Character

A character is anyt letter, number or symbol.

Word

A word is a group of characters, separated by a space on both sides.

Sentence

A sentence is a group of words followed by a period, ?, or !.

A line is simply a row of characters / words. You can select a line, but it is not a special separate entity.

Every time you hit the "Enter" key, you begin a new paragraph. The computer sometimes shows you this with the character "¶".

Each paragraph is separate from each other paragraph. For example, if you select only one paragraph and make a change in the paragraph style, the other paragraphs will not be changed. This is very important when you make changes in indents and tabs, which we will study later.

Document

When you type something in MS Word and then save it, it is called a "document."

This is the style of the characters you type. Times New Roman is the standard font.

There are several types of fonts: serif (there are small "serifs" at the end of lines; for example, Times New Roman and Garamond), sans serif (the letters are very plain; for example, Arial and Helvetica), script (looks like handwriting; for example, Comic Sans and Signature), display (used for special stylized titles, such as Algerian and Papyrus), and dingbat (pictures instead of characters; examples are Wingdings and Webdings).

See examples of these types on this page.

Each category is used in a different manner. Serif fonts are used for normal reading. SansSerif fonts are used for important text--warnings and instructions, for example. Script fonts are used where handwrtiting is called for. Display fonts are used for titles on posters or other places (you will recognize many of them from movie posters). Dingbat fonts are used for placing drawings in text, or easily using such simple one-color images; for example, Lakeland College uses a special dingbat font to add its logo and seal in documents.

Point / Pica

This is the measurement for font sizes. 12 is standard for regular text, 18 is sometimes used for titles. The MLA format requires all text to be 12 point.

Selecting Text

The Cursor

It is important to know that the cursor changes appearance according to where it is. When you usually use the cursor, it is an arrow pointing up and to the left. When You are using MS Word, and the cursor is over the text you are typing, the cursor changes shape and looks like a capital-letter "I" (this is called the "I-beam"). But when you move the cursor to the left of the text (beyond the left magin), it changes to an arrow pointing up and to the right.

Normal cursor:
Over-the-text cursor:
Left-of-margin cursor:

Using the Mouse

There are many different ways to select text in MS Word. You can click, double-click and triple-click. You can do this inside the text, or you can do it to the left of the margin. You can click-and-drag, drag-and-drop, and combine mouse moves with keyboard keys.

Click-and-Drag

"Click and Drag" means that you click the left mouse button and hold it down, then you move the mouse to another location, then you let go of the button. This mouse action is used to "pick up" something on the computer screen and "carry" it to another location. Usually you use "click and drag" to move icons on the desktop.

In Microsoft Word, you can use "click and drag" to move selected text. After you have typed a lot of text, you may want to move one word from one sentence into another. First, you select the word. Then, click and drag the word to a new location, and let go of the mouse button. The word will disappear from the original location, and then appear in the new location. You can do this with any text of any size.

Drag-and-Drop

"Drag-and-Drop" means that you click-and-drag on something, until you have brought it to a special place where you want it. You then let go of the mouse button, then the item goes to the place you brought it to.

Combinations

Here are a list of text-selection maneuvers:

single-click (over the text)	places the cursor
double-click (over the text)	selects a word
triple-click (over the text)	selects a paragraph
single-click (to the left of the text)	selects a line
double-click (to the left of the text)	selects a paragraph
triple-click (to the left of the text)	selects all text in the document
click and drag (over the text)	selects text between click and let-go
double-click and drag (over the text)	selects text word-by-word
triple-click and drag (over the text)	selects text paragraph-by-paragraph
click and drag (to the left of the text)	selects text line-by-line
double-click and drag (to the left of the text)	selects text paragraph-by-paragraph
CTRL + A	selects all text in document
CTRL + click	selects sentence
CTRL + click and drag	selects text sentence-by-sentence
ALT + click and drag	selects rectangle of text
SHIFT + click	selects text between original cursor position and new click
SHIFT + arrow keys	selects more text character-by-character or line-by-line, in the direction of the arrow
CTRL + click and drag + click and drag + ...	selects non-contiguous text (MS Word versions 2003 and later)

In order to practice them, let's use a special Easter Egg:

If you start on a new line and type the text above ( =rand() ) and then hit the Enter key, you will be rewarded with three paragraphs of sample text. If you want different amounts of text, try typing this:

In this case, the first number is the number of paragraphs you want, and the second number is the number of sentences for each paragraph.

This will let you easily create a lot of text, with which you can practice the text selection moves listed above.