The Paragraph (Word 2007, 2010)

What is paragraph formatting?

• Paragraph formatting includes items such as alignment and indenting as well as numbering and bulleting of lists.  If you click on the Home tab, you will see a paragraph section within the Ribbon.    TIP: To select a paragraph triple click within the paragraph.

Paragraph marks

• To insert a paragraph mark, press the Enter key.  This inserts a single paragraph mark.  Often you will insert two paragraph marks to end one paragraph and insert a space on the screen before starting the next paragraph mark.

• To remove a paragraph mark, click at the end of a paragraph and press the Del (Delete) key.  TIP: To see a paragraph mark, click on the Show/Hide icon and you will see the paragraph break as illustrated below.  This makes it easier to identify and then remove the paragraph break. 

• Open a document called Paragraph Formatting.  Click on the Show/Hide icon and you will be able to see the paragraph marks within the document.  Click at the end of a paragraph and press the Enter key.  You will see a new paragraph mark displayed.  Press the Backspace key to delete this paragraph mark.

Soft paragraph (line break) marks

• When you press the Enter key you insert a paragraph mark.  If you press the Shift+Enter keys you insert a soft paragraph mark, which is also known as a line break. 

The visual effect is often the same, but when you insert a line break, then the text after the line break (up to the next paragraph mark) will be treated as a single paragraph.  Click on the Show/Hide icon and you will be able to see the soft paragraph marks within the document.  Re-click on the icon and you will no longer see the soft paragraph marks. 

• To remove a soft paragraph mark, click at the end of a line break and press the Del (Delete) key.  TIP: To see the line break, click on the Show/Hide icon and you will see the line break as illustrated below.  This makes it easier to identify and then remove the line break.   

• Click at the end of a sentence within a paragraph.  Insert a soft paragraph line break.  Insert another soft paragraph line break and notice that this type of mark looks different from a paragraph mark.  Delete the two soft paragraph line breaks.

• Click on the Show/Hide icon so that the marks are no longer visible.

Good practice aligning and indenting text

• Text can be aligned to the left or to the right.  It can also be centred or justified.  If you justify text, Microsoft Word inserts extra spaces into the lines of text so that the left and right edges of the text line up vertically, you do not see a ragged edge down the right side of the text.

• When aligning text use the tools that are built into Microsoft Word.  For instance if you wish to centre a paragraph, as we shall see you could click within the paragraph and then click on the Center icon.  You should not insert spaces or tab stops and try and line up paragraphs visually.  

• The same advice applies to indenting.  There are indent icons you can use.

Aligning text

• Click within a paragraph.  Experiment with using the alignment icons displayed within the Home tab.  

Indenting paragraphs

• It is easy to indent a paragraph.  You would normally indent a paragraph from the left by a specified amount, but you can also indent from the right.  You may wish to format your text using hanging indents, as illustrated below. 

• Click within a paragraph that is aligned to the left. Experiment with using the Increase Indent and the Decrease Indent icons displayed within the Home tab.    TIP: Each time you click on the Increase Indent icon, the paragraph is indented further to the right.   

• Click within another paragraph that is aligned to the left.  Click on the Paragraph Dialog Box Launcher.    This will display the Paragraph dialog box.    You can use the dialog box to set exact left or right indents.  Experiment with setting both left and right indents for this paragraph.

• Use the Undo icon to reverse these left and right indents.  Click on the down arrow next to the Special section of the dialog box. Select First Line. 

  Your paragraph will now look something like this.  The first line is indented, while the rest of the paragraph is not indented. 

Applying single or double line spacing within paragraphs

• Within a paragraph you can adjust the spacing between the lines of that paragraph.    NOTE: Do not confuse adjusting line spacing within a paragraph with adjusting the spacing between each paragraph. 

• Click within a paragraph.  On the Home tab, within the Paragraph section, click on the Line Spacing icon.     This will display a drop down list, from which you can select line spacing options.    Select 1.5 and look at what happens to the formatting of your paragraph.

Applying spacing above or below paragraphs

• You can adjust the spacing between your paragraphs.  This can sometimes make long documents clearer, or can be used to bring attention to certain paragraphs within a document. In the example below we have increased the spacing before a paragraph.   

• Select a paragraph within your document. Within the paragraph section of the Home tab, click on the Paragraph Dialog Box Launcher.  Within the Spacing section of the Paragraph dialog box, use the Before and After control to set the space that will be inserted before and after the paragraph.  Experiment with inserting different amounts of spacing and look at the effect. 

Good Practice: Use paragraph spacing rather than using the Return key

• It is considered better practice to use Word templates with fairly large pre-set paragraph spacing.  This means there is less need to press the Return key to insert visual spacing between each paragraph.