Tech Help
Back
Formatting Paragraphs in Microsoft Word

The Paragraph option in the Format menu allows you to change the formatting of your paragraphs. From here, you can configure the alignment, indentation line spacing and page and line breaks. To view the options in the Paragraph dialog box, from the Format menu, choose Paragraph.

Indents and Spacing Tab

From the Indents and Spacing tab, you can choose the horizontal alignment for the paragraph from the Alignment: drop-down box. You can choose the Outline Level: if you're setting up an outline from your document. You can set the Left: and Right: indentation in the Indentation section, and can select special indents for the first line and hanging indents from the Special: drop-down box. You can also add additional spacing before or after a paragraph, and set the line spacing (Single, 1.5 lines, Double) from the Spacing section. You can view your changes in the Preview box. If you click on the Tabs button, the Tab dialog box will open. (See page 11 for more information about the Tab dialog box.)

Line and Page Breaks Tab

From the Line and Page Breaks tab, you can choose from a variety of pagination options. When Widow/Orphan control is checked, Word will prevent the last line or word of a paragraph from printing by itself at the top of the next page (known as the widow). It also prevents the first line of a paragraph from printing by itself at the bottom of a page (known as the orphan). If Keep lines together is checked, all lines in a paragraph will print on the same page. The Keep with next option allows you to keep two paragraphs together on the same page. When the Page break before option is checked, the selected paragraph will be moved to the top of the a new page.

You can suppress line numbers for specific paragraphs, if you are applying numbering to the document. If you've chosen to allow Word to hyphenate words (which can be set under the Language / Hyphenation section of the Tools menu), you can prevent words from being hyphenated in specific paragraphs.


Tech Home · Tech Committee · Tech Help · Staff Development · Internet Resources
Curriculum · Staff Competencies · AUP · Software · Tech Plan