Word 2013 - Paragraph Formatting
What is Paragraph Formatting?
Paragraph formatting covers a variety of attributes that determine
how the text fits on the page and how entire paragraphs are
formatted. These include:
 Alignment – controls how a paragraph aligns in relation to the
page margins (left, centre, right, justified).
 Indentation – controls how far from the left or the right of the
page margin a paragraph starts or ends.
 Spacing – controls how far each paragraph is from the
next/previous paragraph and/or how far apart each line of the
same paragraph is from the next/previous line.
 Bullets & numbering – controls how symbols or consecutive
numbers are automatically added at the beginning of each
paragraph.
 Borders – controls the appearance of lines that can be added
above, below or to the sides of paragraphs.
 Shading - controls the colour and shading that can be added
behind the paragraph text.
Additional, special paragraph formatting features control the
pagination of paragraphs:
 Widows and Orphans - keeps at least two lines of a paragraph
at the top or bottom of a page.
 Keep with next - prevents automatic page breaks from splitting
a heading away from its associated text.
 Keep lines together - keeps all the lines of a paragraph on one
page.
 Page break before – ensures a paragraph always starts on a
new page.
These are covered in our Microsoft Word 2013 Level 3 course and
outside the scope of this guide.
Show or Hide Formatting Marks
When working with paragraph formatting, it is useful to see where
one paragraph ends and the next one starts. This is indicated by
the paragraph marker ¶ (a ‘pilcrow’). It is displayed wherever the
Enter key has been pressed.
Known as a ‘non-printing character’, the pilcrow is just one of a
variety of symbols used to inform the user when an ‘invisible’
keystroke has been used. Other common non-printing characters
are are
.
indicates that a space has been typed.
 Indicates that the Tab key has been pressed.

indicates that Ctrl+Enter has been pressed. This creates a
‘soft return’ (sometimes called a manual line break. It causes the
line to break before it gets to the margin where an automatic line
break (a ‘word wrap’) would normally occur.
To view non printing characters:
Select the Home tab.
Click Show/Hide
in the Paragraph group.
Paragraph Alignment
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
Tip: Increase Indent and Decrease Indent commands can also be
found on the Mini Toolbar
Setting a precise left indent
By default, the method described above indents/outdents a
paragraph by half-an-inch (approx. 1.25cm) each time you click the
relevant button. To control this measurement more precisely:
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click the dialog launcher button in the bottom right corner of the
Paragraph group
.
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire
paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click Align Text Left; Center; Align Text Right, or: Justify in the
Paragraph group.
Paragraph Indentation
There are four types or paragraph indentation:
 Left indent - pushes all the lines of a paragraph away from the
left margin.
 First line indent - pushes just the first line of a paragraph away
from the left margin.
 Hanging indent - pushes all the lines of a paragraph EXCEPT the
first one.
 Right Indent - pushes all the lines of a paragraph away from the
right margin.
Setting a left indent
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire
paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click Increase Indent in the Paragraph group
.
4. Click Decrease Indent to remove the indentation from
(outdent) the selected paragraph
.
1
4. Under Indentation, enter a measurement in the Left: spin box.
5. Click OK.
Tip: A quick way of removing ALL paragraphs formatting from a
paragraph is to click on the paragraph and press Ctrl+Q.
Setting a first line indent or a hanging indent
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click the dialog launcher button in the bottom right corner of the
Paragraph group
.
4. Under Special: select Hanging or, First line in the drop-down list.
5. Enter a measurement in the By: spin box.
6. Click OK.
To remove a hanging indent or a first line indent:
1. Repeat steps 1 to 3 above.
Word 2013 - Paragraph Formatting
2. Under Special: select None in the drop-down list.
3. Click OK.
Setting a right indent
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire
paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click the dialog launcher button in the bottom right corner of
the Paragraph group
last style used. Use the drop-down arrow at the right to select an
alternative in the Library.
Changing Line Spacing
Line spacing affects the space between the lines of text in a
paragraph. Increasing it can be useful for draft documents so that
on a printed version you can write notes between the lines of text.
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire
paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
.
4. Under Indentation, enter a measurement in the Right: spin
3. Click Line Spacing in the Paragraph group
box.
5. Click OK.
Using the ruler to set indentations
Paragraph indent markers are shown on the horizontal ruler. If
you don't see this ruler, select the View tab and in the Show/Hide
group tick the Ruler check box.
At the left of the horizontal ruler you will see the following
markers:
4. Select the line spacing option you want from the list.
These markers can be moved (clicked and dragged) individually or
together to create left, first line and hanging indentations.
At the right of the horizontal ruler you will see a single marker:
.
Change Spacing Before or After Paragraphs
You can increase the space before and after a paragraph in order to
make titles/headings look less cramped. This technique also does
away with having to press Enter twice every time you want to start
a new paragraph and gives more control to precisely how much
space there is between paragraphs.
1. Click anywhere on the paragraph; for all paragraph formatting
tasks, it is not necessary to select (highlight) the entire
paragraph.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click the dialog launcher button in the bottom right corner of
the Paragraph group
.
4. Select the Indents and Spacing tab
5. Under
This can be moved to create a right indentation.
The shaded area to the left or to the right of the markers indicates
the page’s margins.
1. To create a left indent, click and drag along the ruler the small
rectangle at the bottom of the markers
.
2. To create a first line indent, click and drag along the ruler the
small triangle that points down from the top
.
3. To create a hanging indent, click and drag along the ruler the
small triangle that points up from the bottom
.
4. To create a right indent, click and drag along the ruler the
small triangle at the right-hand side of the horizontal ruler
.
‘Tool Tips’ will appear when you are pointing in the correct spot to
click and drag a marker, eg.
.
Spacing, set a
measurement
in
the
Before: and/or After: spin
box(es). The spin button
increase or decrease the
spacing by 6pts per click but
you can type into the box your own values.
6. Click OK.
Adding Automatic Bullets and Numbering
Adding Basic Bullets and Numbers
1. Select the paragraphs that you wish to add bullets or numbers.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click either the Bullets
or Numbering
button.
Clicking the face of the button will give a default style or, the
2
When formatting paragraphs with bullets and numbering, Word
indents the paragraphs to give added emphasis. If you prefer your
paragraphs un-indented, select them and click the Decrease
Indent button
in the Paragraph group of the Home tab.
To remove bullets and numbering
1. Select the paragraphs from which you wish to remove bullets or
numbers.
2. Select the Home tab.
3. Click either the Bullets
or Numbering
button.
Tip: If an automatic bullet or number appears after pressing Enter,
you can remove it by pressing Backspace (if you want to continue
typing on the same line) or pressing Enter again (to start typing on a
new line).
Changing the start number for an automatically numbered list
If you have applied numbering to two separate lists in your
document, Word ‘thinks’ that they are unrelated and will start
numbering the second one again from 1.
If this is not the case and you wish the numbering to continue from
where the previous list left off, you can change it.
1. Right-click anywhere over the list that you want the numbering to
continue from the previous list.
2. Click Continue Numbering in the shortcut menu.
Conversely, Word may think that your second list is the same as the
first one and has continued the numbering when, in fact, you wish it
to restart numbering from 1. In these cases, you can also change it.
1. Right-click anywhere over the list that you want the numbering to
continue from the previous list.
Word 2013 - Paragraph Formatting
2. Click Restart at 1 in the shortcut menu.
Tip: You can also change the start number by clicking the small
AutoCorrect Options button that appears next to an automatic
number immediately after it is added.
This button will only remain visible
until you carry out another action (eg.
type something).
Sometimes, you may want not want to continue numbering from
the previous list or start from 1 again. In these cases, you can
enter a custom value.
1. Right-click anywhere over the list that you want the
numbering to restart from a custom number.
2. Click Set Numbering Value… in the shortcut menu.
3. Enter a value in the Set value to: spin box.
Follow number with: - leave as Tab character.
Add tab stop at: - leave unticked. This is only needed in
exceptional circumstances where a hanging indent is not
used.
Multi-level bullets and numbering
Sometimes, you may want a numbered paragraph to be followed
by a paragraph with a ‘sub’ bullet or number. For example, a main
heading will have a number 1. But you want its sub-headings to be
a. b. c., etc.
1. Select all the paragraphs that you wish to add outline bullets or
numbers.
2. Select the Home tab.


2. Click the down-arrow at the right of the Bullets button in the
Paragraph group of the Home tab.
3. Select a different bullet from the Library. All the bullets should
3. Click either the Bullets
or Numbering
button.
Clicking the face of the button will give a default style or, the
last style used. Use the drop-down arrow at the right to select
an alternative in the Library.
4. Click onto the first paragraph that you want to make a sub point
of the one above.
5. Click Increase Indent in the Paragraph group of the Home tab
to ‘demote’ the paragraph.
Adjusting Indents
After formatting your paragraphs with
bullets or numbering, you may wish to
adjust the indentations.
1. Right-click over a bullet or number
whose indentations you wish to
change. It, and all other bullets or
numbers at the same level and that
are part of the same list will
highlight with a grey background.
2. Select Adjust List Indents… from the
shortcut menu.
3. Adjust measurements as necessary to produce the required
effect. Settings are as follows:
 Number position: - this is the distance between the left
margin and the bullet or number.
 Text indent: - this is the distance between the left margin
and where the text starts. For standard font sizes (10 or
11pt) the author of this document suggests it is always at
least 0.6cm greater than Number position:
Both these default styles can be customised to using different bullet
and numbering schemes (eg. 1. 1.1. 1.2. 1.3., etc.).
Bullets:
1. Click on the bullet that you want to change the style of.
It, and all other bullets at the same level and that are part of the
same list will highlight with a grey background.
6. Repeat step 5 for all other paragraphs that you want to make
sub points.
7. Select any paragraphs that you want to make a sub-sub
paragraph.
8. Click Increase Indent again to demote it to the next level down.
You can demote paragraphs down to nine levels.
9. If you have demoted any paragraphs too far, click Decrease
Indent
to ‘promote’ the paragraph.
Changing multi-level bullet or numbering style
When creating multi-level lists for bullets, Word defaults to using:
... and for numbering:
3
change consistently.
Numbers:
1. Click on any paragraph in the list where you want to change the
multi-level style.
2. Click Multilevel List in the Paragraph group of the Home tab
.
3. Select an alternative style from the two at the top of the List
Library. The styles in the second and third rows involve the use of
styles and may present difficulties to less experienced Word
users. Style are covered in our Microsoft Word 2013 Level 3
course and are outside the scope of this guide.
Word 2013 - Paragraph Formatting
Removing multilevel numbering, changing the start number and
adjusting indents
Techniques are similar to those described earlier in this document,
the main exception being adjusting list indents.
If you have picked a multilevel style from the Multilevel
Numbering Library, you will be presented with the following
dialog box:
Although many users find this feature useful and can work with it
effectively, some find it difficult to manage and ‘interfering’.
To stop Word trying to help you in this way:
1. Select the File tab.
2. Click Options.
3. Select Proofing at the left.
4. Click the AutoCorrect Options… button
.
5. Select the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
6. Untick the Automatic bulleted lists and Automatic numbered
lists check boxes.
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK again.
1. Select in the Click level to modify list the numbering level that
you wish to change the indentations for.
2. Under Position at the bottom of the dialog box, enter in the
Aligned at: spin box the distance between the left margin and
the number.
3. Under Position at the bottom of the dialog box, enter in the
Text indented at: spin box the distance between the left
margin and where the text starts. For standard font sizes (10
or 11pt) the author of this document suggests it is always at
least 0.6cm greater than Aligned at:
4. Click OK.
Automatic Bullets and Numbering ‘As You Type’
Word has a built-in feature designed to help you create automatic
bulleted and numbered list.
If you start typing a new paragraph with a number followed by a
full stop, Word formats the paragraph with automatic numbering.
When you then press Enter, Word assumes you are starting a new
paragraph and gives you an automatic sequential number.
A similar thing happens if you start a new paragraph with a
hyphen. Word ‘thinks’ you are creating a bulleted list and although
it doesn’t change the hyphen, it indents the paragraph and gives
you another hyphen when you press Enter.
Useful Paragraph Formatting Keystrokes
Alignment
Switch a paragraph between centred and left-aligned
Switch a paragraph between justified and leftaligned
Switch a paragraph between right-aligned and leftaligned
Ctrl + E
Ctrl + J
Ctrl + R
Indentation
Left align a paragraph
Indent a paragraph from the left
CTRL+L
CTRL+M
4
Remove a paragraph indent from the left
CTRL+SHIFT+M
Create a hanging indent
Reduce a hanging indent
Remove paragraph formatting
CTRL+T
CTRL+SHIFT+T
CTRL+Q
Spacing
Single-space lines.
Double-space lines.
Set 1.5-line spacing.
Add or remove one line space preceding a
paragraph.
CTRL+1
CTRL+2
CTRL+5
CTRL+0 (zero)