Paragraph Formatting

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Paragraph Formatting' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adding Automatic Lines
Want an easy way to add lines in your document? You can do it by making sure Word is using one of its AutoFormat features.

Adding Borders around Paragraphs
Want to draw attention to a particular paragraph? A great way to do it is with a border. Word allows you to easily add borders, as described in this tip. You can add a pre-defined border or a custom one; it is up to you.

Adding Borders to Paragraphs
Word includes a rich set of formatting features. Using the Format menu you can easily put any type of border you like around the paragraphs in your document.

Adding Drop-Shadows to Paragraphs
Drop shadows are a special type of border that simulates a "3D" appearance. Adding these types of borders is easy using the Borders and Shading dialog box. This tip explains how to apply the desired formatting to a paragraph.

Adding Tabs at the Beginning of a Line
Press Tab at the beginning of a line, and chances are good that Word will simply indent the paragraph rather than inserting an actual tab character. This tip explains how you can insert a real tab character, as well as how to configure Word so it doesn't indent paragraphs when you press Tab.

Adjusting Space Before
If you need to adjust the space that appears before a paragraph, there are several ways you can approach the adjustment. Here is a quick recap of those methods.

Adjusting Spacing After a Paragraph
There is no need to press Enter a second time at the end of each paragraph. Let Word take care of the spacing automatically by formatting your paragraphs. Here's how.

Aligning a Paragraph in a Macro
If you are applying formatting from within a macro, you may want to change the alignment of various paragraphs. Here's how you can do it by adjusting the Alignment property.

Aligning Borders with the Page Margins
Word allows you to add borders to the paragraphs in your document. This border normally extends into the margin areas of the document, beyond the margins observed by the text itself. This tip provides some guidance on how you can adjust paragraph formatting so you can align the borders with the text margins in the surrounding paragraphs.

Automatically Formatting an ASCII File
Import a file from a source external to Word, and you can end up with a formatting nightmare. One big step is to remove any extra hard returns in the document. The macro in this tip is very helpful in this regard.

Automatically Formatting an ASCII File with WordBasic
Use this simple WordBasic macro to help remove hard returns from inappropriate places in an ASCII file.

Blank Page Printing after Table at End of Document
When you print, do you get an extra blank page printed at the end of the document? It could be because of the final paragraph mark in the document being pushed to that blank page. This tip discusses ways you can get rid of that unwanted blank page.

Centering a Paragraph with the Keyboard
Need a quick shortcut that you can use to center your paragraph between the margins? The answer is here.

Changing Paragraph Borders
Adding borders to a paragraph is a snap. You can also modify the paragraph borders so that they are all different, if you so choose. This tip describes how to set all four sides of a paragraph border independently of each other.

Compound List Formatting
Word can help you do quite a bit of complex formatting to your lists, both bulleted and numbered. Using the steps outlined in this tip, you'll discover how easy it is to set up the formatting in a way that makes entering lists a breeze.

Controlling Widows and Orphans
Got singular lines at the bottom or top of a page? These are often referred to as widows and orphans, and Word allows you to make sure that they don't occur in your documents. Here's how to format your paragraphs to account for them.

Copying Paragraph Formatting
Long-time Word users know that formatting for a paragraph is "contained" in the paragraph mark at the end of the paragraph. Copy this paragraph mark, and you copy the formatting. This tip explains how and why this works.

Copying Paragraph Formatting with the Mouse
One of the most helpful formatting tools in Word is the Format Painter. You can use it to copy formatting from one paragraph to another, without letting go of the mouse. This tip describes how to use the tool.

Creating a Hanging Indent
One of the more common formatting tasks for paragraphs is to create hanging indents. This tip explains what they are and shows how easy it is to create them in Word.

Cut and Paste Formatting
Copy a paragraph from one document to another, and the results may be different than what you expect. The reason for this may not be clear, but is understandable if you know how Word treats styles. This tip explains the underlying principles that affect such document-to-document paragraph copies.

Decreasing a Paragraph's Indent
When formatting your document, you often have need to indent paragraphs. If you later want to decrease the indent used on some paragraphs, you can use the shortcuts provided in this tip.

Deleting Borders
Borders around a paragraph can be a nice touch, but you may want to remove those borders at some time. You can do so quite easily by following the information in this tip.

Double Indenting
Indenting a paragraph is easy in Word. In fact, the program provides shortcut keys that make it a snap. Indenting from both the left and right margins is not as easy, but you can make it easy by using the techniques described in this tip.

Double-Spacing Your Document
Need to produce a quick double-spaced printout of your document? You can do it by using the simple steps in this tip.

Forcing a Page Break Before a Paragraph
There are times that you just want to begin a paragraph (perhaps a heading) at the top of a new page. Word allows you to format a paragraph so that this will always occur. Here's how.

Full Justification in Word 2007
Word has historically allowed you to specify how it should handle justification of text on a line. This feature is not easy to find in Word 2007, unless you know exactly where to look. This tip provides the roadmap.

Getting Rid of Choppiness in Justified Text
Word allows you to format your text so it is justified, with each line of a paragraph extending from the left margin all the way to the right. At times this can cause your text to appear "choppy," with too much space between some characters on the line. This tip explains how you can minimize or reduce that choppiness completely.

Graphics and Line Height
If the inline graphics in your document appear "chopped off," it could be directly related to the formatting within the paragraph containing the graphic. This tip explains why this chopping happens and how you can adjust formatting so that the entire graphic shows up.

Hanging Indent Shortcut
You can use the menus or the ribbon to adjust the indent applied to a paragraph. If you want to format a hanging indent, Word provides a handy keyboard shortcut you can use.

Hanging Indents in Wrapped Text
If you use hanging indents for some of your paragraphs, you may wonder why they don't look right when they wrap on the right side of a text box or graphic. Here's the reason and what you can do to correct the formatting.

Indent and Justify Command
WordPerfect users are familiar with the F4 command, which indents and justifies a paragraph. Word does not have an equivalent single-key command, but it has commands that are just as easy to use and even some tools that are more powerful when trying to do this type of formatting.

Indenting a Paragraph to the Next Tab Stop
Need to indent a paragraph from the left margin? It's easy to do when you use the Indent tool, as described in this tip.

Keep with Previous
Word allows you to format a paragraph so that it is on the same page as whatever paragraph follows it. You may want, however, for a paragraph to be on the same page as the one that precedes it. Here's how to achieve that effect.

Keeping Paragraphs on the Same Page
Don't want your paragraphs to flow from one page to another? Word provides a formatting setting that forces individual paragraphs to stay on a single page rather than splitting across a page boundary.

Keeping Part of a Paragraph with the Next Block of Text
If you are a WordPerfect user, you may be very familiar with the block-protect feature, and wonder if there is a similar tool in Word. There isn't, but as this tip explains, there are ways you can work around what may appear to be a shortcoming in Word.

Making All Lines in a Paragraph the Same Height
When Word figures out how to display a paragraph, it normally calculates line height based on the largest character in a particular line. This can lead to some choppiness in paragraphs. If you want to remove the choppiness, use the Line Spacing setting in the Paragraph dialog box, as described in this tip.

No Space Before at the Top of a Page
One of the ways you can format paragraph styles is to specify how much space should be added before the paragraph. How Word treats that paragraph when it appears at the top of a page depends on several factors. You can control Word's behavior by using the information in this tip.

Paragraph Formatting Shortcuts
Paragraphs are one of the elemental building blocks in a Word document. Formatting those paragraphs is easy to do if you commit just a few shortcuts to memory.

Preventing Straggling Heads
Undoubtedly you will want to format your document so that headings stay with the paragraph that follows the heading. Here's how to format your headings so Word takes care of this automatically.

Put Your Space Before or After?
Word allows you to add additional space both before and after a paragraph. The way in which you add the space affects the layout of your document. The easiest way to get the desired spacing result is to be consistent in how you add space.

Quickly Adjusting Paragraph Spacing
Word allows you to easily adjust the amount of white space before and after a paragraph. Rather than continually displaying the Paragraph dialog box, you may want to use the macros in this tip to make short work of adding the desired space.

Removing Space Before Paragraphs
Want to quickly format a paragraph to remove any extra space before it? Word includes a tool that can make this change a snap.

Resetting Paragraph Formatting
Tired of the formatting used in a paragraph? One way to "start over" is to make sure that the formatting is reset to its default conditions. Here's how to do the reset both manually and in a macro.

Retaining Explicit Formatting after Applying Styles
If you apply paragraph styles to paragraphs, that application may result in the unwanted removal of some explicit formatting, such as italics or bold. This tip presents a technique that allows you to easily retain the explicit formatting you want to keep.

Reversing Type
Most text appears black on white, not white on black. If you want to change this so that your type is reversed, here's a quick way to do it.

Searching for Paragraph Formatting
You can use the Find and Replace capabilities of Word to search for a wide variety of information. One thing you can look for is paragraph formatting, as described in this tip.

Selecting Default Paragraph Formatting
You can easily and freely apply all sorts of formatting to a paragraph. When you want to remove all that explicit formatting, just one little shortcut key is all that is needed to do the trick.

Setting a Negative Paragraph Indent
Word allows you to format a paragraph so that it extends into the left margin of the document. This is done by setting a negative indent for the paragraph.

Stepping Through Head Formats
You can use the shortcuts described in this tip to quickly change the heading levels of the headings in your document. You'll easily get the exact heading level you need.

Stubborn Phantom Paragraphs
When converting documents from WordPerfect to Word, you may run into a problem with what the conversion produces. If you have some characters that cause problems in the resulting document, you'll appreciate the discussion in this tip.

Triple-Spacing Your Document
Print your document with lots of space between each line—triple space it! Here's some quick and easy steps for getting the spacing you want without affecting your document in a lasting manner.

Turning Off Paragraph Hyphenation
Need to make sure that a particular paragraph never has any hyphenated words in it? You can make sure that Word won't automatically add any hyphens by following the easy steps in this tip.

Understanding At Least Line Spacing
Line spacing is used to control how close lines are to each other within a paragraph. Word allows you to specify several types of line spacing. Here's an explanation of a way you can set the minimum line spacing for a paragraph.

Understanding Auto Line Spacing
The most common form of line spacing is Auto line spacing. Do you know what it means?

Understanding How Word Stores Paragraph Formatting
Believe it or not, if you know how Word stores paragraph formatting, it can help you in your editing.

Understanding Justification
Paragraphs can be aligned in four different ways. This tip examines those alignment methods.

Understanding Leading
Those with a publishing, typographic, or design background may understand what leading is, but not how to adjust the setting within Word. It's not that hard, if you know where to look.

Understanding Paragraph Alignment
One of the most basic ways to align paragraphs is to set the alignment used for the text in the paragraph. Word provides four different ways to align text, as discussed in this tip.

Using Dot Leaders in a Paragraph
Adding dot leaders to your text is easy through the application of tab stops. This tip explains the steps you need to follow to add those dot leaders to your paragraphs.

Using Shading to Highlight Information
Word allows you to shade entire paragraphs or simple selections of text. This is a great way to highlight information on the printed page, as described in this tip.

Vertical Alignment of Sections
Using one of the page setup options in Word, you can specify that the paragraphs within the section be vertically aligned a certain way on the page. This tip illustrates how you can set up this type of formatting.