Character Formatting

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

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

Accurate Font Sizes
Word provides you with complete control over the size of the characters in your document. This tip explains how font sizing works, and shows how easy it is to specify very precise font sizes for your text.

Adding a Box Around Selected Text
You can use a special field to put a box around text within a paragraph.

Adding a Font Menu
You can customize Word so it includes a Fonts menu.

Adding a Little Color
The normal way to change the color of selected text is through the use of the Font Color tool. If you have to use the same color over and over again, there is a different way—you can create your own color tool as described in this tip.

Adjusting Small Caps Text
If you use small caps text in a document, you know that there are several steps involved in properly formatting the text. These steps can be combined into a single macro that makes adjusting the text easier than ever before.

Adjusting Small Caps Text with WordBasic
Make your small caps text look its best with this handy WordBasic macro.

Animating Your Text
Want to make your text shimmer and dance on the screen? Depending on your version of Word you can easily add snazzy animations to your text.

Applying Bold Italics
Applying bold and italics formatting to text is easy in Word. If you want to apply bold and italics simultaneously, you can create a tool to handle this formatting easily.

Applying Formatting to Words
In Word 2000 or later versions, Word allows you to apply character formatting to entire words, without the need to first select the words. This is a great time-saving feature, provided you have Word configured properly to enable this type of formatting.

Applying the All Caps Format
Want your text to always appear in upper-case, regardless of how you type it? Word allows you to add formatting to your text that enforces this desire. Discover, in this tip, how to set the All Caps format for a selection of text.

Automatically Using Smart Quotes
As a way to make your documents look more professional, Word can utilize "smart quotes" for both quote marks and apostrophes. Here's what that term actually means and how to control the capability in Word.

Changing Character Color
Need to easily change the color of some selected text? A quick way to do it is with a custom macro that sets just the hue that you want. This tip describes such a macro and explains how to modify it for any color desired.

Changing Character Color with WordBasic
Presents a handy little WordBasic macro that changes the color of the selected text. (Came in real handy before Word provided a Font Color tool.)

Changing Font Size Using a Shortcut Key
When you need to change the font size of a text selection, using the shortcut described in this tip is a great technique. However, what the shortcut does depends on what you have displayed on your screen.

Changing Kerning
When you need to adjust the space Word uses between characters, you need to adjust what is called "kerning." This tip explains how you can make the adjustment you need.

Changing Strikethrough Lines
When you apply the strikethrough attribute to text, a single line appears horizontally through the text. If you want to change the appearance of that line, your options are very limited. This tip explains why this is the case and discusses a simple workaround.

Changing Text Case
You can use the built-in Word shortcut to change the case of a text selection. You may have quite a few items in a document that need to be changed, however. In that case, you'll love the macro presented in this tip.

Changing Text Case with WordBasic
Learn a shortcut for changing the case of your text, as well as a WordBasic macro for changing multiple instances in a document.

Changing Text Color
How to create an icon on a toolbar to automatically add a color to your text.

Changing the Formatting of All Instances of a Word
Need to find all the instances of a particular word and change the formatting of those instances? It's easy to do using the regular Find and Replace capabilities of the program.

Complex Compound Formatting
Sometimes it can seem that the formatting needs of your document can easily outstrip the capabilities of Word. This is not always the case, however. Sometimes you just need to take a step back and figure out how to best get the look you need.

Controlling the Bold Text Attribute
When processing a document in a macro, you may need to make some of your text bold. It's easy to do using the Bold attribute, as described in this tip.

Controlling the Hidden Text Attribute
Want your macro to change the Hidden attribute for some text in your document? It's easier to change than you might think.

Copying Character Formatting
The Format Painter is a handy tool for copying formatting from one text selection to another. This tip provides a quick recap of how to use this tool.

Creating a Drop Cap
Drop caps can be a nice finishing touch for some types of documents. Word allows you to create three types of drop caps, and to adjust how those drop caps appear.

Creating Custom Underlines
Word provides a wide variety of underlines that you can apply to text. What happens if you want to create a custom underline, however? This tip explores some of the options that are available to you.

Creating Thin Spaces
Thin spaces are a typographic device that allows you add a bit of space between elements of a document. There are no thin spaces available in Word (as separate characters), but you can create the same effect produced by thin spaces by using the ideas presented in this tip.

Embossing Text
Word can make your text look as if it has been embossed on the page.

Fonts Don't Work in Word on New System
When you upgrade from a system with an older version of Word to a system that has a newer version, your fonts may not work in the same way as they did on your old system. The solution may lie not within Word, but in the operating system. This tip examines some ways you can deal with the problem.

Fonts in the Font Drop-Down List
The Fonts drop-down list is one of the tools on the Formatting toolbar. When you select fonts from the list, they are moved to the MRU at the top of the list. This tip describes how to turn the Fonts list MRU on and off.

Formatted Merging
When you use the mail-merge capabilities of Word, the information merged takes on the formatting of your source document, not your data source. If you want to apply different formatting to some of the information you merge, you'll need to use the technique illustrated in this tip.

Icon-based Fonts
How to paste toolbar images into a Word document.

Intelligent Title Case
A common editorial need is to change the capitalization used on different words in a selection of text. Word provides a rudimentary way to adjust the case of the text, but you may want a more intelligent way of changing it.

Letters Turn into Squares
Imagine that you are typing away, and all of a sudden your beautiful prose turns into a series of small rectangles that are worthless. If you run into this problem, there are a few things you should check out.

Making Text Bold
You probably already know that there are a number of ways you can make text bold in Word. Here's a quick discussion of two ways, one of which is a surprising adaption from the online world.

Overlining Characters
Want to add an overline above a character or two in your document? There are several ways you can try, as described in this tip.

Placing Numbers Over Other Numbers
Sometimes you need to create text that isn't as "linear" as you might expect. For instance, you may need to put some text over the top of other text, almost like a fraction (but without the fraction line). This tip examines a few ways that you can position text in this over-and-under manner.

Printing Hidden Text
One of the formatting attributes you can add to text is to make it "hidden," which means you can control whether it is displayed or printed. This tip explains how you can control the printing of hidden text, independent of whether it is displayed or not.

Printing without Headings
Want some quick and handy ways to not print certain information in your documents, such as headings? This tip outlines a couple of things you can do to banish the unwanted text, at least from the printout.

Protecting Hidden Text
Formatting some of your text as hidden can be a great help when you need to keep some things from being viewed or printed. The hidden text can be easily unhidden by anyone, however. Here's how to get rid of it so that it can't be uncovered.

Quickly Decreasing Point Size
A shortcut for decreasing the point size of a font.

Quickly Displaying the Font Dialog Box
Want to quickly format some text in your document? Select, right-click, and make a selection, and you can get to the heart of character formatting. This tip shows how easy it is!

Quickly Increasing Point Size
Need to increase the point size of some text in a hurry? You can do it using the Ctrl+] shortcut, as described in this tip.

Replacing Quoted Text with Italics
In many documents it is preferable to have special terms formatted as italics when they are first used. Some people, however, often place quote marks around such text. This tip provides a handy macro that can step through a document and make sure that any text surrounded by quote marks is converted to italics text.

Replacing Quoted Text with Italics with WordBasic
Got a document where lots of quoted text appears? Want to change all that quoted text to italics? This WordBasic macro makes short work of the task.

Resetting Default Character Formatting
Sometimes you want to remove all the formatting from a text selection. This tip explains a fast and easy way to remove the formatting and return the text to whatever format is possessed by the underlying style.

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.

Scaling Characters
Need to adjust how your characters look horizontally? Word provides an easy way you can scale the horizontal appearance of your text without affecting the height. Here's how to do it.

Searching for Character Formatting
Word doesn't limit you to searching only for text. You can also, among other things, search for text formatted in a specific manner. This tip explains how you can easily perform such a search.

Smushing Text Together
Word gives you control over how your text appears on the page. This includes adjusting how close letters are to each other horizontally. Here's how to make the adjustment.

Stepping Through Common Point Sizes
A shortcut for, well, stepping through common point sizes.

Strikethrough Shortcut Key
One common type of formatting is strikethrough, which is normally applied from the Font dialog box. There is no built-in keyboard shortcut for the format, but you can make your own following the advice in this tip.

Superscript and Subscript at the Same Place
Do you want a superscript and subscript character to appear directly above each other without using the Equation Editor? There are multiple ways you can accomplish this task, and this tip examines all of those ways.

Text Prints as Bold, but Displays as Regular
What to do when text looks one way on the screen but prints a different way? This tip provides several different approaches you can use to correct the disparity.

Toggling Animation
Turning text animation on and off.

Underlining Section References Automatically
If you have a document that has some sort of keyword within it (such as "Section") you may want to automatically format that keyword in some way. This tip addresses just such a situation, and shows how you can apply the formatting you need.

Underlining Tabs In Numbered Lists
When Word creates an automatically numbered list, it removes some of your formatting flexibility. One thing you can't seem to format is the space after the number and the period and before the start of your text. There are ways around this dilemma, however.

Understanding Font Styles
Fonts, by default, come with one or more styles that define variations of how that font is displayed in your document. Understanding font styles enhances the way in which you can format your text.

Understanding Monospace Fonts
Monospace fonts allow you to easily achieve a specific "look" with your text or to line up information in a certain way. This tip explains what makes monospace fonts, well, "mono."

Understanding Underlines
Part of the formatting you can add to your text is underlining. That simple word (underlining) represents quite a few different types of formats in Word, however. This tip discusses all the different types of underlines you can use.

Unwanted Numbering on Pasted Tables
When you copy information and then paste it into your document, you may get some things pasted that you didn't count on. There are a couple of things you can try to get rid of these unwanted artifacts of pasting, as described in this tip.

Using Non-Printing Notes
If you have some notes you want added in the text of a document, just type them in and then format them as Hidden text. This tip explains how you can use Hidden text to your benefit with notes of your own making.

Using Very Large Font Sizes
You can format your text to use some very, very large font sizes. The results you see from formatting with large fonts depend on the typeface used. This tip discusses some of the considerations to keep in mind.