Lesson · 12 min

Formatting Text

Learn how to change font, size, case, color, alignment, bold, italic, underline, and highlighting in Microsoft Word.

By the end of this lesson you can

Apply font, size, color, and emphasis deliberately rather than decoratively
Explain why bold, italic, and underline carry different conventional meanings
Use Format Painter to copy formatting from one passage to another
Recognize when direct formatting should be replaced by a style

Video

Watch the lesson video, then complete the reading and challenge.

Lesson Notes

Read through the key concepts before you try the challenge.

Formatting is communication, not decoration

On the job

You are producing a discharge instruction sheet at Lakeside Medical Associates.

A patient needs to know two things above all: take the medication with food, and call immediately if a fever passes 101°F. You have written both. They sit in the middle of a wall of identical gray text, and the patient will read neither.

Your task: Use formatting to make the most important information impossible to miss — and to make everything else recede.

Emphasis works by contrast, which means it is a budget. If you bold six things on a page, you have bolded nothing — the reader's eye has no landing place. A page with two bold phrases directs attention exactly where you want it. The discipline is not learning what the buttons do; it is restraint about how often you press them.

Conventions matter too, because readers have absorbed them. Bold signals importance and survives scanning. Italic signals a title, a term being defined, or a mild emphasis, and it is harder to read in long runs. Underline, on screen, reads as a hyperlink — underlining ordinary text is the fastest way to make readers click something that is not there. Use bold for emphasis and reserve underline for links.

Treatment	Conventional meaning	Avoid
Bold	This is critical; do not skip it	More than two or three per page
Italic	Title of a work, a defined term, or light emphasis	Long passages — it slows reading
Underline	A hyperlink	Ordinary emphasis, on screen especially
ALL CAPS	Short labels and warnings only	Sentences — capitals remove word shape and slow reading
Color	Category or status, when there is a legend	Color alone as the only signal — it fails for colorblind readers

What each treatment conventionally means

Never let color be the only thing carrying meaning. Roughly one in twelve men has some form of color vision deficiency, and a red 'urgent' line that is otherwise identical to the rest of the text is invisible to them. Pair color with bold, an icon, or a word — 'Urgent: call the office' works for everyone.

Format Painter (the paintbrush on the Home tab) copies formatting rather than text. Click inside text formatted the way you want, click Format Painter, then drag across the target. Double-click the paintbrush to keep it active for multiple targets, and press Esc when you are done.