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Fun and Functional Paragraph Formats

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About this lesson

Apply background colors or borders to paragraphs.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Fun and Functional Paragraph Formats.docx
59.3 KB
Fun and Functional Paragraph Formats - Solution.docx
59.8 KB

Quick reference

Fun and Functional Paragraph Formats

Apply background colors or borders to paragraphs.


Home Ribbon, Paragraph Group

When to use and Instructions:

  1. The Sort button allows you to quickly alphabetize a list of words to save time rather than manually re-arranging or re-typing the list. 
  1. Select the entire list with the mouse
  2. Click the Sort button
  3. Make the selection whether Ascending (A-Z) or Descending (Z-A)
  4. Click OK
  1. The Shading button will put a solid block of color behind an entire paragraph. An excellent option for creating a banner above a report or flyer.
  2. Click into the paragraph with the mouse
  3.  Click the Shading button
  4. Make the color selection
  1. The Border button will put a line on any side of the paragraph or around the entire paragraph.
  1. Click into the paragraph with the mouse
  2. Click the Border button
  3. Make the selection
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  • 00:04 In this lesson, I'd like to introduce you to three more items in
  • 00:07 the paragraph function, they're fun and they're functional.
  • 00:11 On the home Home ribbon, over in the Paragraph group,
  • 00:15 we have this button that is Sorting, this one is Shading,
  • 00:19 also known as paragraph color, and this one is Borders.
  • 00:23 So let's go ahead and work on the very first paragraph.
  • 00:25 Whenever you you click inside a paragraph, the computer's looking for
  • 00:28 where the Entire key is, where was the paragraph stopped?
  • 00:32 And in this case it was stopped at the very end of it.
  • 00:34 So no matter where you click,
  • 00:36 what we do next is gonna apply to the entire paragraph,
  • 00:39 anything that's in the Paragraph group will apply to an entire paragraph.
  • 00:43 Meaning you don't have to highlight the whole thing in order to get it to apply.
  • 00:47 So let's go ahead and start with shading.
  • 00:48 If you hit the drop-down arrow on the Shading button,
  • 00:51 watch the screen as I just float my mouse around in the background.
  • 00:54 Now, the beauty of this is you are highlighting the entire paragraph,
  • 00:59 including the empty space beyond that last sentence.
  • 01:03 So I'll go ahead and choose this color, and look.
  • 01:05 Now, had I applied line highlighting, that would've been different and
  • 01:08 I wouldn't have been able to shade this empty area here.
  • 01:11 So it's a great way to really put a bold color or
  • 01:14 a bright color behind a paragraph to make it stand out.
  • 01:18 Generally used for a banner across the top of a report or something,
  • 01:22 where you want a nice, even shade of text in the background of your text.
  • 01:27 On the next paragraph, we're gonna go ahead and apply borders here.
  • 01:30 Again, because it's a paragraph function, I just need to put my insertion point in
  • 01:34 the paragraph, I don't have to triple-click to highlight the whole thing.
  • 01:38 Click on the Border button drop-down arrow and go ahead and float your mouse and
  • 01:42 watch what happens, that's a bottom border.
  • 01:45 Here a line appears at the top, here at the left side, here at the right side and
  • 01:49 look at this one, the All borders, this is how you can wrap a line.
  • 01:53 I'll go ahead and click on that one,
  • 01:55 it's how you wrap a line around an entire set of text.
  • 01:58 Excellent to draw attention to maybe a note or
  • 02:02 a sub-note or an explanation under a long line of text.
  • 02:07 This last line, sometimes a list needs to be rearranged alphabetically, and
  • 02:11 in the older versions of Word, we would've had to manually retype these or
  • 02:15 move them to the correct order.
  • 02:17 Now all we have to do is,
  • 02:18 I do have to select the range that I want to alphabetize.
  • 02:22 I come up to the Paragraph group and here we have a Sorting button,
  • 02:26 when you click that it asks me, sort by paragraph, is it text?
  • 02:30 Remember, hit those drop-down arrows, read them, continue to learn.
  • 02:34 Always be aware of what's under those drop-down arrows,
  • 02:36 you'll become a better computer user.
  • 02:39 And I can choose Ascending or Descending.
  • 02:41 Ascending means A-to-Z, Descending means Z-to-A.
  • 02:45 I'm gonna leave these settings as they are, go ahead and click OK,
  • 02:48 and watch my list, my shopping list over there, absolutely rearrange itself.
  • 02:53 I love that button, it saves you a lot of rework time,
  • 02:57 saves you a lot of frustration, raises your productivity.
  • 03:02 I hope you like those features, please go ahead and practice those.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Basic Paragraph Formats
03m:58s
Bullets and Numbering
04m:39s
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