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It started in law school. A classmate showed me how he took notes in Microsoft Word. He pressed a button on the screen and a pre-formatted document appeared, ready for his notes that day.
I was intrigued. How did he set things up so he could press one button and repeat the same action?
Clearly, this tool that I had used many times before had more to offer than I was getting out of it. I decided to stop getting frustrated with its limitations and seek to understand it so I could better utilize what it had to offer.
In a series of articles, we will explore the fundamentals of Microsoft Word.
Understanding the basics of any program is essential to leveraging the more advanced features. Because Word is ubiquitous in the legal field, despite the numerous other word processing programs available in today’s app world, it makes sense to increase your understanding of the program.
‘Word’ processing
I have been practicing law long enough to have worked in a time before Microsoft Word. I recall helping the law firm transition from WordPerfect to Word, basically because the courts were moving to Word.
Through this process, I learned a lot about what a good word processor was. It was more than just typing words on the screen, but that is the best place to start.
Word has its default set of tools and understanding these defaults (what I call Automatic Behavior Controls, or ABCs) will increase your ability to leverage those tools and improve your experience in Word.
Get words on the screen
We are all familiar with this process: Open Word. Click new blank document. Start typing. Practically, we rarely open a blank Word document. We are either working from a template, a prior file, or a file someone else has sent us. Those documents have picked up ABCs from that/those users and can cause issues with our “version” of the document.
The best place to start is exploring some of the formatting options you can apply to a single word.
Type the word “lawyer” on the blank page. The first thing that might happen is Word tries to capitalize that word because it “thinks” you are starting a sentence. Is that what you wanted? If not, you have already experienced one of Word’s ABCs. Word automatically changed the lower case “l” to an upper case “L”.
While you could go digging around in the AutoCorrect settings and try to turn this off, it is often easier to accept that is what happens and work with it, not against it.
What can you do with the word “lawyer” now that it is on screen? If you turn on a formatting switch before typing a word, whatever you type after will have that formatting applied.
Try this. Press “Ctrl B” (Windows) or “Command B” (Mac) to turn on Bold and then type the word “lawyer,” It should be bold. Next, type a period. That period should also be bold. This is because you have not turned off the “bold” switch. If you look at the toolbar, you will see that the bold button is active. Simply press the bold shortcut (or click the button with your mouse) to turn it off. But, the period is still bold.
Here, we learn how to select text with your keyboard. If you want to select a character, press “Shift” and “Arrow” keys. Pressing “Shift Left Arrow” will select one character to the left. To select the period in the above example requires you to do this twice, because there is a period followed by a space. Press the bold shortcut again to toggle it off or on.
Incidentally, a space is a character. Extra space characters often cause issues in a document. I recommend turning on Show/Hide Paragraph Marks to “see” these, and other, extra characters. Spaces are shown by a dot between words.
A final note about formatting a word with your keyboard. If your cursor is located inside the word, you can use a keyboard shortcut to format just that word. Use your arrow keys to put the cursor in the middle of the word “lawyer.” Press the bold shortcut, which will toggle the bold formatting on and off (or vice versa).
Only a lawyer could write this much in Microsoft Word about the word lawyer.
Until next time
In summary, (1) understand how Word uses ABCs. (2) Format using a keyboard. This skill alone will save hours. While this article focused on bold, simply using “Control/Command U” or “Control/Command I” will apply underline or italics, so really you learned three shortcuts in one article. (3) Use the arrow keys and the shift keys to select text. This will serve you in any document.•
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Seth R. Wilson is an attorney with Adler Attorneys in Noblesville. In addition to practicing law, he helps manage the day-to-day technology operations of the firm. He writes about legal technology at sethrwilson.com and is a frequent speaker on the subject.
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