Manually Changing the Look of Characters
As you have seen, Word 2010 makes changing the look of content in a styled document
almost effortless. But styles can’t do everything. To be able to precisely control the look
of your text, you need to know how to manually change individual elements.
When you type text in a document, it is displayed in a particular font. By default the
font used for text in a new Word document is Calibri, but you can change the font
of any element at any time. The available fonts vary from one computer to another,
depending on the programs installed. Common fonts include Arial, Verdana, and
Times New Roman.
You can vary the look of a font by changing the following attributes:
● Size Almost every font comes in a range of sizes, which are measured in points from
the top of letters that have parts that stick up (ascenders), such as h, to the bottom
of letters that have parts that drop down (descenders), such as p. A point is approxi-
mately 1/72 of an inch (about 0.04 centimeters).
● Style Almost every font comes in a range of styles. The most common are regular
(or plain), italic, bold, and bold italic.
● Effect Fonts can be enhanced by applying effects, such as underlining, small
capital letters (small caps), or shadows.
● Color A palette of coordinated colors is available, and you can also specify custom
colors.
● Character spacing You can alter the spacing between characters by pushing them
apart or squeezing them together.
Although some attributes might cancel each other out, they are usually cumulative.
For example, you might use a bold font in various sizes and various shades of green to
make words stand out in a newsletter. Collectively, the font and its attributes are called
character formatting.
You apply character formatting from one of three locations:
● Mini Toolbar Several common formatting buttons are available on the Mini
Toolbar that appears when you point to selected text.The Mini Toolbar is transparent until you point to it.Manually Changing the Look of Characters 111