MS Office Tutorials - Fancy Headings

Conquering Computers: Tutorial Centre
Microsoft Office
Updated: Monday, 04 February 2008

Number 3: Creating Vertically Centred Text in Word

Last time we spoke about some ways to enhance your headings in Microsoft Word version 6 and later with borders and shadings. Please keep in mind that these features are very effective and relatively easy to apply, however, it is possible to 'go overboard' and so add too much to your documents. Don't sacrifice the main meaning or message of your document by burying it in masses of design, colours and clipart. Adding and applying too much irrelevant design and clipart can result in your message being lost. Remember that the content and the design are each equally important so devote about the same amount of time to maximising the effect of each.

This time we will look at how to create and apply the following effect (Figure 1):
Vertically-centred text effect.

This effect has both the first and last letters larger than the rest, with the smaller leters underlined. Also, all letters are vertically centred with respect to each other. Here are the steps to reproduce this heading:

Start with a blank Word document or your existing one and type the text COMPUTER COURSES all in upper case.
Highlight all the text, then select the Format menu then Font…

Select Arial Black on the left of the dialogue box for the font and 28 points for the font size on the right, then click OK. The advantage of using the Format/Font dialogue box in Word 97 is that you can preview the font. In Word 2000, the font can be previewed from the Font drop down in the toolbar.
Now to make the first and last letters large. Select the first letter, C, then select 48 for the point size from the Font Size drop down like this (Figure 2):

Repeat this step for the last letter S.
The text should now look like this (Figure 3):
Now to make all letters vertically centred: Select the first letter C, then select the Format menu then Font…

Click the Character Spacing tab at the top of the screen (Figure 4):
Click the Position drop down (Figure 5) and select Lowered:
Then, select 6 pt using the spinner control from the By section just to the right (Figure 6); use the 'down' arrow on the spinner control:
Click OK to give the following effect with the letter C (Figure 7):
Repeat steps 6 to 10 with the last letter S to give the following result (Figure 8):
Now to place the underline on the smaller letters: Select the letters OMPUTER COURSE. If you find it impossible to select just those letters because Word automatically selects all letters when you use the mouse, use the keyboard to select the required letters. To do this, click after the first letter C, then hold down the (Shift) key and keep pressing the right-hand cursor key until the required letters are selected.
Make the selected letters underlined by pressing the (Ctrl)(U) keys.

You now have the desired effect.

By playing around with the positioning (and also the Spacing and Scale) features in the Character Spacing tab, you can achieve some very good results.

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