Format Text with Fonts and Colors

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About this lesson

Learn how to apply bold, italic, underline and Drop Caps styles to text.

Quick reference

Format Text with Fonts and Colors

Learn 3 ways to apply text formats

When to use

Formatting text adds clarity and uniformity to a document.

Instructions

  1. Click the line of text that you want to apply a Format to.
  2. Click the HOME ribbon and move the mouse to the FONT group.
  3. Click any of the buttons within the FONT group to see the effect on the selected text.
    Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated  
  4. When selecting text, the minibar will pop up with the base-level font tools available.
  5. If advanced formats are needed, the corner arrow on the Home ribbon, Font group (shown in pic above) will open up for more options.

Tips:

  • The format only applies to the SELECTED text.  If nothing is selected, nothing will format. Make sure you have told the computer what you want it to do by clicking, dragging, and selecting the text before applying a format.
  • Double-click a word to select one word.
  • Triple-click a paragraph to select a full paragraph.
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  • 00:05 Formatting texts with fonts and
  • 00:07 colors is one of the fun things about Microsoft Word.
  • 00:10 The general rule of thumb is,
  • 00:12 you must first have selected what you want to apply fonts and colors to.
  • 00:17 So let's take a look at our Home ribbon.
  • 00:20 Right up here, we have an entire set.
  • 00:22 This is called the font group, and we have our font style, and size, and
  • 00:26 all kinds of things we can do.
  • 00:28 Plus we have a dialog box operator for even deeper and more advanced fonts.
  • 00:33 I'll hit Cancel on that right now.
  • 00:36 What I want to do is actually work right down here on the screen.
  • 00:39 So I'm going to click and drag this very first line of topic 1.
  • 00:42 Now, watch what happens when I let go.
  • 00:44 The mini bar pops up.
  • 00:46 And on the mini bar are the base level sets of fonts.
  • 00:49 Well, since we're just applying bold and red here, let's go ahead and do that.
  • 00:52 Notice, I'll click the B and the tooltip pops up, Ctrl+B.
  • 00:57 And I want the color red.
  • 00:58 Right now, mine is set for green.
  • 00:59 So any button with the letter A on it means alphabet,
  • 01:02 You're going to change alphabet, this time, color.
  • 01:05 So I'll hit the drop-down and I'll choose red.
  • 01:08 Okay, let's move on to the next one.
  • 01:10 Topic 2, italicized and blue.
  • 01:12 This time, I'll float my mouse in the left-hand margin.
  • 01:15 Just click once to select the entire line and the mini bar pops up, and
  • 01:19 I want to choose Italicize.
  • 01:21 Tooltip says Ctrl+I, and I'll change the color to blue.
  • 01:27 Okay, let's do some advanced stuff.
  • 01:29 On topic 3, we want to apply underline, and green, and strike out.
  • 01:32 So I'll select the line, but the mini bar doesn't have the strike out on it.
  • 01:37 That's on the Home ribbon.
  • 01:38 So eyeballs up to the top to the Home ribbon.
  • 01:41 Here we go, we want the Underline button.
  • 01:43 Tooltip says, Ctrl+U.
  • 01:46 We'll change the font color to green.
  • 01:49 And we want strike out, which is right here, also called strike through.
  • 01:53 So I'll go ahead and click that, and it crosses it through.
  • 01:57 All right, how about topic 4?
  • 01:59 Go ahead and select the line.
  • 02:01 This time, we're going to apply Bold, Underline, Italicize,
  • 02:06 my goodness, all kinds of stuff, and we're going to make it orange.
  • 02:10 The drop-down arrow and choose orange on this one.
  • 02:16 Let's go ahead and take a look at the dialog box operator.
  • 02:19 I'll click the little tiny arrow on the corner.
  • 02:22 Let's take a look deeper, check this out.
  • 02:23 We have strike through, and you can see the preview right here.
  • 02:27 Turn that off, show Double strike through.
  • 02:30 Look at that, my goodness, double strike through.
  • 02:32 You can also apply Small caps, which will capitalize every letter,
  • 02:38 but the first letter is slightly larger.
  • 02:41 What about all caps?
  • 02:43 Now, this is different than uppercase.
  • 02:45 If I turn on uppercase or lowercase, it doesn't matter?
  • 02:47 I turn on All caps, everything will be all capitalized.
  • 02:51 What about Hidden?
  • 02:53 Do I want to hide that text?
  • 02:54 No, I don't, I'm going to leave it unhidden, and
  • 02:57 I'll go ahead and click OK right here.
  • 03:00 So what we've seen so far are three ways to find the fonts.
  • 03:03 We can make a selection, find the minibar fonts,
  • 03:06 we can come up to the Home ribbon, find the font group right here, and
  • 03:11 we can open up the dialog box and find more font options in here.
  • 03:15 Let's work on the paragraph.
  • 03:16 This is really cool.
  • 03:18 So this paragraph is part of an announcement flyer or
  • 03:21 perhaps part of a story.
  • 03:22 I want to add a drop cap to the first letter to make the first letter huge.
  • 03:26 I don't even have to be clicked on the first word,
  • 03:28 just be clicked into the paragraph.
  • 03:30 Now, this is on the Insert ribbon, and it's way over on the far right-hand side.
  • 03:34 There's a text group, and this button right here says, Add a Drop Cap.
  • 03:39 When I hit the drop-down, notice I have Dropped cap, and I've In margin cap.
  • 03:43 I'll choose Drop cap here.
  • 03:45 And on the next paragraph, I'll do the same thing, but
  • 03:49 I'll choose the In margin cap, okay?
  • 03:52 Puts the first letter in the margin.
  • 03:53 You've seen this in magazines, you've seen this on storybooks.
  • 03:57 Notice also, we have Drop Cap Options on that list.
  • 04:02 I could tell this to go five lines deep and hit OK, and
  • 04:06 they're made it even larger.
  • 04:08 Okay, this exercise was a good time to explore fonts and colors.

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