Contents

1. Introduction 2

2. The basics 2

3. Typing Text 3

4. Select, cut, copy and paste 4

5. Correcting text 6

6. Formatting text 7

7. Save and retrieve a document 8

8. Using the Header and Footer 10

9. References 11

10. Next steps 12

About this Document

Words in bold Will need to be typed or chosen from a menu

or window

Small capitals – e.g. ALT Indicate keys that you press

Bulleted lists Are guidelines on how to perform a task

Press KEY1 + KEY2 Press both keys together

Press KEY1, KEY2 Press each key consecutively

Choose Insert - Picture

Show menu commands – in this case, choose

the option Picture from the Insert menu at the

top of the screen

Beginner

Writing an Essay with Word 2007

Introduction

This document covers the basic techniques necessary in Microsoft Word to write a simple

essay. It has some advice on typing and using the keyboard for complete beginners, and

thereafter reference information on the functions necessary to layout a document and

enter references.

Prerequisites

This document assumes that you are familiar with the use of a computer keyboard and

mouse and have a working knowledge of Microsoft Windows

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1. Introduction

1.1 Opening Word

Birkbeck‟s computers have Word 2007 installed on them. To start the

program, click on

Start

Programs

Microsoft Office

Word 2007

1.2 Terminology used

The Cursor is the flashing bar on the screen that marks where text will

appear when you type. Moving the cursor, by using the arrow keys or

clicking the mouse button, allows you to insert text in the middle of a

sentence.

Selected text is text you have marked on the screen so as to carry out a

function on it, for instance, deleting it, cutting or making it bold.

The mini toolbar appears when text is selected, and is a quick way to

apply different formatting to it.

Formatting means changing the appearance of text – making it larger, or

in a different font.

A Ribbon is the toolbar at the top of the screen, containing icons on

which you click to access different functions.

Within the Ribbons, different tools are contained within toolgroups,

whose name appears below the group.

2. The basics

Objectives A checklist of the essentials for word processing

2.1 Essentials

A few rules and techniques that you may know already;

Don‟t press return at the end of every line – allow text to flow,

Word will automatically wrap it around at the end of the line

Use page breaks to jump to a new page (rather than pressing

return) – Insert – Page Break

Use Word‟s page numbers to label pages where needed (Insert –

Page Number)

After working through this document you will also know how to use

Keyboard

Line spacing

Footnotes

Headers and footers

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3. Typing Text

3.1 The keyboard

This guide cannot teach you to type, but some pointers on keyboard use

are below.

Keyboard layout

Enter key Note that you should only press this key to end a paragraph,

not at the end of every line. The computer will automatically

move text onto the next line once you reach the end.

Shift keys The two shift keys allow you to enter capital letters, and to

type the symbols on the top half of keys, e.g. the ! on the

number 1 key, or ? on top of the /.

Ctrl keys The two ctrl keys are used for keyboard shortcuts (e.g. hold

ctrl and press s to save your work).

Typing

Whatever you type will appear wherever the cursor (a flashing vertical line)

is positioned within the document. Move the cursor by using the arrow

keys or by moving the mouse and clicking.

Practice is the most important thing, and you will become quicker over

time. However, if you have the time to practice the correct hand position

you may find you can become an accomplished typist. The website

http://www.sense-lang.org/typing/ offers free typing lessons.

Shift: press and

hold either key

for upper case

letters

Deletes letters

to the right

Deletes letters

to the left

Tab: Moves

cursor along,

or into the

next box (e.g.

from username

to password

box)

Enter: end paragraph. Also

used to confirm – press

instead of clicking OK

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4. Select, cut, copy and paste

Objectives To learn some essential techniques and apply them to rearrange

text within your document

4.1 Select text

“Selecting” text means marking it on screen. Any text that is selected

may then have another action applied to it, allowing you to cut that text

out and move it around your document, make it bold or italicised or

delete it.

You may select text with either the keyboard or the mouse. There is one

important difference – if you use the keyboard, Word will assume you

are minimising use of the mouse and therefore will not show the mini

toolbar (which requires use of the mouse). Try selecting with the mouse

at first but if you find you do not need the mini toolbar, try using the

keyboard.

To select with the mouse;

Click before the text to be selected

Hold the mouse button

Drag the mouse over the text you want to select

You may do this in reverse instead – click after the text to be

selected and drag the mouse backwards to select text.

To select with the keyboard

Move the cursor so it is before the text to be selected, using the mouse or the arrow keys

Hold the SHIFT key

Use the arrow keys to select text

Each press of the right arrow will select one more character to

the right of the cursor. To select a whole word, hold down the

CTRL key as well.

4.2 Cut and copy

Once text is selected, use one of these functions to store that text in the

computer‟s memory so that you can either move or repeat it elsewhere

in a document. Cut removes the text, copy takes a copy to repeat that

text.

In either case you use the paste command to insert the text into the

document.

Both functions are on the Home Ribbon, within the Clipboard tool group.

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To copy text, select it and then click copy

To cut text, select it and then click cut

4.3 Paste

Once text is cut or copied, you should paste it into the document. The

text will be pasted wherever the cursor appears, so make sure you move

that to wherever you want the text to appear using either the mouse or

the arrow keys.

Move the cursor (vertical flashing line) to the correct point in

your document. Note that if you cannot move it beyond the very

last line in your document you should press the RETURN key

Click the paste button

You may paste text more than once, regardless of whether it was

originally cut or copied.

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5. Correcting text

Objectives To correct text wrongly typed

5.1 Spelling mistakes

Word will attempt to help you with spelling and other formatting

mistakes by underlining words it thinks are typed wrongly.

A red squiggly underline indicates a spelling mistake (this may include text

separated by a comma but no space, such as „and,so‟)

A green squiggly line indicates a grammatical „mistake‟. This may just be

where you have used the passive voice, common in academic writing, but

sometimes Word has spotted an extra space mark or similar.

To edit mistakes you need to

Move the cursor (flashing line) to where the mistake is

Enter text or remove the mistake

There are two different keys to rub out mistakes

Backspace removes character to left of cursor

Delete removes character to right of cursor

There is also a delete key on the numeric keypad, bottom-right of the

keyboard.

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6. Formatting text

Objectives To change the appearance of text as desired

6.1 Change Font and control line spacing

You need only use a few commands to layout text as required by an

essay. You may want to change the font, increase the size and use bold

for headings and italicise text for bibliographies. All these commands may

be found on the Home Ribbon or the mini toolbar.

To use any of these tools, you should

Two groups of tools are of most use here – Font and Paragraph. Both

are next to each other on the Ribbon but are shown separately below.

The Font group allows you to change the font‟s appearance. Use the B to

change text to Bold, I to italicise text and U to underline (note that this is

considered archaic for headings – those would more normally be made

bold and appear in a larger font). All those tools are toggles – click once to switch on, click again to switch them off.

The icons at the bottom left of the Paragraph group allow you to change

text alignment – the icon lit up shows that text is currently aligned with

the left of the page.

The single most useful icon here is the , which is used to change the line spacing (e.g. from single to double line spacing).

6.2 Double-space an entire document

Using the icon allows you to make the current paragraph double-spaced. To save you repeatedly clicking that icon for each paragraph it is

possible to apply the same line spacing throughout a document.

On the Home Ribbon, find the Editing

tool group on the right-hand side

Click on Select

Choose Select all

Click on the line spacing icon

Choose 2.0

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7. Save and retrieve a document

Objectives To save a document and find it again once you have closed it

7.1 Saving a document

Although it is possible to type a document in one go and then print it,

doing so without saving means that you will lose your work if the

computer encounters an error or there is a power cut.

Instead, you should save your document regularly. You will also be able

to return to a saved document at a different time or on a different day.

To save your document, click on the blue disk icon at the top left

of the screen, to the right of the Office button, as shown

The first time you save a document, a window will pop up in

which you can type the name of your document – Word will

automatically choose the first line, but you may type a different

name if you prefer – just make sure it is meaningful to you

Check that Word is saving the document in your “My

Documents” folder by checking the location next to Save In, as in

the screenshot below

If anything else is displayed there, click on My Documents on the

left-hand side to make Word save the document there

Click Save

Once you have saved the document for the first time, just click the blue

disk again regularly to save the newer version in the same place – it will

automatically replace the older one.

7.2 Retrieving a document

If you close a document, or are opening Word again having just logged in,

you will need to open a document again to work on it. There are several

ways to do so, two are listed below;

Use the Recent Documents list

Word keeps a list of the last few documents you have opened. Click on

the Office button to see it. Although they appear on that list in order (most recent at the top), you can prevent an item from slipping off the

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list by clicking on the pin icon to the right of the file-name – particularly

useful if you will be working on a document over time.

Office button Pin

Use the Open command

To search your My Documents area or other storage device such as a

memory stick, you should use the Open command. Again, that is found

on the Office button.

Click that button and you will be taken to the open document dialog box,

which will show the contents of the last file location you browsed

(usually the My Documents folder).

Find the file, click it once and then click Open to see the contents.

Note that you should double-click (click twice in quick succession) to

open a folder and see its contents.

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8. Using the Header and Footer

Objectives To add information such as student number and page numbers to

every page of a document

8.1 Page Numbers

To add page numbers to every page, choose the Insert Ribbon, click

Page Number and choose an option from the menu that drops down.

It may be worth checking your course handbook in case it mandates

where page numbers should appear, but otherwise putting them at the

bottom of the page leaves space for other things at the top.

Page numbers will automatically appear on each page of the document,

including any pages added after you insert the page numbers.

8.2 Adding other information

Any other information to appear at the top of the page may be typed in

manually. Adding text to the header makes it appear on every page of the

document.

The header is the blank area at the top of each page – anything you type

will not normally appear in here.

To move the cursor into the header so you can add text there, double-

click anywhere in the top inch of the page. You can also click on the

Header icon (shown above) and choose Edit Header from the bottom

of the list.

Aligning text

To align all text in the header to the right, use the icon in the Paragraph

tool group on the Home Ribbon.

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9. References

Objectives To add references using footnotes or in-text citations and

understand how to format text appropriately

9.1 Format

Your course handbook will normally suggest a style of referencing for

you to use, and you should follow the advice therein or ask your lecturer.

If you are given a choice, between say short in-text citations (Smith,

2000) or longer footnotes, make sure you pick a system and stick with it

for that piece of work.

The formatting required for references is straightforward – you may not

need to use all the techniques below.

To italicise text, select it (click and drag with the mouse) and then click

the button, which can be found on the Home Ribbon and the mini toolbar.

To underline text, select it and then click the button, found next to the italic icon, above.

To embolden text, select it and then click the button, found next to

the italic icon, above.

9.2 Add a footnote

The footnote icon is found on the References Ribbon. Not all Schools

require that you use them for references – check your course handbook

for guidance.

To add a footnote, click on the References Ribbon

By clicking with the mouse, move the cursor to where you want

the footnote to go

Click the Insert Footnote button

Footnotes are automatically numbered (and re-numbered if you add them

in front of existing footnotes).

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10. Next steps

Objectives To point out other useful sources of information in order to

improve your Word skills

10.1 Other useful documents

Long Documents with Word

Although you need only use the basic functions of Word to write an

essay, there are more involved features that may be useful should you

come to write a longer document, such as a dissertation. This document

introduces the most essential features.

Writing long documents with Word

(http://www.bbk.ac.uk/its/help/documentation/pdf/public/5-165.pdf)

Reference manager

Word has an inbuilt reference manager. Not recommended for

beginners, but it offers a relatively straightforward way to organise

references and make sure that they appear in a consistent format within

your document.

Word 2007‟s reference manager

(http://www.bbk.ac.uk/its/help/documentation/pdf/public/5-162.pdf)

Document 5.169 Version 1 January 2010