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About this lesson
Paragraph format and alignment is important to proper document layout.
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Exercise files
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Basic Paragraph Formats.docx59.4 KB Basic Paragraph Formats - Solution.docx
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Quick reference
Basic Paragraph Formats
Paragraph format and alignment is important to proper document layout.
Home Ribbon, Paragraph Group
When to use
Use the Paragraph Alignment buttons when you want text to align to the left edge, right edge, both edges, or center align.
Instructions
- Click the line of text that you want to apply Paragraph Format to.
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Click the Left Align button so the text is flush to the left margin. This is the default paragraph alignment. (Meaning, it’s how the computer displays it if you do not make changes.)
Click the Center Align button so the text is centered between both margins. Used to align titles over a report or story.
Click the Right Align button so the text is flush to the right margin. Use when you want text flush right on the document.
Click the Justify Align button so the text is flush to both margins. Used in a formal business or report document.
- 00:04 Paragraph formats, paragraph alignments is what we're gonna be talking about here.
- 00:10 Now, I've got four paragraphs set up in this example document.
- 00:14 You can, please, use this and
- 00:15 practice on this one, and I've got the name of it aligned left.
- 00:19 And of course there are shortcuts.
- 00:21 Well these shortcuts, when you float your mouse right up here on the Home ribbon,
- 00:23 in the Paragraph group, we're gonna be focusing on those four buttons.
- 00:27 The first one is align left with a Ctrl+L, and the next one is center,
- 00:31 Ctrl+E, right align, Ctrl+R, and fully justified,
- 00:37 meaning both sides will be evenly justified, flush to the margins, Ctrl+J.
- 00:42 So let's go ahead and start with this first one.
- 00:44 Whenever you're working with a paragraph, you could go ahead and
- 00:47 select the paragraph.
- 00:48 But honestly, it's a paragraph function.
- 00:50 It knows when the paragraph ends.
- 00:52 Because all of these are soft returns, until this one,
- 00:54 then we have a hard return hidden right behind here.
- 00:57 If you have any question about your hard returns, up on your Home ribbon,
- 01:01 in the Paragraph group, this button is your Show/Hide button.
- 01:05 And that will absolutely show you where paragraphs end with these little
- 01:08 paragraph marks.
- 01:09 It is very common for me to work with these paragraph marks on.
- 01:14 Generally, it confuses people so I'll turn them off just for now.
- 01:17 All right, so again, I don't have to triple click this paragraph to select it.
- 01:21 I can if I want, one, two, three, selects the whole paragraph,
- 01:24 it is your personal preference.
- 01:26 All right, now this one automatically is left aligned,
- 01:29 it just is because that's the way it ts.
- 01:31 But generally, if you've got a paragraph, you're going to hit an indent.
- 01:35 So I press my Tab key which indented the first line.
- 01:39 And that's fine, there's not much else I can do here.
- 01:42 Let's go to the second paragraph.
- 01:44 Centering a paragraph.
- 01:45 Now notice I've got a, it thinks I've misspelled here, it thinks I've got
- 01:49 a contextual error here cuz of the red squiggle and the blue squiggle.
- 01:52 You can right-click and tell the computer to ignore this, okay,
- 01:55 to make those squiggles go away.
- 01:57 If you know it's absolutely correct, just ignore these.
- 02:00 Then that's fine.
- 02:01 I don't want you to be confused by a little colored squiggles on
- 02:04 the words here.
- 02:06 Centering the paragraph, when I click in into a paragraph, I'll go ahead and
- 02:08 click the Center button and look what happens.
- 02:11 It just centered it above the three inch line.
- 02:15 And when I click and hold there you can see it dissects right through and
- 02:18 everything is centered around it.
- 02:20 So not really great for a paragraph, excellent though for
- 02:23 a title of a report or stories.
- 02:25 So I'll click on this particular line, go ahead and hit my Center and
- 02:28 there it is, completely centered.
- 02:30 Excellent, let's do the control or the right, right align.
- 02:34 I'm gonna click in this paragraph.
- 02:35 I could triple-click and select paragraph, personal preference and
- 02:39 I'll hit the right align which will simply line it up flush to the edge.
- 02:44 So when I click and
- 02:45 hold right here you can see how all the paragraph lines are flush right there.
- 02:50 All right, why woud you use this one?
- 02:52 Well, you would absolutely use this one,
- 02:54 I often use it to set a note aside underneath a paragraph.
- 02:58 But I don't want the note to be left aligned.
- 03:00 I want it to kinda be off set, so I'll push it over to the right-hand side
- 03:04 with my right alignment, and the final one is fully justified now.
- 03:08 Let's just take a look at this one, just for a second.
- 03:11 When I click and
- 03:11 hold this line, look how far away all the words are from the right-hand margin.
- 03:17 Now I'm going to click into this paragraph,
- 03:19 I'm going to hit the fully justify and now when I click and hold, look at that.
- 03:23 They're right up against the right-hand margin, incredibly professional for
- 03:27 business letters and formal reports, not so much casual writing or story writing.
- 03:32 Newspaper magazine writing will always have jagged edges, but for
- 03:36 formal business letters we absolutely want a nice flush right-hand margin.
- 03:41 All right, that's it for the paragraph formats and alignments.
- 03:45 Thank you.
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