Welcome to the next in a series of tips on using Microsoft Word, geared towards authors.
Most Word advice is rather complicated and full of things you’ll never need to know.
I shall do my best to keep it simple, because you’re not stupid… just busy.
Please note:
– Not all versions of Word are the same, but most are near enough.
– There are different ways of doing the same thing. I shall demonstrate just one (or two).
I expect you all know about Ctrl/C, Ctrl/X, Ctrl/V and Ctrl/S. But do you know about Ctrl/B – bold, Ctrl/I – italics and Ctrl/U – underline?
To see lists of all the keyboard shortcuts, search for keyboard shortcuts in Help.
There are other ways of performing these actions, but if you know the keyboard shortcut, it can save time.
Here’s one that I’ve found very useful: Shift/F3. Select a string and press Shift/F3. It has three modes: lower case, UPPER CASE and Title Case.
Links to Previous Word Tips
- Tip 1: A Matter of Style
About heading styles. - Tip 2: Make Your Novel a Trampoline
How to jump swiftly and gracefully between chapters. - Tip 3: That’s Not What I Wrote
How to stop Word making changes you don’t want. - Tip 4: How Not to Jump to a New Page
Press Enter until a new page appears? Please don’t. - Tip 5: How Not to Indent a Line
The space bar is not for indentation. - Tip 6: Track and Compare
About Track Changes, Compare and Combine. - Tip 7: Replacement Operation
Pitfalls of find and replace. - Tip 8: Automatic Saves
The different ways of saving a document - Tip 9: Accents / Diacritic Marks and Apostrophes
Inserting acutes, graves, umlauts and the rest. Also, getting apostrophes the right way round.
What next? Is there anything else you’d like me to explain about Microsoft Word?
Miriam Drori, Author 