Introduction

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Use alignment buttons to align text

Formatting text

Formatting your writing helps convey your message. Word allows you to format text two ways:

• Manually: Formatting text manually allows for a great degree of creativity and control.
• Style template: This gives documents a more consistent look and feel.

In this lesson, you will learn how to align text using the alignment buttons on the Formatting toolbar.

To align text using the alignment buttons:

• Select or click anywhere inside the paragraph you want to align.
• Click the align left, center, align right, or justify button on the Formatting toolbar.

Left-align text: Word's default lines up objects to the left with a ragged right edge.

Center text: This centers selected text, numbers, and inline objects.

Right-align text: Selected text, numbers, and inline objects are aligned to the right with a ragged left edge.

Justify text: This aligns selected text, numbers, and inline objects to both the left and right margin indents, and gives text a straight edge margin on both the right and left sides.

Did you know?

Most of the time, you will left-align your text because left-aligned text is easiest to read. However, you may want to center your text when titling your document.