Create your elegant lists easily with Winword 95

Create your elegant lists easily with Winword 95

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): While working on a prospectus some time ago, I learned the hard way that creating a list in Winword 7.0 is actually as effortless as finding police officers at the entry points to Jakarta's three-in-one zone at 9:40 a.m. on a workday. However, I must remind you in advance that it will take a lot of practice to master the tricks, which you cannot find in Winword Help. Once you get the feeling, however, you can finish creating your lists in no time.

Conventional way

In Winword 7.0 there are at least three different approaches that you can take in creating a list such as the one you see in the accompanying illustration. You can select the menu item Format from the menu bar, and then click on the Bullets & Numbering command under it. This will bring out the tabbed Bullets and Numbering dialog box. You choose the bulleted, numbered or multilevel list function you'd like to use by clicking on the appropriate tab. Each tab will show a sample of how your list will look like. You can tell Winword to create the hanging indent for you, or let the second line and all subsequent lines start from the left margin. If you wish, you can even modify the preset formats. Try this, and I guarantee you'll be overwhelmed by the options that you can play around with.

Once you've determined which bulleted or numbered list format you want, you can go ahead and type in your text. Each time you hit ENTER, Winword will create a new item for you -- with a new bullet or an increasing number. To cancel the function, i.e., to stop adding new items to the list, all you have to do is hit ENTER and then BACKSPACE to erase the bullet or number that has just appeared. Your cursor should now be on the left margin, and the text you subsequently type in will be treated as a common paragraph.W

However, when you need to create another list, you'll have to invoke the Bullets & Numbering dialog box again and click its OK button.

If you like shortcuts, you can use the bullets and numbering icons found in the Formatting toolbar. By the way, Winword 7.0 comes with no fewer than nine customizable toolbars, and you can easily cover the entire screen with them and get overwhelmed as well. However, it's easy to tell which one is the Formatting toolbar; it is the one that has the font names, font sizes, bold, italic, underline and text alignment icons on it.

Please keep in mind the magic combination of ENTER and BACKSPACE, since, as I have found out, it is one of the most powerful series of keystrokes in Winword 7.0.

As you go

My preferred method of creating a list is the one that I would call "As-You-Type-It-In". Now, to really see how it works, you have to have Winword 7.0 running on your PC and look closely at the illustration. At the same time, read on and follow the steps I give you next. Well, that's not as easy as it sounds, I guess.

Anyway, creating the first item you see in the illustration was very easy. With the cursor on the left margin ready to start a new paragraph, I typed in the number "1" followed with a period and a space. Then I typed in the text for the first item, which was "This is the first item in the list". I hit a couple of TABs, and then I typed in the price.

When I hit ENTER, the space between the period after the character "1" was magically adjusted without affecting the location of the text "US$800.00". It's nifty. Not only that. As the cursor jumped down to the next line, Winword automatically added the character "2", followed by a period and an appropriate space. My next sentence, "This is the second item in the list", was perfectly aligned with the text above it.

I continued adding more items to the list simply by hitting ENTER. Winword added the numbers, the periods and the spaces automatically. Amazing is perhaps the right word here. How does it do it? Each time you start a new paragraph with a number, a period and a space, Winword will understand that you're creating a list. How should you stop this automatic function? I told you, didn't I? It's the ENTER and BACKSPACE combination!

Items a, b, and c of Item 2 are only slightly more complicated to create, as we're now creating a multilevel list. But, it's still manageable. Here's what I did: I hit ENTER after typing in the text "US$300.00". Winword gave me the number "3". I typed in the letter "a", followed by a period and a space, and I typed in the text "This one belongs to Item 2". Now I had "3. a." as the number of current list items. No problem. I hit ENTER again at the end of the line. On the next line, Winword gave me the number "4", followed by a period and a space. Now, remember this carefully: I moved the insertion point back one line up by hitting the Up Arrow key. The cursor now rested just before the character "a". I hit BACKSPACE once, and bingo! The number "3" disappeared, and "a" remained aligned with the beginning of the text above it. To get "b", I hit END to move the insertion point to the end of the line, and hit ENTER. Winword gave me a "b"-- followed with a period and a space -- perfectly aligned below "a".

I could continue adding items on this level as I did on the previous level -- level of 1., 2., 3. Now, how did I get back to this level? It's easy. I just hit ENTER, and then I hit DELETE. Remember, it's not ENTER and BACKSPACE, but ENTER and DELETE in order to go up one level.

Hanging indent

Creating the hanging indent as shown by Item 3 of my list couldn't be simpler. At the end of the line, I hit ENTER, which gave me the number "4". I continued typing and when I reached the end of this line I hit HOME and BACKSPACE. The number "4" disappeared, but the text "But this one . . . " remained hanging nicely in perfect alignment with the text above it.

To proceed with the second line of the hanging paragraph, I hit END and then ENTER. The insertion point moved down just below the letter "B" of the word "But". Another ENTER as I reached the end of the second line gave me third line without any bullet or number.

Item 4 is a multilevel list. When you know how to create Item 2, you'll have no difficulty figuring out how to create Item 4. Just remember that to promote the next item you're going to enter, you have to hit ENTER and DELETE.

If you think your list looks crowded and a space between the items will make it look better, you can add the space later. When the entire list is completed, you can hit ENTER and BACKSPACE to create spaces between the items.

What about bullets instead of numbers? You can type in a dash, "-", to create a square bullet mark such as the ones you see under Item 4a. Or, you can type in the character "o", and Winword will transform it into a round, solid bullet.

Finally, the behavior of the insertion point as you create your list in Winword 7.0 is really interesting to see and to learn. There's no other way you can familiarize yourself with its movements when you hit, for instance, ENTER and ENTER, than to experiment with it. So, try it out!