Introduction

After creating text you can make it fancy or professionally looking by applying the techniques of text formatting. Before exploring some of the formatting attributes available to a word processor, there are two important things you should learn first: techniques of document navigation and text selection.

Navigation

Navigating through text is the ability to move the caret or the mouse cursor among the various characters or sections of text. The easiest way to move the caret to any section of the document is to click the desired position. If you click between two characters, the caret would be positioned between those two. If you click in the middle of a letter, the operating system would calculate the shortest distance to a border of the letter and position the caret there: Neither the caret nor the cursor can be positioned in the middle of a character. For example, if you try clicking the letter M, if your mouse landed between the left border of the letter and the left diagonal, the caret would be positioned to the left of M. If you try clicking M and your mouse lands between the right diagonal and the right border of the letter, the caret would be positioned to the right of M.

You can also perform text navigation using the keyboard:

• If you press the right arrow key, the caret moves one character to the right.
  If the caret is already at the end of the line but it is not on the last line of the document, the caret would be moved to the left of the first character of the next line.
• If you press the left arrow key, the caret moves one character to the left.
  If the caret is already at the beginning of the line  and it is the first line of the document, nothing would happen. If the caret is already at the beginning of the line but it is not on the first line of the document, the caret would be moved to the right of the last character of the previous line.
• If you press Home, the caret moves to the beginning (the far left) of the current line.
  If the caret is already at the beginning of the current line, it would not be moved.
• If you press End, the caret moves to the end of the current line. If the caret is already at the end of the current line, it would not be moved.
• If you press the down arrow key, the caret moves down to approximately the same position but to the next line of text. If the position is not available in the next line of the text, for example if the next line of text is shorter than the current line, the caret gets positioned at the end of the line.
  If you press the down arrow key but the caret is positioned in the last line of text of the document, nothing would happen.
• If you press the up arrow key, the caret moves up to approximately the same position but to the previous line of text. If the same position is not available in the previous line of the text, the caret gets positioned at the end of the line.
  If you press the up arrow key but the caret is positioned in the first line of text of the document, nothing would happen.
• If you press Ctrl + the right arrow key, the caret would move one word to the right. If the caret is already positioned at the end of the line and it is not on the last line, the caret would be moved to the left of the first word of the next line. If the caret is already positioned to the right of the last word of the current line and there is no other word after that, nothing would happen.
• If you press Ctrl + the left arrow key, the caret would move one word to the left. If the caret is already positioned in the beginning of the line and it is not on the first line, the caret would be moved to the left of the last word of the previous line. If the caret is already positioned to the beginning of the first word of the current line and there is no other word before that, nothing would happen.
• If you press Ctrl + the down arrow key, the caret would be positioned to the left of the first word of the next paragraph. If the caret is positioned anywhere in the last paragraph, the caret would be moved to the end of the paragraph. If the caret is already at the end of the paragraph and the current paragraph is the last, it would not be moved but it may beep.
• If you press Ctrl + the up arrow key, the caret would be positioned to the left of the first word of the previous paragraph. If the caret is positioned anywhere in the first paragraph, it would be moved to the beginning of the paragraph, to the left of the first word. If the caret is already at the beginning of the paragraph of the document, it would not be moved.
• If you press Page Down and the document is so long that it is not displaying completely, all the area you are looking at would be moved up; the same number of lines down would be displayed. This means that the document would be displayed to you one page at a time, going downward. The operating system is in charge of calculating the amount of text that constitutes a page. This means that a page of text is not the same as the page of the printer.
• If you press Page Up and the document is so long that it is not displaying completely, all the area you are looking would be moved down, leaving place for the next page to be displayed. This means that the document would be displayed to you one page at a time, going upward. The operating system is in charge of calculating the amount of text that constitutes a page.
• If you press Ctrl + Page Down, the caret would be moved to the end of the area that is displaying to you.
• If you press Ctrl + Page Up, the caret would be moved to the beginning of the area that is displaying to you.
• If you press Ctrl + Home, the caret moves to the very beginning of the document
• If you press Ctrl + End, the caret moves to the very end of the document

All these operations are managed by the operating system. This means that they usually don't depend on the application you are using.

Practical Learning: Navigating Through Text

1. Start WordPad and type the following:
    

   Leaving Sydney When we decided to leave, we knew we were making a hard decision. We had spent so much time this had become our new home. A few weeks or months earlier, we wanted to make Sydney our newly found settlement, a permanent place we could proudly call ours. It appeared that, unpredictably, fate had decided otherwise. As the time to leave approached, we gathered what were left as our belongings. We managed to meet, for the last time, our neighbors and every one we had been accustomed to. Everybody wished us all the best. Aurhor: Arthur D. Pale Titles: Stories of my Life

2. Resize your application so the word "place" appears as the last word of the fourth line:
    
   
3. Click somewhere on the first line
4. On the second line, on the word "knew", click between n and e
5. Click to the right of the word place
6. Click at the end of the paragraph that starts with "As the time"
7. On the last line, click between of and my
8. Press the up arrow key four times
9. Press the left arrow key three times
10. Press the Home key. That places the caret at the beginning of the current line
11. Press End. That positions the caret at the end of the current line
12. Press and hold the Ctrl key, then press the Home key. That places the caret at the beginning of the document
13. Press Ctrl + Home. That takes you to the beginning of the document