sets up the required style for each type of text and then defines a named style using Format/Style/New.
One particularly tricky aspect of play scripts is the level of indentation in the spoken text. When styles are used the format of all similar objects in a document can be changed in one action, rather than having to go through the whole thing and do each one separately.
To format complicated text effectively you should have a good knowledge of the workings of the Ruler and of the different styles in use, in particular first line indents and hanging indents. Use of the Ruler can also be important for fine-tuning numbered or bulleted lists, though here the pre-sets are generally adequate for most purposes.
Another finishing touch for a document is a Header and Footer. Page Setup/Layout includes options for different headers on odd and even pages and for the first page (where you may not want a header or footer at all).
These can add further refinement if the breadth of research warrants their use. They might be used where you need to provide a lengthy quotation, which might interrupt the flow of the main text. They can also be used to provide a properly formatted bibliography.
If using columns then one should leave the setting of columns to the very last and also learn to use the Insert/Break options. You may use DTP for this style of document but this opens a whole raft of other formatting options.
You may also prefer to use DTP for documents with many diagrams in them, where keeping words and pictures close together is important but difficult to achieve in a word processor.
MS Word includes facilities like columns and boxes for text and pictures but DTP will generally produce better results when using columns. If the requirement is for six pages of text and two or three diagrams then Word can cope but if there are ten pages of text and twenty diagrams then a DTP program will be better.
A widow is a single line of text at the bottom of a page separated from the rest on the next page, while an orphan is a single line of text at the top of a page separated from its parent paragraph. Pupils should be encouraged to move text around to avoid these. The appearance of a heading at the bottom of a page with its text on the next should also be avoided.
Remind boys to use the spell check and grammar check and to watch out for homophones and common errors such as confusing ‘affect’ and ‘effect’. Some teachers may think the grammar check inappropriate but I believe it is very useful, drawing attention to a number of problems that dog boys’ work, such as mixed tenses, overlong sentences and misplaced punctuation. Use of the on-line Thesaurus (double-click the word and press Shift-F7) can brighten a sentence and avoid repetition, while checking for alternatives may also clarify a word’s meaning.
The Edit/Replace tool can save considerable time where the same mistake is made repeatedly, e.g. incorrect capitalising or misspelling of proper names. Use Edit/Copy to copy word or phrase into Replace box, e.g. ‘clinistix’ for ‘Clinistix’ and ‘Sucrose’ for ‘sucrose’ are common errors.
Where numeric data has to be tabulated the user should be familiar with the insertion and formatting of tables.
This should be done often, preferably by changing the settings for Auto-Save in Tools/Options/Save to a small value (such as 5 minutes or less).
Most guides to word processing start with these but I have left them until later because most pupils can handle these and going straight to them can lead to the kind of poor structure in a document that should be avoided. Format/Paragraph/Line Spacing may not be known. You may use these basic tools to add emphasis to text but the bulk of formatting should be done through Styles. Margins are generally left untouched, though they may be changed in a DTP-style project.
Word includes a list of words that will correct themselves if you type them wrongly, for example 'teh' will be replaced automatically with 'the' (too bad if you really want 'teh'!). The AutoCorrect list also includes common misspellings such as 'recieve' and popular characters such as smiley symbols, for example ':)' produces J. This tool can also be used to create your own shorthand, for example a 2 or 3 letter code for a long word or phrase, for example 'ha' for 'hydrochloric acid' or some complex equation with subscripts and superscripts. To achieve this choose Tools/AutoCorrect and enter the letters that you want to replace on the left of the table and the words that you want to appear on the right. The change to the AutoCorrect list will be saved in your Normal.DOT template so it will be there next time you want to use it. This could save you quite a lot of time when typing up documents with lots of technical terms or abbreviations that you want to expand.
You can use macros to make typing in a foreign language easier, creating a key combination for the various accented characters. To do this choose Tools/Macro/Record New Macro. Give the new macro a name and click the Keyboard icon to assign a key combination (such as Ctrl-Shift-e, etc.). Click 'Apply' and Close. The Recording Macro toolbar appears, so whatever you do now will be recorded in the macro you just created. For a foreign character or other symbol you use often choose Insert/Symbol locate the character and insert it into the document. Click the square button in the Recording Macro toolbar to stop recording. When you press the key combination you specified you will get the character you inserted. Once again the setting will stay in your Normal template so you will be able to use it again and again.
Three actions from the Standard toolbar come in handy in most word processing work: the Format Painter, Undo and Redo. All word processor users should be familiar with these.
Familiarity with these can save the user a lot of time. In particular:
Keyboard shortcuts:
Selecting text with the mouse:
These selections are useful in advance of a cut and paste or a drag-move.
One more thing – NEVER use Word Art!