Hey there.
Welcome back.
We’re in module 2 which is the Getting Started with Word module and we’re now on section
2 where I want to show you how to work with non-printing characters and some line spacing
basics.
Just so you’ll know what non-printing characters are, there are certain characters like spaces
and the Enter key and the Tab key that you would like to see those when you’re typing
for various reasons.
And you can.
So let me show you how that would work.
I’m back in my document here and I’m going to set up a professional looking letter.
And let’s say the first thing I want to type is the date.
So let’s say that the date happens to be April and it happens to be the 14th.
Notice the yellow box that appeared right above April.
If that is what I want I’m going to hit the Enter key and it will fill it in for me.
If that was not the date I wanted I would just keep on typing and it would go away.
Now I’m going to go ahead and hit the Enter key because I’d like to go down to the next
line.
If you need two spaces in there you’d want to hit the Enter key again.
Now I want to say this is to someone and so I’m going to type it like this and notice
I’m going to hit the Tab key.
What Tab does is stops you at the half inch mark on your ruler.
The reason you want to do that is because if I just type the To and I went space, space,
space, space, space and then I came down and did the next line, let me finish this one
real quick.
Let’s say this is to Jim and I’m going to say it’s from me.
But if I had used the spaces here and the spaces here then Jim and Cindy would never
line up and look professional.
Sometimes they’ll look close but you’ll print it out and they’re really off.
And the reason for that is because each character of the alphabet is a different width.
So remember that when you hit the Tab key on the keyboard you’ll stop at the half
inch mark on the ruler.
You’ll learn later how to set custom tabs so you can have it stop wherever you like
when you hit that Tab key.
So I’m going to enter a couple more times and start my document.
Now I’m going to scroll down just a little bit so we can see the whole thing.
So I’m going to say Call Mr. Kelly to check your calendar order, period.
The one you wanted is out of stock and will not be available until next week.
Did you see how the text just automatically wrapped there?
And I’m going to say If you have any questions, questions, call me at 614-555-1212.
And then I’ll go ahead and just drop down a couple of lines and put my name in there.
Now you notice I have a misspelled word right here so I’m just going to go ahead and put
my Y in there and that’ll fix it for me.
Now it might look okay but sometimes what happens as you’re typing and you look and
you say, “I’m not sure if I have two or three spaces there.
Let me check that out.”
Let me show you how to use non-printing characters.
If you’re on your Home tab you’re going to see right here it looks like a backwards
P and if you point to it it says Show or Hide.
I’m just going to turn that on.
You just turn those on or off.
Notice what you’ll see here.
Every time you see this that is a paragraph marker.
It indicates the end of a paragraph.
Microsoft Word will consider this a paragraph.
It will consider this a paragraph and so on and so forth down the line.
These also represent every time you’ve hit the Enter key on the keyboard.
So if you needed to see how many blank lines were between a couple of paragraphs turn it
on and check it out.
Another neat little trick that happens.
Sometimes you will print a one page document and a second blank page comes out.
And the reason for that is notice that after my name I’ve got an Enter.
But I could have lots of these in there.
It could be I sat on the keyboard.
Who knows?
But if I have enough of those to force it to a second page you’ll get a second blank
page.
Just start deleting some of these.
You can actually just click in front of one and just start hitting Delete until you get
back up to one page.
Now the other thing you’re going to see here is you’ll see a dot between the words.
So normally if you have two spaces then it’s going to actually tell you that it’s a grammatical
error.
If you have three it doesn’t.
Now it doesn’t tell you that right after the period like in this case.
But normally if you’re typing your sentence and you see two it’ll give you a grammatical
error like that.
If I wanted to actually go ahead and any of the stuff or delete it I can.
See also here’s the Tab right here.
We talked about that’s shown by an arrow.
Now it may look like things are double spaced in this particular document and they’re
not.
Let me show you what’s going on in any new blank document when you first start typing.
I’m going to do what’s called Selecting.
I’m going to hold down Control and hit the letter A to select my entire document.
That way whatever I do next it will affect everything I have selected.
We’re going to talk a lot more about selecting a little bit later but for now Control-A will
select everything.
Now I want to show you right up here under the Paragraph grouping.
Do you see this one right here?
This is your Line Spacing.
What you don’t see is that this is set on 1.15 automatically.
So if you set it on 1 you’ll see it changes it a little bit.
That gives you single space, true single space.
The other big one I want you to notice is this.
Do you see how it says Remove Space After the Paragraph?
What happens is in Microsoft Word there is a feature that will actually add some additional
space after the Enter key and there is some there.
That's why you have the option to remove.
And by the way do you notice that when I just move my mouse over one of these choices it
shows me what it’s going to look like if I choose that choice?
I’m going to remove space after and this is actually what my document would look like.
Let me turn off these non-printing characters.
See?
So what I can actually see now is that I probably want a blank space between this line and this
line.
So I’m going to click at the end of the word Week and I’m going to hit the Enter
key to get that extra space in there.
So you do want to turn these on so you can see what you’ve done.
And notice these are called Non-Printing because they’re never going to print.
So just know that you can work with them on or off.
I usually turn them on when I want to see what I’ve done and then I’ll turn them
back off, but that’s really up to you.
And remember the line spacing.
You want it on single space and if it says Remove that means there is extra space to
remove.
So just know that.
Now we’re going to go on in a later video and talk about all the line spacing options
but I wanted you to know that for now just so that you can get your letter looking the
way you want so you can get it out.
So that’s how you work with the non-printing characters and the line spacing, the real
basic options.
What I want to do now is go ahead and wrap up this video and let’s go over to section
3 and talk about saving this.