font formatting

One of the tactics I regularly recommend to users when transferring content from an old WordPerfect document is to use Paste, Special, Unformatted Text instead of just the plain Paste or CNTRL-V commands:

Paste, Special Dialog Box

The advantage here is that Paste Special clears out all of the formatting so the newly-pasted text doesn’t mess up your nice Microsoft Word document.

The disadvantage?  Well … it clears out all the formatting.  And this can be a pain to re-do, particularly if you’ve got a long document with lots of case citations, etc.

What to do?  Here are three tricks to keep in your Microsoft Word skills arsenal.

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Got a long brief or other document that has lots of headings, subheadings, etc.?  You need Styles, baby.

No, not styleStyles.

The Styles function in Word is a handy tool for, among other things, setting up headings for different sections of a document.  These styles serve a dual purpose: not only do they help keep document formatting consistent (i.e., all paragraph and subparagraph headings at a particular level, for example, will be consistent through the document), they can help later when you create a Table of Contents, since Word can use these styles to create the levels of your Table of Contents.

There are a couple of different ways to use Styles & Formatting (as the feature is formally known) in your document.

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In Word, there’s usually more than one way to do something.  And the way you do things usually depends on whether you’re more comfortable with the keyboard or the mouse.

Take, for example, basic character formatting.  To make characters boldface, italics, or underline, you can:

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