Formatting Text In A Writer Document

The approach used when creating a textual document in Writer is that the text simply typed in, when complete, the text entered is formatted so that its presentation will be attractive to the reader. Formatting of such material includes creating page headers, topic headers, paragraph headers, page footers and so on, then assigning fonts and font sizes, to these entities perhaps even dividing text into columns, adjusting the line and paragraph spacing and setting margins and a ton more.

Changing Font Styles:

A font is a set of printable or displayable text characters in a specific style in the document. Different fonts contain a different collection of characters and symbols. The default Font set by Writer for its Normal template is Times New Roman and the heading is Arial.

Writer offers many ways to change fonts and font styles.

In order to Change the font style for a specific block of text:

1. Select the text whose font style must be changed
2. Click on the down arrow, in the Font name list box in the Object bar
3. A list of available fonts is displayed as shown in Diagram 1
4. Select a font from the list
5. Press Enter – The selected text will be assigned the font chosen
6. You can change the font weight by clicking on the three buttons on the right side of the Font name list box. They are iconic buttons that depict Bold, Italic and Underline as shown in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1

NOTE: You can also change the style of the text by right clicking on selected the text and then selecting any desired Font from the options provided in the Font, Size and Style options as shown in Diagram 2.

Diagram 2

Show font history:

Show font history lists the last five fonts that you have used in the current document at the top of the list in the Font Name box on the Formatting bar.

In order to make font history constantly display the last five fonts used to the following:

1. Click on the Tools menu in the Top Menu bar
2. Select Options as shown in Diagram 3.
3. Select OpenOffice.org from Options
4. Click on View under OpenOffice.org
5. Select the Show font history check box as shown in Diagram 4.
6. Then click OK.

Diagram 3

Diagram 4

Changing Font Size:

Font-size is the property that sets the size of the text in a document.

Font sizes are measured in points. Points and picas are used for measuring spacing, line thickness and so on. 12 points makes a pica and 6 picas make an inch.

The Font Size for Writer’s Normal template document is 12 points, by default.

In order to change the font size of any text in a document:

1. Select the text whose size has to be changed
2. Click on the down arrow to the right of the Font size list box in the Object bar as shown in Diagram 5.
3. A list of available font sizes is displayed
4. Select a font size from the list or type in the appropriate size and press Enter to complete

Diagram 5

NOTE: You can also change the size of the text by right clicking on the selected the text and selecting the desired Font size from the options provided in the Size as shown in Diagram 6.

Diagram 6

Changing Default Font Settings:

The default font settings for any text document can be changed by:

1. Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org Writer -> Basic Fonts (Western). Using this option the default paragraph, heading, list, caption and index fonts can be changed as shown in Diagram 7.
2. If Current Document Only option is selected then the changes will be applied only to the currently opened document.
3. Once selection is done click OK to complete

Diagram 7

Using the Character Dialog Box:

The Character dialog box contains the most comprehensive collection of formatting options such as Font, Font Effects, Position, Hyperlink and Background.

To open the Character dialog box:

1. Select the text in the document
2. Click on the Format menu item in the Top Menu bar
3. Select the Character option from Format menu as shown in Diagram 8.
4. The Character dialog box opens as shown in Diagram 9.
5. Make the appropriate selections in the Character dialog box.
6. Press Enter

Diagram 8

Font:

Under the Font tab, you can set the Font-Family, Font-Weight and Font-Size for the text document. While making the selection you can view the output of the selection made in the Preview window below as shown in Diagram 9.

Diagram 9

Font Effects:

Writer offers a number of attributes or special effects that enables adding impact and emphasis to selected characters using the Font Effect tab in the Character dialog box.

A User can choose from 34 different effects including outline, shadow, various types of strikethrough and underline, uppercase and lowercase, small caps, title case, blinking text and even emphasis.

Apart from using font effects a user can also make text standout by using font colors. The color dropdown list on the Font Effect tab gives access to different colors as shown in Diagram 10.

Diagram 10

Position:

To make printed document look good, special attention needs to be given to fine points of spacing between adjacent characters. This can be done using the Position Tab on the Character dialog box as shown in Diagram 11.

This tab provides options for varying character spacing uniformly for all characters in a selected passage (Default, Expanded or Condensed) or by a specified amount. Character spacing can also be changed between the characters. In addition to this, a live view while choosing the formatting options is provided.

Diagram 11

Hyperlink:

Hyperlink assigns a new hyperlink or edits the selected hyperlink as shown in Diagram 12. Here, you can enter a URL for the file that you want to open when you click the hyperlink. If you do not specify a target frame, the file opens in the current document or frame. You can even locate the file that you want to link to.

By clicking on Events, you can specify an event that triggers when you click the hyperlink.

In Character Styles, you can select a formatting style to use for visited/unvisited links from the list.

Diagram 12

Background:

Set the background color or graphic as shown in diagram 13. You can specify the background for paragraphs, pages, headers, footers, text frames, tables, table cells, sections, and indexes.

It makes it easy to highlight sections of text in different colors. To remove the highlights from the text, click on the Background tab and select No Fill. This will remove the highlights from the text.

Diagram 13

When you click on OK, the output of the following changes can viewed in the document as shown in Diagram 14.

Diagram 14

NOTE: You can even open the Character Dialog Box by right clicking on the selected text and select the Character option from the box as shown in Diagram 15.


Diagram 15

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