Welcome to the Spoken tutorial on Typing text and basic formatting.
In this tutorial, we will learn to:
Align text
Use Bullets and Numbering
Use Cut, Copy and Paste options
Use Bold, Underline and Italic options
Use the Font name, Font size, Font color options in Writer
Formatting features: Applying these features make our documents more attractive.
They will be much easier to read as compared to the documents which are plain text.
This tutorial is recorded using
Ubuntu Linux OS version 18.04 and LibreOffice Suite version 6.3.5
Open the file Resume.odt which we have created earlier.
This file has been provided to you in the Code files link on this tutorial page.
Please download and extract the file.
Make a copy and then use it for practising.
We will first learn about aligning text in Writer.
We had previously typed the word RESUME and aligned it to the center of the page.
So, let’s select the word RESUME once again.
If you have resized your LibreOffice window, some of the icon may not be visible.
In that case, click on the double arrow icon at the end of the toolbars to see the hidden icons.
Now click on the Align Left icon on the Formatting toolbar.
The word RESUME is now aligned to the left of the page.
Click on the Align Right icon. The word RESUME gets aligned to the right of the page.
Now, click on the Justify icon.
The word RESUME is uniformly placed between the right and left margin of the page.
This feature will be more obvious when we have a line or paragraph of text.
Let’s undo the changes until our text Resume is centre-aligned.
In Writer, we press Ctrl + Z keys on the keyboard to undo an action. Deselect the word RESUME.
Now, press Enter key on the keyboard to go to the next line.
Press the Enter key once again to create one more line.
Click on the Align Left icon in the toolbar.
Then click on the Bold icon from the toolbar to disable the bold option.
Now let’s learn about bullets and numbering.
Bullets and Numbering are used when independent points have to be written in a document
Each point starts with either a bullet or a number.
Bullets are used for unordered lists
Numbering is used for ordered lists
In the Formatting toolbar, we can see the separate icons for Bullets and Numbering.
Let’s click on the Bullets icon.
Immediately a dot or bullet symbol appears on the document.
Let’s type the alphabet a and press Enter.
Now, let’s type b and press Enter.
Next let’s press the Numbering icon.
Immediately, the bullet symbol is converted to number 1.
Type c and press Enter.
Type d and press Enter.
Hope this gives you a clear picture of the difference between bullets and numbering.
Click and drag the left mouse button to select all this text.
Now, we will learn another method of accessing Bullets and Numbering.
First click on the Format menu in the menu bar and then on Bullets and Numbering option.
Bullets and Numbering dialog box opens up.
It provides various styles under different tabs which can be applied to our document.
Select Bullets tab if not already selected.
Many bullets styles are seen here.
Select the large square bullets.
And click on the OK button at the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
Observe the change in the bullet symbols.
Now, let’s reopen the Bullets and Numbering dialog box and click on the Numbering tab.
Many numbering styles are seen here.
Let’s select the Roman numerals style.
And click on the OK button at the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
Observe the change in the numbering. They appear as Roman numerals now.
Likewise we can use any bullets or numbering style as per our choice.
Now press the Delete key on the keyboard.
Then press the Backspace key on the keyboard to remove the remaining numbering also.
Let’s reopen the Bullets and Numbering dialog box and click on the Numbering tab.
Now, let us click on the second style and click on the OK button.
We are now ready to type our first point.
We’ll type NAME colon space RAMESH and press Enter.
Here onwards, press the Enter key after every point.
The next bullet point shows the new incremental number.
Let’s type the second point in the Resume as “FATHER’S NAME” colon MAHESH
Then type the third point as MOTHER’S NAME colon SHWETA.
Type the next two points as shown here.
Let’s save our file by pressing Ctrl + S keys.
It’s a good habit to frequently save our file while working.
There can be multiple levels of bullets or numbers in a list.
It depends on the format we choose.
Let me demonstrate for you.
Go to point no. 4 FATHERS OCCUPATION.
Place the cursor after the colon and press Enter.
Now press Tab key once.
Immediately, no. 5 turns into a new Bullet list and gets indented below no. 4
Move the cursor to the end of the bullet point and press Enter.
Type SELF EMPLOYED and press Enter.
We can press Shift + Tab keys to decrease the indentation.
Now press the Delete key till the next point comes up one line.
Move the cursor to the end of the numbered point 5 and press Enter. No. 6 appears on the list.
To turn off Bullets and Numbering, reopen the Bullets and Numbering dialog box.
Click on the Remove button at the bottom.
We see that the bullet and numbering style is no longer seen for the new line of text.
Explore the bullets and numbering quick access icon in the formatting toolbar on your own.
Notice that we have typed the word NAME thrice in our document.
Instead of typing the same text all over again, we can use the Copy and Paste option in Writer.
So, let us learn how to do this.
First, delete the word NAME from the text MOTHER’S NAME.
Select the word NAME in FATHER’S NAME
Right-click on the mouse and select Copy.
Place the cursor between the text MOTHER’S and colon symbol.
Right-click on the mouse and select Paste.
We see that the word NAME gets pasted automatically.
The shortcut keys for these options are Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste.
This feature is very useful while writing repeated text in large documents.
So we don't need to type the entire text repeatedly. We can simply copy and paste.
In Writer, there is a feature similar to Copy, which is Cut.
Let me show a demonstration.
First, delete the word NAME from the text MOTHER’S NAME.
Now select the word NAME in FATHER'S NAME.
Right-click and select Cut.
Notice that the word NAME is no longer there next to the word FATHER’S.
Which means it has been cut or deleted.
Place the cursor between the text MOTHER’S and colon symbol.
Right-click on the mouse and select Paste.
We see that the word NAME is now pasted next to the word MOTHER’S
The shortcut key to cut is Ctrl+X.
Likewise, paste the word after FATHER’S also.
Cut and Paste feature is useful to move a text from one place in the document to another.
The only difference between copying and cutting the text is the Copy option keeps the original word at its place from where it was copied whereas the Cut option removes it from its original place.
Move the cursor to the end of the document. Press Enter twice
Now let’s type a new heading EDUCATION DETAILS.
We will now learn how the Font name and Font size of any text can be changed or applied.
Previously, we had selected UnDotum as the font name.
Hence we can see UnDotum in the Font name field.
Let us use a different Font and Size for the heading EDUCATION DETAILS.
So, first select the text EDUCATION DETAILS And then click on the Font Name drop-down.
Search for Liberation Sans and click on it.
The Font Size field shows 14 currently.
Let’s change this to 11.
We see that the Font size of the text decreases.
Let’s now move to Font Color.
Make sure that our text is still selected.
Now, click on the dropdown in the Font Color and select the color green.
So, we see that the heading is now green in color.
Next we will click on the icons Bold, Italic and Underline.
We can use any combination of these text formats for our text, as per our requirements.
Save our file by pressing Ctrl + S keys. And then close it by clicking on the X icon at the top right.
This brings us to the end of this tutorial. Let us summarise.
In this tutorial we learnt to:
Align text
Use Bullets and Numbering Use Cut, Copy and Paste options
Use Bold, Underline and Italic options
Use the Font name, Font size, Font color options in Writer
As an assignment: Open the file practice.odt
Activate Bullets and Numbering
Choose any style and type few lines of text
Select some text and change its Font name to Free Sans
Set the Font size to 16
Make the text Italic
Change the Font color to red
Save and close the file
The video at the following link summaries the spoken tutorial project Please download and watch it.
We conduct workshop using Spoken Tutorials and give certificates. For more details, please contact us.
Please post your timed queries in this forum.
The Spoken Tutorial project is funded by MHRD Govt of India
This tutorial was originally contributed by DesiCrew Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in 2011
This is Pratik Kamble along with the Spoken Tutorial team from IIT Bombay signing off. Thank you for watching.