Word Processing and Documentation
What the domain covers
Word Processing and Documentation tests practical document production: entering and editing text, character and paragraph formatting, styles, page setup, tables, headers and footers, mail merge, reviewing tools, and output to print or PDF.
Core rules and concepts
- Character formatting affects selected text (font, size, bold, colour). Paragraph formatting affects alignment, indentation, line spacing, and spacing before/after.
- Styles bundle formatting and are applied to headings and body text. Changing a style updates every paragraph using it, which keeps long documents consistent.
- Page setup controls paper size, orientation, margins, and columns. Section breaks allow different headers, footers, orientation, or page numbering within one document.
- Headers and footers repeat at page edges. Fields such as page number and date can update automatically.
- Mail merge combines a main document, a data source, and merge fields. It produces one personalised copy per data record.
- Track Changes records insertions, deletions, and comments for review; accepting or rejecting changes finalises the document.
Worked example
A 60-page report has 40 headings formatted manually in bold 16 pt. The author later applies the built-in Heading 1 style to all 40. To change their appearance, she edits the Heading 1 style once. All 40 headings update together, and the navigation pane and table of contents can recognise them. Reason: styles attach semantic structure and central formatting; manual formatting must be changed one heading at a time and is not recognised as a heading level.
Traps that cost marks
Direct formatting overrides a style until it is cleared. A page break starts a new page but does not create a new section. Pressing Enter repeatedly is not a substitute for paragraph spacing. Saving a .docx as PDF preserves appearance but is not ideal for further editing. Check that mail-merge fields match the data-source column names exactly.