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Everybody knows Microsoft Word. It’s on almost every PC in the world and fair few Macs as well. However, a lot of users have picked up bad habits, things that detract from the usefulness of the document being created. This article looks at the most common basic errors among Microsoft users.

* Pressing the Return key at the start of a document which needs to be printed on a letterhead is one of the most common such errors. The correct thing to do is to change the top margin setting. Otherwise, you get have superfluous characters at the start of your text. (In Word 2003, go to File and choose Page Setup. In Word 2007, click on the Page Layout tab of the ribbon then click on Custom Margins.

* Leaving two spaces after the period which ends each sentence is another common error among users. In fact, one space is fine with modern typefaces since they are proportionally spaced (e.g., the letter “w” takes up more space than the letter “i”). The two space habit is a throwback to the days when people were using typewriters with monospace typefaces such as Elite and Courier.

* The habit of pressing the Return key twice at the end of each paragraph is not a good idea because it creates a sea of extra white space on the printed page. Only one return should used to end the paragraph. Extra space can then be added using the paragraph spacing commands. To find these options, in Word 2003 or earlier, choose Paragraph from the format menu. In Word 2007, click on the Page Layout tab.

* People who have never had any formal Microsoft Word training can perhaps be forgiven for not fully understanding how tabs work. You will even see some users attempting to align elements by using the space bar and, of course, when they print the document, nothing is properly aligned. As experienced users will know, the Tab key should be used; not the space bar.

* Having identified the Tab key as the correct one to use to create columns, many Word users just press the tab key to tab along to the next default tab. The number of times the Tab key is pressed will thus vary, depending on the length of each piece of text. It is much better to set one’s own tabs by clicking on the Word ruler. This means that on each line of text, the tab key will be pressed the same number of times between columns.

* Another common mistake among Word users is to manually format text in long documents or perhaps to user the Format Painter. Manually formatting text is fine for single page or short documents but with long documents, it’s best to use Word’s style feature. That way, if you need to modify the appearance of the document, all you need to do is to modify the attributes of the styles.

* Word has a number of AutoCorrect options which can seem intrusive to new users and who complain about them without attempting to switch them off. To modify Word’s AutoCorrect and other settings, choose Options from the Tools menu (Word 2003/2002 etc.) or choose Word Options from the Office button in Word 2007.

Tags: Software