3.1 Character Formatting

3.1 Character Formatting

In word processing, character formatting refers to formatting attributes that are applied directly to individual characters, words, or selected blocks of text, rather than to entire paragraphs. It allows you to change the appearance of text to improve readability, emphasize important information, or follow specific document design standards. Understanding how to manipulate character attributes is a core competency for the ICDL (International Computer Driving Licence) Documents exam.

Core Font Attributes

The most basic character properties are font family and font size.

Font Family (Typeface)

A font family defines the design of the characters. Typefaces are generally divided into two main categories:

1. Serif fonts: These have small decorative strokes (serifs) at the ends of character lines (e.g., Times New Roman, Georgia). They are traditionally used for printed body text because the serifs help guide the reader's eye along lines of text.
2. Sans-serif fonts: These do not have decorative strokes (e.g., Calibri, Arial, Helvetica). The term 'sans' is French for 'without.' Sans-serif fonts have a clean, modern appearance and are preferred for digital screens, headings, and signs.

Font Size

Font size determines how large characters appear. It is measured in points (pt), a standard typesetting unit where 1 point is equal to 1/72 of an inch. For example, a 72-point font is approximately one inch tall. Standard business documents typically use a font size of 11 pt or 12 pt for body text. You can adjust the font size using the drop-down menu on the Home tab, or use buttons to increase or decrease size in preset increments.

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Text Styling and Emphasis

To draw attention to specific words or phrases, you can apply styles that alter the visual weight or structure of the text.

• Bold: This style increases the thickness of the character strokes. It is used to make keywords, headings, or critical terms stand out. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + B (Windows) or Cmd + B (Mac).
• Italic: This style slants the text to the right. It is commonly used for titles of books, foreign words, technical terms, or mild emphasis. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + I (Windows) or Cmd + I (Mac).
• Underline: This adds a line directly beneath the selected text. Word processors allow you to customize the underline style (such as single, dotted, dashed, or wavy lines) and the underline color. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + U (Windows) or Cmd + U (Mac).
• Double Underline: This style places two parallel lines beneath the text. It is frequently used in financial documents to denote grand totals or to show major headings. You can apply it via the Font dialog box or using Ctrl + Shift + D (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + D (Mac).

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Color Customization and Highlighting

Color changes can enhance the visual appeal of a document and help structure information. However, there is a major conceptual difference between font color and highlighting.

Font Color

Changing the font color modifies the color of the text characters themselves. The default font color is usually automatic black. When you apply a new font color, the selected characters will change to that color (e.g., red, blue). This formatting is stored as a character property and will change if you apply a global style override.

Text Highlight Color

Applying a text highlight color places a colored background strip behind the selected text, resembling a physical highlighter marker. This is primarily a review or collaborative tool. Crucially, highlighting is not a font style; it is an overlay. If you change the font color of highlighted text, the highlight background remains unchanged. To remove highlighting, you must select the text, open the Text Highlight Color tool, and select No Color.

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Subscript and Superscript

For technical writing, math, and chemistry, you must know how to position text relative to the baseline.

• Subscript: This formatting reduces the font size of the selected text and lowers it slightly below the text baseline. This is standard for chemical formulas, such as representing water as H₂O or carbon dioxide as CO₂.
• Superscript: This formatting reduces the font size and raises the selected text slightly above the baseline. It is used for mathematical exponents (e.g., 5² = 25), ordinal suffixes (e.g., 1st, 2nd, 3rd), and footnote citations.

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Case Changes

To save time retyping text, word processors provide a Change Case tool in the Font group of the Home tab. This tool offers five options:

1. Sentence case: Capitalizes the very first letter of the first word in a sentence and leaves all other letters lowercase, except for proper nouns.
2. lowercase: Converts all selected characters to small letters.
3. UPPERCASE: Converts all selected characters to capital letters.
4. Capitalize Each Word: Capitalizes the first letter of every word in the selection. This is useful for formatting titles or table headers.
5. tOGGLE cASE: Reverses the casing of all selected characters. Uppercase letters become lowercase, and lowercase letters become uppercase. This is often used to correct mistakes made when the Caps Lock key was accidentally left on.

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Using the Format Painter

The Format Painter is a highly efficient tool that allows you to copy all formatting attributes from a selected piece of text and apply them to another piece of text. This ensures absolute consistency and saves significant time.

Copying Formatting Once

1. Select the text that has the formatting you wish to copy.
2. Click the Format Painter button once (located in the Clipboard group on the Home tab). The cursor will change to a paintbrush icon.
3. Select the target text. The formatting is applied immediately, and the Format Painter tool automatically turns off (the cursor returns to normal).

Copying Formatting Repeatedly

1. Select the text with the formatting you wish to copy.
2. Double-click the Format Painter button. This locks the tool into an active state.
3. Click or drag over the first text block to apply the formatting.
4. Click or drag over the second, third, or subsequent text blocks. The tool remains active, allowing you to format non-contiguous blocks of text.
5. Press the Escape (Esc) key on your keyboard or click the Format Painter button again to turn the tool off.

Automatic Hyphenation

Syllabus item 3.1.6 asks you to apply automatic hyphenation. Hyphenation controls whether the word processor is allowed to split long words at the end of a line with a hyphen, rather than pushing the whole word to the next line. By default most documents are set to No Hyphenation, which can leave large ragged gaps on the right edge of justified text.

To turn the feature on in Microsoft Word, go to the Layout tab, click Hyphenation, and choose Automatic. The program then inserts optional hyphens wherever a word can legitimately break, and those hyphens disappear again if editing later moves the word away from the line end. Choosing Manual instead makes the application stop at each candidate word and ask you where to break it, while None switches the feature off. Automatic hyphenation is most useful in narrow columns and fully justified layouts, where it produces tighter, more even spacing between words.

Hyperlinks

Syllabus item 3.1.7 covers inserting, editing, and removing a hyperlink — clickable text that jumps to a web address, an email address, or another place in the document. To insert one, select the text, then use Insert > Link (or the shortcut Ctrl + K) and type the destination address in the Address field of the dialog box. The linked text usually appears underlined and coloured to signal that it is clickable.

To edit an existing hyperlink, right-click it and choose Edit Hyperlink, which reopens the same dialog so you can change either the display text or the target address. To remove a hyperlink, right-click it and choose Remove Hyperlink; this keeps the words on the page but strips the link and its blue underlined styling. Removing the link is different from deleting the text — the visible words remain, they simply become ordinary, non-clickable characters.