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CAN Formatting Tips
Table of Contents- How to Quickly Format CANS in Word 2010, PC
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 1
1. An Introduction to Styles .......................................................................................................................... 1
Default Styles in Word 2010 ..................................................................................................................... 1
Editing Styles in Word 2010 ...................................................................................................................... 2
(a) Changing Advanced Font Settings ................................................................................................... 3
(b) Paragraph Settings .......................................................................................................................... 5
(c) Border Settings................................................................................................................................. 6
(d) Creating Shortcut Keys .................................................................................................................... 7
2. Creating a Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... 8
Troubleshooting ........................................................................................................................................ 9
1. An Introduction to Styles Styles in Word allow you to quickly and consistently format your document. Also, the correct use of
styles will allow you to quickly generate a table of contents, which can be a useful study tool and a quick
reference during your exam.
Default Styles in Word 2010 There are a number of default styles in Word. These include Headings, the “Normal” style, the “Title”
style and so on. This document uses the standard heading styles.
Thankfully, Word 2010 has made these styles easy to view. You can see which style you are currently
using on the “Home” tab, in the Styles pane.
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On a Mac, Styles can be found by clicking View
and selecting Formatting Palette. A window will
open up similar to .
Headings are found under Styles.
Editing Styles in Word 2010 Styles are highly customizable. For instance, you can change the spacing between paragraphs, the
spacing between letters, and the font.
For this example, we will change the style for “Heading 1”. Start by right-clicking on the style name
“Heading 1”.
A menu box will appear (pictured above). Scroll to “Modify…” and left-click.
The “Modify Style” dialogue box will open.
On a Mac this box is opened by clicking the ¶ symbol to the right of the heading and then clicking
Modify.
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There are plenty of advanced things that you can do here to customize the style; however, for the
purposes of CANing, only a few features are needed. We’ll look at:
(a) Changing advanced FONT characteristics
(b) Changing the PARAGRAPH settings
(c) Creating SHORTCUT KEYS
(a) Changing Advanced Font Settings
In the “Modify Style” dialogue box, left-click on the Format button in the bottom left-hand corner. The
Format menu will appear. Select “Font”
A new dialogue box will open.
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The “Font” tab will allow you to change the font, the font style, the sizing, colour, and so on. For
example, I like to use “Small caps” to distinguish some of my headings. You are probably already familiar
with these settings, though.
Advanced settings, however, are also available. Click on the “Advanced” tab.
Advanced settings allow you to adjust the spacing and scale of individual font characters. The Spacing
option will allow you to compress your text. This is a very useful feature for reducing the overall length
of your CAN. Reduce the font spacing by 0.3 points by clicking the down arrow.
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The spacing dialogue box will change to “Condensed” when you reduce the spacing.
*NOTE: reducing the spacing between letters for the “Normal” font will yield the best results.
Select OK to save your settings. You will return to the main “Modify Style” dialogue box.
(b) Paragraph Settings
In the Format menu box, click on Paragraph.
The Paragraph dialogue box will open.
Rather than showing you what these things do, let’s have a look at what the useful settings are:
Alignment: can be Left, Center, Right, or Justified. Justified means that Word will space out your
text to consistently fill an entire line, except for the last line of a paragraph.
Outline Level: a word caution against changing the default settings here - this will affect the
view in Outline mode, as well as the table of contents (TOC) settings. This is only really useful if
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you are creating a custom heading, such as “CAN Heading 1.” This is unnecessary for basic
formatting.
Indentation: this determines where your line of text starts. If you haven’t seen this dialogue box
before, it is really no different than adjusting the little chevrons on the ruler. However, when
you change the settings here, every time you use Heading 1, it will indent by the same amount
(left side) or shorten your line by the same amount (right side).
Spacing: this is a very useful setting. Spacing will allow you control how much space is between
different styles. For example, if you don’t already use headings, you probably add an extra line
using the “Enter” key to create space between paragraphs. Spacing does that for you, and will
allow you to create smaller spaces between paragraphs than a full return. There is an example
included below that shows you how different paragraph spacing works:
*NOTE: I have turned on the paragraph marks so you can see where each line ends. The
indicates the end of a paragraph; Word assumes you have ended a paragraph after you have
pressed “Enter”. You can change the style for each individual paragraph, as shown above.
In the example above, Heading 1 has 24 pts of space above the line. There is no spacing
between the Heading 1 paragraph and the Normal paragraph. However, because the Normal
style has 1.15 times line spacing, each line of normal text will be separated by some white space.
This is similar to what you do when you need to double-space a document.
(c) Border Settings
In the Format menu box, click on Border.
A dialogue box will open.
24 points
20 points
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This will allow you to create a border around your heading.
Selecting the Shading tab will allow you to create a coloured background to you heading.
(d) Creating Shortcut Keys
A shortcut key is probably the most useful tool for quick and painless formatting. Once you have all your
styles created, a shortcut key will allow you to quickly “apply” the formatting with a few keystrokes.
For example, suppose you have a style for bullets called “Bullet 1”. To assign a new shortcut key, open
the “Modify Style” dialog box, click on Format, and this time, select Shortcut Key
A new dialog box opens.
Press a combination of keys to create a shortcut key. I generally use ALT+[a letter],[a number], mainly
because ALT combinations are not automatically assigned by Word. If a combination is assigned to
another shortcut, it will show up under Currently Assigned To.
Click Assign to assign the shortcut key.
Note: for common “pre-assigned” shortcut keys in Word, see Appendix A.
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Shortcut keys can be assigned to any style, including the Normal style and Headings. An example of
possible shortcut keys is listed in the table below:
Style Shortcut Key
Heading 1 ALT+H,1
Heading 2 ALT+H,2
Heading 3 ALT+H,3
Heading 4 ALT+H,4
Normal ALT+N,N
Bullet 1* ALT+B,1
Bullet 2* ALT+B,2
2. Creating a Table of Contents One of the many advantages of using styles in your documents is that you can quickly create a table of
contents. A table of contents is particularly useful if you create very long CANs, but requires that you
assign Headings throughout the document.
To create a table of contents, click on the “References” tab in Word 2010 or use the “Insert” menu in
Word 2003. Click on Table of Contents
A list of options opens. Scroll down and select Insert Table of Contents. A dialog box will open.
The default settings will create a table of contents with page numbers for Headings 1 through 3. You can
add Headings 4 through 9 by changing the Show Levels number. Level 1 corresponds with Heading 1,
Level 2 corresponds with Heading 2, and so on.
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Click OK. You now have a table of contents in your document.
Troubleshooting Some common problems can arise with tables of contents.
(1) The table of contents does not contain any content – go back and check to make sure you have
assigned headings. If you have no headings in your document, Word cannot create your table of
contents.
(2) You cannot easily format the table of contents – this problem arises because Word creates a
“field” of hyperlinked text. Instead, you need to format the table of contents from the Table of
Contents dialog box. Click Modify, and adjust the font and paragraph settings there.
Appendix A: Word Shortcut Keys
Sourced from <http://www.computerhope.com/shortcut/word.htm>
Shortcut Key Action
Ctrl + 0 Adds or removes 6pts of spacing before a paragraph.
Ctrl + A Select all contents of the page.
Ctrl + B Bold highlighted selection.
Ctrl + C Copy selected text.
Ctrl + D Open the font preferences window.
Ctrl + E Aligns the line or selected text to the center of the screen.
Ctrl + F Open find box.
Ctrl + I Italic highlighted selection.
Ctrl + J Aligns the selected text or line to justify the screen.
Ctrl + K Insert link.
Ctrl + L Aligns the line or selected text to the left of the screen.
Ctrl + M Indent the paragraph.
Ctrl + P Open the print window.
Ctrl + R Aligns the line or selected text to the right of the screen.
Ctrl + T Create a hanging indent.
Ctrl + U Underline highlighted selection.
Ctrl + V Paste.
Ctrl + X Cut selected text.
Ctrl + Y Redo the last action performed.
Ctrl + Z Undo last action.
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Shortcut Key Action
Ctrl + Shift + L Quickly create a bullet point.
Ctrl + Shift + F Change the font.
Ctrl + Shift + > Increase selected font +1pts up to 12pt and then increases font +2pts.
Ctrl + ] Increase selected font +1pts.
Ctrl + Shift + < Decrease selected font -1pts if 12pt or lower, if above 12 decreases font by +2pt.
Ctrl + [ Decrease selected font -1pts.
Ctrl + / + c Insert a cent sign (¢).
Ctrl + ' + <char>
Insert a character with an accent (grave) mark, where <char> is the character you want. For example, if you wanted an accented è you would use Ctrl + ' + e as your shortcut key. To reverse the accent mark use the opposite accent mark, often on the tilde key.
Ctrl + Shift + * View or hide non printing characters.
Ctrl + <left arrow> Moves one word to the left.
Ctrl + <right arrow>
Moves one word to the right.
Ctrl + <up arrow> Moves to the beginning of the line or paragraph.
Ctrl + <down arrow>
Moves to the end of the paragraph.
Ctrl + Del Deletes word to right of cursor.
Ctrl + Backspace Deletes word to left of cursor.
Ctrl + End Moves the cursor to the end of the document.
Ctrl + Home Moves the cursor to the beginning of the document.
Ctrl + Spacebar Reset highlighted text to the default font.
Ctrl + 1 Single-space lines.
Ctrl + 2 Double-space lines.
Ctrl + 5 1.5-line spacing.
Ctrl + Alt + 1 Changes text to heading 1.
Ctrl + Alt + 2 Changes text to heading 2.
Ctrl + Alt + 3 Changes text to heading 3.
Alt + Ctrl + F2 Open new document.
Ctrl + F1 Open the Task Pane.
Ctrl + F2 Display the print preview.
Ctrl + Shift + > Increases the highlighted text size by one.
Ctrl + Shift + < Decreases the highlighted text size by one.
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Shortcut Key Action
Ctrl + Shift + F6 Opens to another open Microsoft Word document.
Ctrl + Shift + F12 Prints the document.
F1 Open Help.
F4 Repeat the last action performed (Word 2000+)
F5 Open the find, replace, and go to window in Microsoft Word.
F7 Spellcheck and grammar check selected text or document.
F12 Save as.
Shift + F3 Change the text in Microsoft Word from uppercase to lowercase or a capital letter at the beginning of every word.
Shift + F7 Runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted.
Shift + F12 Save.
Shift + Enter Create a soft break instead of a new paragraph.
Shift + Insert Paste.
Shift + Alt + D Insert the current date.
Shift + Alt + T Insert the current time.