Keyboard Shortcut Press Shift+Enter to insert a line break.
You can also determine the positioning of a paragraph between the left and right margins
by changing its alignment. You can click buttons in the Paragraph group on the Home tab
to align paragraphs.
● Align Left Aligns each line of the paragraph at the left margin, with a ragged
right edge
Keyboard Shortcut Press Ctrl+L to left-align a paragraph.
● Center Aligns the center of each line in the paragraph between the left and right
margins, with ragged left and right edges
Keyboard Shortcut Press Ctrl+E to center-align a paragraph.
● Align Right Aligns each line of the paragraph at the right margin, with a ragged
left edge
Keyboard Shortcut Press Ctrl+R to right-align a paragraph.
● Justify Aligns each line between the margins, creating even left and right edges
Keyboard Shortcut Press Ctrl+J to justify a paragraph.
Tip If you know that you want to create a centered paragraph, you don’t have to type
the text and then align the paragraph. You can use the Click And Type feature to create
appropriately aligned text. Move the pointer to the center of a blank area of the page, and
when the pointer’s shape changes to an I-beam with centered text attached, double-click to
insert the cursor in a centered paragraph. Similarly, you can double-click at the left edge of
the page to enter left-aligned text and at the right edge to enter right-aligned text.
You can align lines of text in different locations across the page by using tab stops.
The easiest way to set tab stops is to use the horizontal ruler. By default, Word sets
left-aligned tab stops every half inch (1.27 centimeters), as indicated by gray marks
below the ruler. To set a custom tab stop, you start by clicking the Tab button located
at the left end of the ruler until the type of tab stop you want appears. You have the
following options:
● Left Tab Aligns the left end of the text with the tab stop
● Center Tab Aligns the center of the text with the tab stop
● Right Tab Aligns the right end of the text with the tab stop
● Decimal Tab Aligns the decimal point in the text (usually a numeric value) with
the tab stop
● Bar Tab Draws a vertical line at the position of the tab stopManually Changing the Look of Paragraphs 121