Basic Paragraph Formats

Quick reference

• 00:04 In this lesson, we're gonna work on Paragraph Formats.
• 00:07 On the Home ribbon there's an entire section named Paragraph.
• 00:11 We're gonna focus this lesson on the Left Align, the Center, the Right Align,
• 00:16 and the fully Justify.
• 00:17 So we're gonna practice this,
• 00:18 please notice also when you put your mouse on those buttons, it gives you a tool tip.
• 00:22 CTRL+L for left align, CTRL+E for center, CTRL+R for
• 00:26 right align, and CTRL+J of course, for justify.
• 00:30 Here we go.
• 00:30 Now, in this particular case, the first paragraph, align left.
• 00:34 It is by default, already aligned left.
• 00:37 Now maybe I want to hit my Indent or my Tab key to indent that first line.
• 00:41 Notice that every consecutive line underneath is flushed to the left margin,
• 00:46 so it is technically aligned left.
• 00:48 There's not a lot we can do there.
• 00:49 The next one is center.
• 00:51 We're going to center this paragraph for whatever reason, okay?
• 00:54 So I have the choice, I can come up here and hit this Center button, or
• 00:58 I can press Ctrl+E.
• 01:00 I'll go ahead and hit the button, since I'm already there.
• 01:02 And there it's centered.
• 01:02 Now that doesn't look very good, but
• 01:05 a title of a story would absolutely be centered.
• 01:08 So I'm gonna select that line just by clicking into it.
• 01:13 I could come over here and select the entire line in the margin, but
• 01:16 this is a paragraph feature, meaning you can just click into the line,
• 01:19 it will affect the entire thing to the hard return.
• 01:22 So I'll press Ctrl+E, and that will center the title of the story.
• 01:25 And I just mentioned it'll affect everything until the hard return.
• 01:29 How do you know where those hard returns are?
• 01:31 Well, again, in the paragraph section up above,
• 01:33 there's this little paragraph icon called the show-hide button.
• 01:36 When I turn that on, you can see these little paragraph marks at the end.
• 01:41 So everything, no matter what paragraph you click into,
• 01:44 all of these paragraph features will affect the entire thing until it sees one
• 01:49 of these paragraph hard returns.
• 01:51 It often confuses people when I have those on, so I'll turn that off for
• 01:54 now, but just so you know, as a habit,
• 01:56 I usually work in Microsoft Word with my show hide buttons on.
• 01:59 I like to see all of the codes in the background.
• 02:03 Now let's go ahead and write a line in the next paragraph.
• 02:06 Now what's gonna happen here, notice I have a flush left and a jagged right line,
• 02:10 it's going to reverse that, okay?
• 02:12 So I'm gonna have a flush right and a jagged left line.
• 02:15 Let's go ahead and click on the right-align button, there we go.
• 02:18 See, a flush right edge and a jagged left.
• 02:21 Now why would I ever use that?
• 02:23 Well, sometimes I do want to set a note off to the right edge.
• 02:27 So I'm gonna go ahead and turn that on.
• 02:29 Sometimes I want a page number on the right margin.
• 02:32 Sometimes I want the date to be flush to the right margin.
• 02:35 That is when we would use the flush right margin.
• 02:38 Okay, let's go ahead with the justify.
• 02:40 Now notice, this paragraph is very normal, straight edge on the left margin and
• 02:44 a jagged edge on the right margin.
• 02:46 When you're writing a long manuscript, maybe newspaper article,
• 02:50 maybe a newsletter,
• 02:51 it's very normal to have a jagged right edge because it actually helps
• 02:55 the readers' eyes to travel to the next line if they see that jagged right edge.
• 03:00 They've proven this, this isn't me making this up.
• 03:03 They've done studies on how to help people read script easier and
• 03:07 jagged right edges is nice,
• 03:08 but in the business world, they have taken to the flush left and right, okay?
• 03:13 So that is called fully justify, and that button is right up here,
• 03:17 the fully Justify or Control+J.
• 03:20 I'm gonna go ahead and click this, click.
• 03:21 Now, notice my left edge is street along, flushed to the left margin, and
• 03:26 my right edge is flushed to the right margin.
• 03:29 It's just very proper.
• 03:31 So it's often used on a short read, like a business letter,
• 03:34 a single page business letter, the moment that business letter goes two pages,
• 03:39 I'd probably go back to the right, the jagged right edge.
• 03:42 But for a short letter looks very nice, and
• 03:45 it's generally only in formal business that we see that.
• 03:48 All right, please go ahead and practice those.

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