Setting Font Attributes In Ms Word

To change the font anywhere in your document, you need to begin by making a selection. Next, click on the drop-down menu next to the currently displayed font. The list of fonts that appears is divided into three sections first we have the Theme fonts. Microsoft Word's Theme feature allows you to quickly format a document to achieve a certain look. The second section shows the fonts that you've recently used and the third section contains a list of all fonts installed on your computer.

You can select a font either by using the mouse or with the keyboard. To use the keyboard, press the down and up cursor keys. As you do so, Word provides two levels of preview: firstly each font is displayed in its own font; and, secondly, as the mouse passes over each font the highlighted text temporarily changes to that font showing you an excellent preview of what your text will look like in each font. To actually choose a font: with the mouse, simply click on the name of the font; with the keyboard, press the Enter key.

If you know exactly which font you want and you have a long list of fonts installed on your computer, you may find it quicker to type the name. All you need to do is to delete the current font name and begin typing the name of the font in question. You will not usually have to type the entire name; simply enough to distinguish the font from any others beginning with the same letters. Once the correct name is displayed, simply press the Enter key.

Microsoft Word also includes a variety of ways of changing the font size. Firstly, you can click on the drop-down menu to the right of the currently indicated size. As with the font face, when the mouse passes over each size you are given a live preview of what your text will look like at that size. You can also use the up and down cursor keys to select each size. To actually choose a particular size either click on it or press the Enter key. As well as using these preset sizes, you can also type your own size. Simply delete the current size and type the size that you want. When doing this, you may also include decimals. Press the Enter key on your keyboard to apply the size.

Another way of setting the size of your text is to use the Grow and Shrink icons. These work in conjunction with the preset sizes we saw earlier; thus, clicking the Grow button will take you from 16 to 18 to 20; while clicking Shrink will take you back to 18, 16, 14, 12 and so forth.

This technique can also be used where you have different font sizes within your selection. For example, let's say you select a 16 point heading together with 12 point body text. The first thing you will notice is that, since the selection now contains two sizes, no size is indicated in the font size box. If you now click once on the grow icon, the heading will change from 16 to 18 while the body text will change from 12 to 14.

The Grow Font and Shrink Font commands also have keyboard equivalents. To grow the font, hold down Control-Shift and type in the greater-than symbol and naturally to shrink its Control-Shift less-than. The greater-than and less-than symbols are usually located to the right of the letter "M" on your keyboard.