Microsoft Word comes equipped with a wide variety of fonts and many tools to allow you to be creative with your word processing. Yet, from what I see, most people don’t go any farther than using boldface and a larger font size and maybe a different color for the headings and parts of text they need to highlight.

While in business documentation the use of fancy fonts and excessive decorations may not be appropriate, knowing the full potential of Microsoft Word will be very helpful when designing a newsletter, a brochure, or a card.

Fonts

First of all, I would recommend you to check all the available fonts. You will find them in the upper left corner; there is a little white box there that probably says “Times New Roman” – the default font you are most likely using. If you click on it and scroll down, you will see all the other font names and samples of them. There are fonts that look like handwritten script, fonts that are slim and narrow or thick and bold, fonts that look formal, informal, and funny – in other words, enough to find something useful for whatever project you are working on.

Color and Special Effects

When you have chosen the font you like, you can experiment with color and special effects. There are two ways to change the font color. First is through the little button you should have on your toolbar, an underlined letter “A”; the second way is to click on “Format,” also on the toolbar, and then on “Font.” The window that will open will not only allow you to change the font color but also let you use special effects like adding shadow to your text. You will see little checkboxes titled “Shadow,” “Outline,” “Emboss,” “Engrave,” “Small Caps,” etc. Try and select each one; a sample text below will show you what happens and how it changes the text.

Another handy tool is Borders and Shading; you will find it under “Format” as well. That feature allows you to put a border around certain parts of your text, in many different styles. Your border can be plain, or 3-dimentional, or have a shadow. You can choose how thick it is and you can change the color of the border. The “Shading” feature allows you to fill the border with color – inside. Imagine, for example, how much better the heading “My Newsletter” will look if you make it blue, surround it with a blue border and fill the border with, say, yellow… But wait, even that is not all.

WordArt

If you want to be even more creative, you can use WordArt, a wonderful feature with a whole gallery of fancy text templates. The WordArt button should be on your toolbar as well (usually on the lower one, down the page); it is another capital “A”, only blue and inclined to the right. If you can’t find it there, go to “Insert” (on the upper toolbar), scroll down, click on “Picture,” scroll down again and then click on “WordArt”.

Unlike with fonts, color, and borders, you cannot apply WordArt to your already existing headings. You will have to type them into WordArt. When you click on WordArt, it opens a WordArt Gallery window showing you different kinds of templates you can use for your heading. You can make your heading diagonal, arched, wavy, 3-dimentional – even vertical, if you want! Choose the template you like, click on it, and then click “OK”. It will open another window saying “Enter Your Text Here” – that’s where you type in your heading. You will notice that you can adjust the appearance of the template at this point by choosing a different font, different font size, and making it bold or italic. When you are done, click “OK.” Your new fancy heading will be inserted into the document.

If you don’t like it, you can always change and adjust it more. In order to do that you should click on it; two things will show up: a border around your text and a small WordArt window below it giving you different options. Using the controls on the border (the little black and green squares in the corners and on the sides) you can stretch, compress, enlarge or reduce the heading. Using the WordArt window you can edit your text, change the font, change the color and the shape of your heading, switch from horizontal to vertical, make all the letters same height, and change the spacing between the letters. With all of these options, you can transform the original template beyond recognition and come very close to having your own creative design. If you don’t like the heading altogether and wish to get rid of it, all you need to do is to click on it and hit the “Delete” button on your keyboard.