Hi there. It’s Cindy. We are down to module 3 and this is the module where we’re going
to talk about Character Formatting. Basically what this means is that when you
have letters or numbers you’ll want to change the original way that they look. So text,
for example, is normally black and it’s a certain size and a certain font. You’ll
want to change those and that’s called Formatting. You’re going to see that when we get to
module 4 that’s where we’ll talk about formatting that paragraphs take on. But for
now we’re going to talk about character formatting.
Now this is section 1 and I want to start this module with talking to you a little bit
about the AutoCorrect feature and some of the options available with it. So let me go
ahead and flip over to a blank document and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.
There are certain things that are part of what we call the AutoCorrect feature and let
me show you what a few of those things are. One of the most common things is that there
are certain words that if you misspell them it will spell them correctly for you. The
word The is a great example. If I spell it T-E-H and watch when I hit the Spacebar it
spells it correctly for me. Can is another one. A-C-N. If I spell it that way it’ll
spell it correctly. That’s because when I show you the AutoCorrect feature in a few
minutes you’ll see that if it’s a commonly misspelled word there’s a list of those
in here and if it’s in that list it’ll change it for you.
Here’s a couple of other things. Fractions. If I type ½, for example, notice how when
I space it looks like ½ or ¼. Fractions are another part of AutoCorrect. How about
an ordinal? Do you know what an ordinal is? An ordinal is the word 1st, like this. When
you space the S-T becomes superscript is what they call that. 2nd, that’s another good
example. Also hyperlinks. So if you typed any email address or any website what’ll
happen is once you get that email address or the website types and you space it’ll
become a hyperlink automatically. That means that I can take my mouse and see how when
I point to the word it says Control-Click to follow the link. That means if I hold the
Control key and I click I’ll actually go to that particular website because it’s
a hyperlink. So I’m going to go ahead and delete some
of this stuff. By the way, Control and the letter A will select everything and then I’ll
just hit Delete on the keyboard. We’re going to be looking at selecting text in the next
section. So just know for now Control-A selects everything.
Here’s some other things that are part of AutoCorrect. If I type three dashes from my
keyboard like this and I hit the Enter key notice it gives me a straight line all the
way across. So if I need several of those I can do that several different times and
I have several lines. And what’s really cool about this is you can type on these lines.
See that? Otherwise if you had types the dash like a lot of people do, the dashes just move
over and it’s a big mess. So I’m going to go ahead and select all that and delete
it. And here’s how you type bold lines. You’re going to do underscores. Hold Shift,
hit three dashes, let go of Shift, and Enter. And now you have a bold line.
Now there are some other lines you can put in here as well. If you look at the numbers
across the top of your keyboard all the symbols aren’t going to work but a lot of them will.
So like if I’m holding Shift and hitting the pound symbol, which is over the number
three, and I hit the Enter key notice I get this particular line or border as it’s called.
Another one are the stars. If I’m holding Shift and the 8 has a star above it, if I
do three of them notice I’m going to get this particular one. So that’s kind of cool
how that works. You can just have some really just neat effects within your document. Now
let me go ahead and delete all of this. I want to take you in and show you where the
AutoCorrect features are and how you can make use of some of this.
If you click on the File tab and go down to Options. Under the Proofing on the left you’re
going to see AutoCorrect Options right here. Now when I click on this what you’re going
to notice is that here is some things that are checked automatically. That means Word
will do these things automatically for you. For example, I am famous for typing two capital
letters at the beginning of a word. Microsoft Word will make the second letter lowercase.
Also it will capitalize the first letter of a sentence for you. And we talked about that
way back in module 1. Both of these will have exceptions and that’s what this is. So what
you’ll see under Exceptions are this is a whole list of words you can type with a
period and a space and the next word will not get a capital letter. If you needed to
add one you would type it here and hit the word Add. Also the tab that says Initial Caps.
There are some times words you want to type that have two capital letters at the beginning,
like IDs is a prime example. But if you find one you want to add type it here and hit Add.
Okay. You’ll also see that when we start working with tables in a later module it will
capitalize the first letter of anything in a table cell. Days of the week automatically
get a capital letter and also notice Correct accidental uses of the Caps Lock key. If you’ve
got the Caps Lock key turned off it’ll flip it for you.
Down at the bottom it looks like a list of symbols. You’ve probably seen people type
the smiley faces in emails and things. This is how they type it and then on the right
is how it appears. But if you keep coming down the list you can see it’s a list of
commonly misspelled words. The misspellings on the left, the correct spelling on the right.
So if you type any word this way it will appear the way you see it on the right.
Here’s a couple of ways you can make really good use of this feature. You may have some
words that you consistently misspell wrong and you spell it wrong the same way every
time. Go ahead and type in your misspelling on the left and your correct spelling on the
right. You can also do things like this. If you have to type your name a lot at the bottom
of a letter put in your initials. Let’s say your initials are S-H. Over here type
out your full name just like you want it to appear. And so you’ll hit Add. Don’t get
too hung up on these initials. You don’t need periods, capital letters, any of that
stuff. So I’m going to click OK all the way out and show you that when I type S-H
and I space it puts in the whole name. So that’s a great way to use the AutoCorrect
feature. I’m going to go back to File and click on
Options again and when I go to Proofing and back to AutoCorrect notice that if I want
to take my initials out I’m just going to type it on the left and it will appear in
the list here and I can just hit Delete this way. So that’s a great way to go ahead and
make use of that AutoCorrect feature. Now I wanted to show you a couple of other
quick things. Notice this AutoFormat As You Type. A couple of things I mentioned to you
when we were typing in that blank document. I had mentioned the fractions. We had typed
½, ¼. I didn’t mention this top one. What Straight Quotes means is when you type quotation
marks they have straight lines versus smart quotes have little curly-cues on the end.
Bold and Internet with real formatting. That one is not on here and you may not ever use
it but if you wanted a word to be bold automatically you just type a star, whatever the word is
and a star and that word will be bold. Here’s your Internet and network pass with hyperlinks.
That’s when I showed you how to type in the website and it would automatically make
it a hyperlink. Here’s your Ordinals we talked about. And I was showing you also those
dashes that would give you the straight lines. That’s this one. If you happen to try some
of those things I talked about and they don’t work for some reason check and see if they’re
turned on in here. That’s really the big things I wanted to
tell you real quick about AutoCorrect. I’m going to go ahead and click OK there. Just
know you have AutoCorrect as an option. You’ll see a lot of them happen automatically. And
then I want to take you over now to section 2 and really start talking about selecting
text.