Digital Documentation (Word Processing)
Formatting levels
Character formatting changes letters - font, size, bold, italic, colour. Paragraph formatting changes blocks - alignment, line spacing, indents, bullets, space before and after. Know which the question is asking about; applying a paragraph setting with no text selected affects only the current paragraph.
Structure tools
Styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, Normal) tag content so the Navigation pane and an automatic table of contents work. Section breaks change page orientation, margins or columns for part of a document; a page break only starts a new page. Headers and footers repeat on each page, and page numbers belong there.
Working with data
Find and Replace with Match case or Whole words avoids unintended swaps. Tables align figures. Mail merge joins a main document to a data source to produce one personalised copy per record. Track Changes and Comments support review without losing the original.
Worked example
A school must send 45 fee reminders, each carrying the guardian's name and amount, on one template. Reasoning: build the letter with placeholders (guardian name, amount), keep the list in a spreadsheet whose column names match the placeholders, run Mail Merge, preview one record, then finish and merge to a new document or straight to print. One template plus a 45-row data source produces 45 letters, with no retyping.
Traps
- Pressing Enter repeatedly to reach a new page; use a page break.
- Bolding every heading manually instead of using styles, so no table of contents is generated.
- Sending .docx when the recipient needs a fixed layout - export to PDF.
- Forgetting that editing a footer changes the whole section.