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Paragraphs are goodly sized chunks of text in a document. A paragraph has left and right margins, a top and a bottom, a before and an after, plus space in the middle. Word provides ample tools for formatting paragraphs of text. There's a simple way, for example, to automatically indent the first line of a paragraph.
You can format a paragraph in Word several ways:
- Use a paragraph-formatting command and then type a new paragraph in that format.
- Use the formatting command in a single paragraph to format that paragraph. (Place the insertion pointer in a paragraph and then use a formatting command.)
- Use the formatting command on a block of selected paragraphs to format them all together.
Here's an example for you to mess with:
1. Type the following paragraph:
It was a crushing blow. Francis had practiced her lines all week. Her mother had finished the costume. Even her brothers were impressed, commenting that she really was Chicken Little. But all that meant nothing now. While she sat in the bathtub, her father broke the terrible news: "I'm sorry, Francis. But you have the chicken pox."
Did you remember to press Enter to end the paragraph? That's important.
2. Move the insertion point so that it's somewhere inside the paragraph's text.
3. Press Ctrl+E.
Ctrl+E is the keyboard shortcut for the Center command, which centers the paragraph's text from left to right on the page.
4. Press Ctrl+L.
The paragraph is left justified, undoing the centering.
5. Press Ctrl+T.
The paragraph is now formatted with a hanging indent.
6. Press Shift+Ctrl+T.
And the hanging indent is gone.
Hopefully, that little demo helps you understand a little about how paragraph formatting works. Here is some more helpful information:
 | - A paragraph is a chunk of text that ends when you press the Enter key. Paragraph-formatting commands work only on paragraphs, not on sentences or individual words. Of course, if your paragraph is only a single word or sentence, that's okay.
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- You can format all the paragraphs in a document by first selecting the entire document. The quick way to do that is to press the Ctrl+A key combination.
 | - Some folks like to see the Enter key symbol (¶) in their documents, visually marking the end of each paragraph. You can do this in Word by clicking the Word Options button on the Office Button menu. Click Display on the left side of the Word Options dialog box. On the right side, put a check mark by Paragraph Marks. Click OK. Now, every time you press the Enter key, a ¶ symbol appears at the end of the paragraph.
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