What is the Formatting Toolbar?

The Formatting Toolbar is a standard component of many WPS and text editors that allows users to format the text quickly. Using this toolbar allows the user to improve the appearance and legibility of the textual content in a rather short period of time. In this article, I want to shed some light on what the Formatting Toolbar is, what it is used for, and its sub-tools. We will here explain in detail some of the most commonly used terminologies when it comes to text formats and illustrate real-life examples. Moreover, further in the lesson, we will describe how to work on the formatting toolbar in order to get professional and refined documents from you.  

Primary Terminologies  

1. Bold (B): highlights the selected text by increasing the depth of the color and the thickness of the characters’ lines for better visibility. For instance, when writing normal text, it reaches the reader in this simple font, but when the writer wants to highlight the message, it is in bold.  

2. Italic (I): Translates the selected text to the right side of the document and is often used to draw the reader’s attention to certain earmarked terms or phrases. For example,  normal typing would be written like this, and italic typing would be in emphasis.  

3. Underline (U): As in Word, when you highlight some text, the cursor turns into a line across the page, and you can insert a horizontal line below the highlighted text for importance or titles. If a certain text contains a regular pattern, then it will be displayed as normal while the underlined part is displayed like this.  

4. Strikethrough: GV: Overlays the text with a line that spans the width of the text, zeroing in the middle of the selection of text to show deletion or correction. Words in regular font are typed as normally, but if there is a need to cross out words, the words are typed in strikethrough font.  

5. Font Type: Analyzes the current style of the placed text and then offers the possibility of changing the font family to one of the proposed examples: Arial, Times New Roman, or Calibri. For instance, text in Arial will differ from text in Times New Roman font.  

6. Font Size: You can change the size of the text; size is usually expressed in points, for example, 10 pt, 12 pt, or 14 pt. Normal text might be 12 pt, for example, and big text could be 14 pt.  

7. Text Color: Alters the text color and provides a set of color options to set the color for the chosen text. Standard font type is normal but if you use text color it is either red, blue or the color of your preference.

8. Highlight Color: Highlights the background of the selected text with an emphasizing chosen color to make the passage easily conspicuous. For example, the normal text is black and non-italicized, while the highlighted text is black too, but the background of the selected word or phrase is colored.

9. Alignment: A function that justifies the text in the left, center, right or justify the text across the page. Left this text, for example, is standard, centered text, this text is at the middle, right aligned text, this text is on the right and justified text is text spread.

10. Bullet Points and Numbering: Produces lists having bullets or numbers so that it becomes easier to sort them. So here given an example, bulleted lists look like this:

• Item 1
• Item 2

Numbered lists look like this:

1. Item 1
2. Item 2

11. Indentation: Changes the level of indentation of a selected paragraph, either to increase or decrease it. Non-bold text uses normal line spacing with no additional indents while bold text uses spaces or tabs at the left margin of the text.

12. Line Spacing: Alters the vertical distance between text lines which enhance the appearances of documents or articles. Single-spaced format is the continuous format while the double-spaced text format would have more space between the texts for enhanced readability.

Visual Representation

Here is a simple illustration of a typical Formatting Toolbar:

Steps to Use the Formatting Toolbar

1. Accessing the Toolbar: Click on your word processing program or a text editor. The Formatting Toolbar is sometimes placed on the top interface of a program.

2. Selecting Text: For example, you want to make a particular word or a line bold or change the color of the line, then you place your mouse at the start of the text area and drag till the end of the line and right click to choose the format of the line.

3. Applying Bold, Italic, or Underline: Use the buttons marked as B, I, U to put the selected text in the corresponding styles.

4. Changing Font Type and Size: With the help of two dropdown menus, you can as well select another version of the font type and size.

5. Adjusting Text and Highlight Colors: You can choose your favorite color by clicking on the text color or highlight color button, then choose on the palette.

6. Aligning Text: Snap with alignment buttons making the text be in the left or in the center, right, or justified.

7. Creating Lists: Select the bullet points or numbering sign and you can create a list.

8. Modifying Indentation and Line Spacing: That is, to make the desired changes in the indentation students need to click on the respective buttons and to change the line spacing they also should press the necessary buttons.

Conclusion

Formatting Toolbar is among the most essential tools in the word processing and text editing soften wares that makes it very easy for users to manage appearance and reading the documents. When utilizing the various features of Formatting Toolbar that includes; bolding, italicizing, underlining, changing the font, size, text color and highlighting colors, alignment-bulleting, numbering, indentation, spaces between lines or paragraphs.