Word Processing & Paint

1Word processing & starting MS Word

A word processor is application software used to type, edit, format and print documents. Microsoft Word is the most popular one. It was made by Microsoft; Charles Simonyi helped create it.

With Word you can:

• make letters, reports, notices, newsletters, books and bills quickly;
• change text while typing and after typing;
• beautify text with colours, styles and effects, and insert pictures;
• copy and move text; share documents online;
• preview a document before printing and take many printouts.

Starting Word

1. Click the Start button.
2. Scroll down and click Word.
3. The start screen, called the Backstage View, appears. Here you can create, open, save, print and share documents.
4. Click Blank document. Word opens a new document with the temporary name Document1.

The small blinking line is the cursor (insertion point) — the next letter you type appears there. When a line is full, Word moves the text to the next line by itself. This is called Word Wrap. Press Enter only to start a new paragraph.

2The Word window & basic operations

Title bar

At the very top; shows the document's name, e.g. Document1 - Word.

Quick Access Toolbar

Small buttons at the top-left: Save, Undo, Redo.

File tab

Opens the Backstage View: New, Open, Save, Save As, Print, Close.

Ribbon

The strip of commands, arranged in tabs (Home, Insert, Design, Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View, Help). Each tab has groups: the Home tab has Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles and Editing.

Dialog box launcher

The tiny arrow at the bottom-right of a group; opens a box with more options (e.g. the Font dialog box).

Document window

The white page where you type.

Scroll bars

Vertical and horizontal bars to move up/down and left/right.

Status bar

At the bottom: page number (Page 1 of 2), word count, language, document views and the Zoom slider.

The first time you save, Word asks for a file name. A Word file gets the extension .docx — so a file saved as School becomes School.docx.

3Selecting & editing text

Making changes in a document is called editing — copying, moving, deleting, finding and replacing. Before you change text you must select it; selected text is shown highlighted. The blank strip in the left margin is the selection area.

Move, copy, delete

• Move = select → Cut (Ctrl + X) → click the new place → Paste (Ctrl + V). The text leaves its old place.
• Copy = select → Copy (Ctrl + C) → click the new place → Paste. The text stays in both places — even in another document.
• Cut, Copy and Paste are in the Clipboard group on the Home tab. The clipboard is a temporary storage area that holds what you cut or copy.
• Backspace deletes the character to the left of the cursor, Delete the one to the right. Ctrl + Backspace / Ctrl + Delete delete a whole word left / right.

Undo and Redo

Undo (Ctrl + Z) cancels your last action. Redo (Ctrl + Y) reverses the Undo — it does the undone action again. Both buttons are on the Quick Access Toolbar.

4Spelling, grammar & the Thesaurus

Word has a built-in dictionary and grammar rules. As you type, it marks possible mistakes:

Check spelling and grammar

1. Click the Review tab → Spelling & Grammar (or press F7). The check starts from the cursor and covers the whole document.
2. An Editor pane opens on the right and shows the first mistake with suggestions. Click a suggestion to fix it (open the … next to it and choose Change All to fix it everywhere).
3. Or choose: Ignore Once (skip it this time), Ignore All (skip all its uses in this document) or Add to Dictionary (teach Word the word, so it is never marked again).

Quick way: right-click a word with a red wavy line and pick the right spelling from the list.

Thesaurus — find a better word

The Thesaurus gives synonyms (words with similar meanings) — and some antonyms — to improve your vocabulary.

1. Select the word (e.g. happy).
2. Click Review → Thesaurus (or press Shift + F7). The Thesaurus pane opens on the right.
3. Point to a synonym (e.g. cheerful), click its drop-down arrow and choose Insert. The old word is replaced.

5Formatting a document

Formatting means changing the appearance of a document to make it attractive — font, size, colour, alignment, spacing. Use the Font and Paragraph groups on the Home tab. Always select the text first.

Font

• Font type and size: Home → Font group → click the drop-down arrows. The default font is Calibri (Body) (size 11 in Word 2016; some books list 12).
• Bold (Ctrl + B) makes text darker. Italic (Ctrl + I) slants it to the right. Underline (Ctrl + U) puts a line under it (spaces too). Press the same keys again to remove the effect.
• Font Color: click the arrow next to the A button and pick a colour. Text Highlight Color colours the background like a highlighter pen.
• Change Case (the Aa button) has 5 options: Sentence case., lowercase, UPPERCASE, Capitalize Each Word, tOGGLE cASE. Shift + F3 switches between cases.
• Subscript (Ctrl + =) puts text below the line: H₂O. Superscript (Ctrl + Shift + +) puts it above: 5², 1^st.
• For more choices, open the Font dialog box with the launcher in the Font group (or Ctrl + D). Selecting text also shows a small pop-up with basic formatting buttons.

Alignment

Alignment is the position of text between the left and right margins. The buttons are in the Paragraph group on the Home tab.

Line spacing and paragraph spacing

1. Select the paragraph.
2. Click the Paragraph dialog box launcher (Home tab → Paragraph group). Select the Indents and Spacing tab.
3. In the Spacing section, type the paragraph spacing in the Before and After boxes, and choose the Line spacing (e.g. 1.5, Double). Click OK.

Quick way: the Line and Paragraph Spacing button in the Paragraph group.

6Print preview & printing

Before printing, check how the page will look on paper. This is Print Preview.

1. Click File → Print (or press Ctrl + P). The Print window opens, and a preview of your document appears on the right.
2. Use the arrows below the preview to see each page, and the Zoom slider (bottom-right) to magnify it.
3. Choose the printer from the Printer list and type the number of Copies.
4. Under Settings, click the arrow next to Print All Pages and choose what to print (see below).
5. Click the Print button to get the hard copy.

7MS Paint: the window and its tools

MS Paint is a drawing program that comes with Windows. Open it: Start → Windows Accessories → Paint, or type Paint in the Search box. Its window has a title bar, a File menu, the Home and View tabs, the ribbon, the white canvas (drawing area) and a status bar. The Home tab has the groups Clipboard, Image, Tools, Brushes, Shapes, Size and Colors.

Color 1 and Color 2

• Color 1 (foreground) is used when you draw with the left mouse button.
• Color 2 (background) is used with the right mouse button — and by the eraser.
• Click Color 1 or Color 2, then click a colour in the palette. Edit colors lets you mix your own.

Shapes

The Shapes group has Line, Curve, Oval, Rectangle, Rounded rectangle, Polygon, triangles, diamond, pentagon, hexagon, arrows, stars, speech bubbles, a heart and lightning. Outline and Fill choose how a shape's border and inside are painted (the outline uses Color 1; the fill uses Color 2).

• Hold Shift while dragging: an oval becomes a perfect circle, a rectangle a perfect square, and a line stays perfectly straight (flat, upright or at 45°).
• Curve tool: draw a straight line, then click and drag to bend it — you can bend it up to two times. After that the curve is finished.

8Paint: select, rotate, zoom & save

Selecting and changing the image (Image group)

• Select → Rectangular selection (a box) or Free-form selection (draw around an odd-shaped part). Also Select all (Ctrl + A), Invert selection and Delete.
• Transparent selection: when you move or paste a selected part, its background colour (Color 2) is left out, so no white box appears around it on another colour.
• Crop keeps only the selected part. Resize and Skew (Ctrl + W) changes the size by percentage or pixels, or slants (skews) it by degrees.
• Rotate: Rotate right 90°, Rotate left 90°, Rotate 180°, Flip vertical, Flip horizontal.

View tab

• Zoom in / Zoom out / 100% (Ctrl + Page Up / Ctrl + Page Down).
• Rulers (Ctrl + R) and Gridlines (Ctrl + G). Gridlines show the tiny squares (pixels) of the picture — they appear only when you zoom in to 400% or more.
• Full screen (F11) shows just your picture. The Status bar shows the pointer position, picture size and zoom.

Saving a drawing

1. Click File → Save (or Ctrl + S). The first time, the Save As dialog box opens.
2. Choose the folder, type a file name (e.g. MyGarden).
3. In Save as type, pick a format: PNG (the default in Windows 10), JPEG, BMP, GIF or TIFF. Click Save.

Until you save, the title bar shows Untitled - Paint. After saving it shows your file name. (Old versions of Paint, like the one in Windows XP, saved as .bmp by default — many olympiad questions still use .bmp as "the Paint file" answer.) Save stores the drawing permanently on the disk; Save As (F12) saves a copy with a new name or type.

9Shortcut keys reference

Watch & explore

• 📖Word tutorialGCFGlobal · free step-by-step Word lessons
• 📖Keyboard shortcuts in Wordsupport.microsoft.com · the official list
• 📖Microsoft WordSimple English Wikipedia · history of Word
• 📖Microsoft PaintSimple English Wikipedia · the Windows drawing app
• 📖Microsoft Paint (more detail)Wikipedia · versions and file formats

10Quick recap

• Start → Word → Blank document → Document1. Start screen = Backstage View. Word files = .docx.
• Window: title bar, Quick Access Toolbar (Save, Undo, Redo), File tab, ribbon (tabs → groups), document window, status bar (word count, zoom).
• Select: double-click = word · Ctrl + click = sentence · triple-click = paragraph · Ctrl + A = all.
• Cut + Paste = move; Copy + Paste = duplicate; clipboard holds it. Undo Ctrl+Z, Redo Ctrl+Y.
• Red wavy line = spelling; double blue line = grammar. F7 = Spelling & Grammar; Shift+F7 = Thesaurus (synonyms).
• Ignore Once / Ignore All (this document only) / Add to Dictionary (never marked again).
• Bold = darker, Italic = slanted, Underline = line under. Change Case has 5 options.
• Align Left Ctrl+L · Center Ctrl+E · Right Ctrl+R · Justify Ctrl+J (both edges straight).
• Line spacing = between lines; paragraph spacing = between paragraphs (Paragraph dialog → Indents and Spacing).
• File → Print (Ctrl+P): Print All Pages / Selection / Current Page / Custom Print.
• Paint: Fill with color (closed shapes), Color picker (copy a colour), Magnifier, Eraser (uses Color 2). Left button = Color 1, right = Color 2.
• Shift = perfect circle/square/straight line. Curve bends 2 times. Gridlines at 400%+. Transparent selection removes the background box.
• Flip horizontal = mirror left↔right; flip vertical = upside down. Save as PNG (default), JPEG, BMP, GIF.

Flip cards