Computer Boot Up Camp

Week Three Class Notes-

Using Writing Tools

On-Line at: http://www.dowlingcentral.com

EXERCISE 1: You will need to open up the document on the “R” Drive in our Camp folder called ex 3-1.

Save it into your folder and call it mussels.

1. Check spelling and grammar in document

Misspelled words are underlined with the red squiggly line. Grammar problems are underlined with a green squiggly line.

You can check the mistakes in a document in two ways.

a. Type up the whole paper. When you are done, click on TOOLS in the menu bar and then SPELLING AND GRAMMAR.

You will get a dialogue box with all the mistakes…one at a time. Decide if these really are mistakes and make the appropriate changes OR IGNORE the mistake.

If the word is correct and you want to add it to the custom dictionary…like your last name…click add. Just make sure that the word is spelled correctly or spell check won’t pick up the misspelling next time.

TRY THIS: To change what the spell checker and grammar look for, click on OPTIONS at the bottom of the checker window. You can check or uncheck any of the possibilities you would like. Also…and even better, click on the settings box. This will let you customize what you want WORD to look for.

b. As you are typing, right click on words that have squiggly lines. Word will give you suggestions for improvement. Click on your choice. You can also add words to your dictionary or ignore them from here.

EXERCISE 2: Run a spell check and grammar check on your mussels document. Use method A from above. Make sure that the Check Grammar button is checked. Stop when you get to the Readability Statistics.

This will tell you how many words are in your document and at what grade level you are writing. A good thing to know.

2. Using the thesaurus

You can also use the thesaurus to find synonyms for your writing. You can get to the thesaurus in two ways. First, however, you have to highlight the word or phrase you want to change.

a. Go back to the TOOLS menu>>> Language>>>THESAURUS.

b. Right click on the word you want to change. Click on Synonyms>>>Thesaurus.

EXERCISE 3: Highlight a few words in your document and change them to other words.

SAVE YOUR DOCUMENT.

3. Find and replace text

Lets say that you want to find every instance of times you used a particular word in your document. You can use find to find them and replace all of them with another word.

EXERCISE 4: Go to EDIT in the menu. Click on FIND. Then click on the REPLACE tab. Type in muscle in the find box and mussel in the replace box. Replace all.

4. Inserting graphics

Ahh. The best part of all! Graphics. If you want to add graphics to your document, here’s how.

EXERCISE 5: Go to INSERT on the menu bar. Choose PICTURE. You then have to decide if you already have the graphic on your computer (maybe you took it with a digital camera. Then you would choose FROM FILE) or you need to find one from the clipart gallery. Since we don’t have a picture that we placed on the computer, we are going to use the gallery.

Click on Clipart. Type in the word mussel. See if there are any pics in the gallery of mussels. If there are, choose one, right click on it and insert it into your document. It gets inserted where you have left your blinking cursor.

If there are no mussels in your gallery…which is probably the case, we can go elsewhere.

http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/?cag=1

To get to it from school, open up IE EXPLORER. Copy and paste the above address into the web address bar. Practice searching for pictures.

At home (and hopefully next year here at school): Find the Clips Online button and click on it. This will take you to an on-line gallery of thousands of available clipart graphics.

When you get to the gallery, you use the search box at the top. Choose clipart for the type and type in mussels. You will be taken to a page with several clipart pics from which to choose. There may be more than one page. Choose one that you like…or several…by clicking the little boxes. Click on the download basket over to the left side of the screen.

You have to select which office product you have…we have the older version at school. Then hit download now.

You might be prompted to accept the agreement. You also might be prompted to open or save. Choose open. The graphic(s) will be imported into your gallery and you can right click and insert the one you want. They will be on your computer for future use unless you delete them.

NOTE: You have to be on-line to get here. If you have a dial-up connection at home, dial in first.

Now we have to format the graphic.

EXERCISE 6: Click on the corner of the graphic and drag it in or out to resize it. Then click on the graphic…right click and choose FORMAT PICTURE.

You can choose to put a background color behind it, a box around it…The most important thing in the format picture window is layout. If you want to move your picture around, choose TIGHT or SQUARE. This will allow you to place the pic within the text. Move your pic to a place you like.

SAVE YOUR DOCUMENT.

5. Using templates

Templates are pre made documents that you can use to speed up the process. You have some on your computer, but there are a lot at the Office site.

The templates that are already on your computer can be found by going to FILE>>>NEW. There are many templates ready for you to fill in.