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The most commonly used fonts in Word seem to be Arial and Times New Roman. Boring? They needn’t be. A document that uses only one or two fonts can be improved with the use of a few special text effects.
By the way, don’t feel compelled to stick with only these two fonts, unless it is company policy. Experiment with other fonts that are installed as part of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. For example, Comic Sans can give a casual feel to the document. And Wingdings fonts can be used to add special characters such as stars and arrows.
If you work with shared documents, use only standard fonts in your documents (the fonts that come with Windows and Office). That way, if your documents are opened on a different machine, the fonts will not be substituted. Font substitution can substantially change your document, not always for the better. Imagine your headings changed from an old English style font to Courier New. Your document would look very different and much less professional.
Documents seem to look and flow better if you use only two to three different fonts. Choose your fonts, and then choose which effects to use, and where to use them.
Body text should normally be typed in a serif font without any special effects (except bold or italic where needed). Special text effects can be used where you want text to stand out. For example, in headings, on a cover page, or within text boxes.
One more tip before we get started. Feel free to experiment, but also look at the results when printed. Some printers will not be able to handle effects such as Outline or Emboss. Before committing to that effect, do a printout and have a look at the results. It may be worthwhile searching the Internet or contacting your printer supplier for an updated printer driver.
The following options are covered in this article.
· Text colour. If the only printer you have is a black-and-white, the text will appear as a shade of grey. This can still be a nice effect.
· Font effects (shadow, outline, emboss engrave) found in the Font dialogue box (click Format – Font to display this dialogue box).
· Animation. This is only visible on the online document and does not show up in the printed copy.
· Borders. These can apply to a word, paragraph or entire page. There are a number of styles of borders. Note that borders do not need to go right around text. You can use borders to add only horizontal, or only vertical lines. Or maybe one of each.
Part two of this series covers text boxes, vertical and sideways text, dropped capitals, columns, text spacing and end markers.
Other options you can use include indenting, numbered lists (with the numbers a different font to the text), and bullets and dividers from the clipart gallery.
Text Colour
Modifying text colour works best for PowerPoint presentations, or where you are printing to a colour printer. However, it can give a grey effect, making the text stand out, when printed to a black-and-white printer.
The steps are as follows.
1. Select the text you want to colour.
2. Choose Format – Font.
3. Click the drop-down menu for Font Colour. Select a colour.
4. You can also choose More Colours to use the Standard and Custom tabs.
5. Click on OK. The colour is applied.
To repeat the colour on a different area of text, display the Drawing toolbar. Select the text. Click the Font Colour button to apply the colour.
The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Y is used to repeat an action. If the last thing you did was to colour the text, you can use this key combination after selecting the next piece of text.
If applying colours to headings, apply the colour to the heading style. This ensures all your headings appear in the same colour.
Text Effects (Shadow, Outline, Emboss Engrave)
1. Select the text.
2. Choose Format – Font.
3. Click in the box for Shadow, Outline, Emboss or Engrave. The Preview box shows you the effect.
4. Click on OK.
Animation
This only works when the document is displayed online. It does not display in the printed copy.
1. Select the text.
2. Choose Format – Font.
3. Click the Text Effects tab.
4. Choose an effect from those displayed.
5. Click on OK.
Borders
Borders can be applied to a single word, a paragraph, or a page.
Border for Words
To add a border to a single word or series of words within a paragraph, follow these steps.
1. Select the text, not including the paragraph marker at the end of the paragraph or line.
2. Click on Format – Borders and Shading.
3. Select the Borders tab.
4. Select Box under the Setting section.
5. Select a style. Scroll down in the box to view and select other styles.
6. Select a colour if wanted.
7. Select a width if wanted.
8. Click on OK.
Border for a Paragraph or Heading
To add a border to a paragraph or heading, follow these steps. The border will extend to the right margin.
1. Select the text, including the paragraph marker at the end of the paragraph or line.
2. Click on Format – Borders and Shading.
3. Select the Borders tab.
4. Select Box.
5. Select a style. Scroll down to see more.
6. Select a colour if required.
7. Select a width if required.
8. Click on OK.
Page Border
To add a page border, follow these steps.
1. Go to the page where you want the page border (for example, the first page of a report).
2. At the end of the page, add a section break (Next Page, or Odd Page).
3. Make sure the flashing cursor is on the page where you want the border.
4. Click on Format – Borders and Shading.
5. Choose the Page Border tab.
6. Choose a style, colour and width, or choose from the drop-down Art list. Note that you can change the width of an Art style if required.
7. Make sure the Apply To says This Section.
8. Click on OK.
Tips for Borders
Copy a part of the page border and re-use it elsewhere in the document to keep the same thread running through it. You could use a screen dump of a corner, or redo the page border but specify only top, bottom or one side.
Or find a graphic that mimics the page border. It may use the same theme, or colours. Use it throughout the document.
Experiment with dragging clipart over a border. Clipart or other objects covering a corner can look very effective
Stay tuned. The next article in this series is about text boxes, vertical text, sideways text and dropped capitals.
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