The first step in editing a document is to move the cursor to the location where you want to make a change. If you’re using the mouse, click the left (primary) mouse button to position the cursor.

If you’re using the keyboard, use the keyboard shortcuts listed in the following table.

After you’ve moved the cursor, you can begin entering text or editing. To remove characters or words, use one of the keyboard shortcuts listed in the following table.

For larger edits, such as deleting a paragraph or making formatting changes, you highlight, or select, the text you want to change. When you make a selection, you’re identifying what you want to work with. After it’s selected, you then specify how you want to work with it by using your mouse or keyboard to issue a command.

You can use a variety of methods to select text. The most common is the click-and-drag method. That is, you move the mouse pointer to where you want to begin your selection, click and hold the left (primary) mouse button, and then drag through the text you want to select. Additional methods include using the keyboard and other mouse actions, which are discussed in the following sections.

Selecting text by using the mouse

When using the mouse to select text, you can place your mouse pointer in the document and use the text select arrow, also called an I-beam pointer. Or, you can point to the area to the left of the document margin. This area is called the selection bar. It isn’t labeled, but you know you’re in the selection bar when your mouse pointer changes from the text select arrow to an arrow that points up and to the right. Each time you click in the selection bar you select text.

The following table lists mouse actions for both the text select arrow and the selection bar.

Selection	Mouse action
One word	Double-click
One line	Click the selection bar next to the line
Multiple lines	Click next to the first line in the selection bar and then drag up or down
One sentence	Press the Ctrl key and click the sentence
One paragraph	Triple-click in the paragraph or double-click next to the paragraph in the selection bar
Entire document	Press Ctrl and click in the selection bar or triple-click in the selection bar

You can also use a combination of the mouse, keyboard, and Shift key to select text. For example, if you didn’t select enough text, simply press the Shift key and then click where you want your selection to end, or use the keyboard to modify your selection.

Using other selection methods

Microsoft Word also has selection methods for selecting multiple words, phrases, sentences, and columns of text anywhere in a document.

To make text selections that are not next to each other, after you make your first text selection, press the Ctrl key and use a mouse action to select additional text.

To select a vertical column of text, press and hold the Alt key and use the mouse to drag through the text you want to select.

Important

Holding down the Alt key and clicking a word or selected phrase will display the Research pane. When using the Alt key to select a column of text, make sure you click and drag. If the Research pane is displayed, close it, and then press the Alt key while selecting the column of text again.

Tip

You can also use the Navigation pane to select a heading and its related content. On the Navigation pane, right-click the heading you want to select, and then click Select Heading And Content. For more information about using the Navigation pane, see Chapter 6.

Each time you press the Tab, Spacebar, or Enter key, characters called formatting marks are inserted into the document. Normally these formatting marks are not shown on the screen, but you can toggle their display by clicking the Show/Hide ¶ button, located on the Home tab in the Paragraph group.

When you press Enter, a paragraph mark (¶), also called a pilcrow sign, is inserted into your document. Each press of the Tab key adds a right-pointing arrow (→), and a dot in the middle of the line (·) indicates that the Spacebar was pressed.

If you use multiple spaces and tabs for horizontal alignment, or press the Enter key several times to change vertical alignment or to create blank lines, it can complicate the editing and formatting processes, because each character uses a specific amount of space.

The best practices for document composition include using formatting methods rather than pressing the Tab, Spacebar, and Enter key multiple times:

In this exercise, you’ll examine how document composition can have an impact on editing. You’ll edit two lists of information. One list uses tabs and spaces for alignment, and the other uses a manual tab to achieve the same result. You’ll also use formatted space to change the position of a paragraph.

To insert symbols, such as the ohm sign (Ω), or international characters, such as the letter “a” with an acute accent (á), you can use the Symbol dialog box or a keyboard shortcut.

To display the Symbol dialog box, on the Insert tab, in the Symbols group, click the Symbol button, and then click More Symbols.

From the list of symbols, double-click the symbol you want to insert, or click the symbol once to select it and then click the Insert button.

Here are a few tips for using the Symbol dialog box:

If a selected symbol has an associated keyboard shortcut, it will be listed near the bottom of the dialog box next to the Shortcut Key button. There are four basic keyboard shortcut methods that you can use to insert symbols.

The following table provides an example of each method and a description of how to enter the keyboard shortcut.

If you use international characters that have accents, such as á or ÿ, you don’t need to memorize each individual keyboard shortcut for them. You can use the built-in keyboard shortcuts for the accent character instead, which are listed in the following table.

To insert an accent, first press the keyboard shortcut, release the keys, and then enter the character.

Assigning a custom keyboard shortcut to a character or symbol

If you frequently use the same character or symbol that has a complex keyboard shortcut, you can define your own custom keyboard shortcut instead of memorizing the built-in one. In the Symbol dialog box, select a character or symbol, and then click Shortcut Key. In the Customize Keyboard dialog box that appears, in the Press New Shortcut Key text box, press the keys for your preferred keyboard shortcut. For example, press Ctrl+Shift+Y.

It’s important to note that prior to assigning your new keyboard shortcut, you should first check whether the keyboard shortcut you want to use is assigned to another command. After you enter your keyboard shortcut, the existing keyboard shortcut assignment will be listed below the Current Keys list box.

If the shortcut is already assigned, and it’s one you don’t use, you can override the built-in assignment with your custom keyboard shortcut by clicking the Assign button. If you later decide you want to use the originally assigned keyboard shortcut, you can redisplay the Customize Keyboard dialog box for your symbol, select your custom keyboard shortcut from the list of current keys, and then click Remove. To reset all custom keyboard shortcuts, click Reset All.

Inserting special characters

The Special Characters page of the Symbol dialog box has a collection of special punctuation symbols, such as an em dash (—), and formatting characters, such as a nonbreaking space, that aren’t available on most keyboards. You can insert them exactly like you insert symbols or international characters, by using the Symbol dialog box or the corresponding keyboard shortcut.

Of the available special characters, there are a few that are especially useful for specifying how words or phrases should wrap between lines of text if they fall at the end of a line. The following table describes each of these and provides a description of the formatting mark that’s displayed for each when you click the Show/Hide ¶ button on the Home tab.

Character	Description	Formatting mark
Optional Hyphen	An optional hyphen is displayed only when part of the text wraps to the next line. If the text remains on the same line, the hyphen doesn’t appear.	hooked hyphen (¬)
Nonbreaking Hyphen	Keeps text before and after the nonbreaking hyphen together on the same line.	long hyphen(–)
Nonbreaking Space	Keeps text before and after the nonbreaking space together on the same line.	small raised circle (°)

Tip

The formatting marks for an em space and en space are also displayed as a small raised circle, but extra space is added to the left of the symbol for an en space and extra space is added to the left and right for an em space. A 1/4-em space is shown as a vertical bar (|).

A manual line break, which isn’t in the Symbol dialog box, is another special formatting character for controlling line wrapping. This type of break is used to force text to start on a new line without starting a new paragraph. For example, you may have several short lines that you want to treat as a single paragraph, such as an address. To enter a manual line break, press Shift+Enter. The formatting mark that represents a manual line break is a rightangle arrow pointing to the left.

In this exercise, you’ll use the Symbol dialog box to insert a nonbreaking space to prevent a telephone number from wrapping across multiple lines.

Set Up

You need the Newsletter_C document located in the Chapter07 practice file folder to complete this exercise. Open the Newsletter_C document and then follow the steps.

1. On the View tab, in the Show group, select the Navigation Pane check box.

2. In the Navigation pane, click New Women’s Shelter. If necessary, scroll to view the text below the picture.

3. On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click the Show/Hide ¶ button.

4. Select the space after (971).

   

5. On the Insert tab, in the Symbols group, click Symbol, and then click More Symbols.

6. On the Special Characters page, double-click Nonbreaking space.

   Keyboard Shortcut

   Press Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar.

7. Close the Symbol dialog box and note that the entire phone number wrapped to the next line.

8. Edit the first part of the sentence with the phone number to read To donate instead of If you wish to donate and note that the phone number moves to the previous line.

   Tip

   Move the cursor to the beginning of the sentence and press Ctrl+Delete three times. Then press Delete to remove the lowercase t, and enter a capital T.

   

   Clean Up

   Close the document without saving changes.

As you enter text into a document, various typing mistakes and misspellings are corrected for you by a feature called AutoCorrect. If you’re familiar with using AutoCorrect on a smartphone, the feature in Word is similar, but it does more than correct commonly misspelled words. Other corrections range from capitalizing the first letter of sentences and days of the week to toggling the case of characters if you accidently enter them with Caps Lock on. For example, if you enter the word “teh” as the first word of a sentence, AutoCorrect will both capitalize the first letter and change the word to “the” after you press the Spacebar.

You also have the ability to reverse the action if it isn’t correct and remove words that you don’t want corrected automatically. When a correction is made, point to the word to display the AutoCorrect Options button, and then click the button to display a menu of choices.

To reverse the correction, click the first option, which will start with either Change back or Undo. For the example previously provided, when the word “teh” as been entered at the beginning of a sentence, the first option is Undo Automatic Corrections, because two corrections were made. Clicking the option will reverse both the spelling of the word “the” and the capitalization.

If you never want the correction to be made again, click a Stop option, such as Stop Automatically Correcting “teh”. Keep in mind that this will delete the entry and will take effect for all documents. After an entry is deleted, you’ll need to manually add the entry in the AutoCorrect dialog box in order for Word to start correcting it again.

To view all of the AutoCorrect options, click Control AutoCorrect Options at the bottom of the menu to display the AutoCorrect dialog box.

In the AutoCorrect dialog box, you can choose to turn the options on or off, delete words that are automatically corrected, or add your own entries to the AutoCorrect list.

To add custom entries, enter the characters you want to replace in the Replace text box. In the With text box, enter your replacement text, and then click the Add button.

Here are a few tips for using the AutoCorrect dialog box:

Building blocks, formerly known as AutoText in previous versions of Word, are pieces of information that you can quickly insert into your documents. You can insert built-in building blocks, such as watermarks and cover pages, or your own custom entries.

Following is a list of the primary building block galleries and their locations on the ribbon:

To insert a building block, simply click the building block you want to insert in your document. Some of the building block galleries, like the Cover Page gallery, have additional commands for inserting building blocks. To display these commands, right-click a building block in the gallery.

The Quick Parts gallery doesn’t have built-in building blocks and can be used for your custom entries. Custom building blocks can range from frequently used text, such as a signature block or boilerplate text for a letter or other document, to pictures and other graphics. Additionally, unlike built-in building blocks, custom building blocks can be inserted by using the keyboard. Just enter the name of the building block and watch for the AutoComplete ScreenTip. When the ScreenTip is displayed, press Enter to insert the building block. Typically, you only need to enter the first few characters of the name and the AutoComplete ScreenTip will be displayed.

In this exercise, you’ll create a custom building block for the Fabrikam company logo and address and then insert it by using the ribbon and keyboard.

Here are some important tips to remember when you are creating custom building blocks: