Applications : Writer - Content Is KING

The content of your document is important and it helps to highlight key words and sentences so lets use the Formatting Toolbar to play with some text. We will start with the Bold icon.

Formatting Toolbar

Click Under Content and type in Formatting and Enter

Click on the Bold Icon (Ctrl+B) and type This Text is Bold and Enter, the text is darker, Embolden, the Bold Icon is still "Pressed in" so click on it again (Ctrl+B) to release, otherwise the next piece of text will be Bold.

Writer Basic Formatting
Above the Bold Icon are the Undo Icon (Ctrl+U) arrow pointing Left, which you click on to undo your last action when if you make a mistake and opps that wasn't a mistake Click on the Redo Icon (Ctrl+Y) arrow pointing right, to like Undo the Undo do do, you will get use to this.

Use the next few Icons to type out some Text in Italic (Ctrl + I) and Underline (Ctrl + U) and Strikethrough just remember each time to use that Icon or Shortcut Key again to cancel your last Format.

Then try a Bold, Italic and Underlined  to prove that YES you can MULTITASK.

Character

To do some serious Formatting try this: Type in Content Is KING.

Select the text and then on the Menu Bar click on Format » Character

The Character Box pops up and in the Font Tab Choose a Bold Style

and Font Size 40pt

Writer Advanced Formatting

In the Font Effects tab I gave my text some special treatment you can see the results in the preview window, to give KING a crown I selected that text and added a Bold Wave Overline from the Overlining Drop Down Menu and Clicked OK.

For a final touch I selected Content Is KING again and on the Formatting Toolbar I clicked on the Background Icon and gave the text a nice yellow background from the drop down menu, lovely.

Hit Enter and start to type, Yikes the Text is still formatted so hit the Back Space Key and at the Menu Bar Click on Format » Clear Direct Formatting or Click on the Paragraph Styles box and in the Drop Down choose Clear formatting or click on the Clear Direct Formatting icon or better still use the shortcut key Ctrl+M and the Font will go back to default.

Writer Clear Direct Formatting

If for some daft reason you wanted to treat other text to the same special treatment as KING just select KING and Click once on the Clone Formatting Icon and then Click on the text you want to format, lovely, want to inflict multiple pieces of text to the same format Select KING and this time Double Click the Clone Formatting Icon and then click on all the text you want, to stop - hit the Escape Key, please STOP.

Writer Format Cloning

Spell Check

Yes, Content is KING and it's most important that words are speelt spelt correctly, under Content is KING (don't forget to clear all that formatting.)   type in Spell Check and Enter, then Copy and Paste the paragraph below, with some spelling errors, to see if Writer picks up on them.


This Paragraaph has a few erors, hopefully you will see these highlighted with a red underlinee. You can right click each mistake and in a drop down menu choose the correct spelling, alternately hit the F7 key or click on the Abc Icon to spell check the entire Documnet


Writer Spell Check

No mistakes highlighted, then you have to set Writer with the correct language, on the Menu Bar goto Tools»Options and Expand the Language Settings and Click on Languages, and set them for your location, mine are set for Ireland.

Writer Language Settings

The Default Language for Documents should have an ab Symbols, if not you have to get the Dictionary, go to the Writing Aids page and at the bottom of that page Click on this link LibreOffice Extensions Search for your Language and Install the Writing Aids as an Extension to Writer.

If you are using Linux, another option is to Install the correct LibreOffice Packages for your Language, I followed the instructions on Debian's Wiki on LibreOffice and Installed the packages listed under Extending Functionalities which were: LibreOffice Help, myspell, clipart, fonts and then I updated LibreOffice to the latest version.

Now finally I was good to go, the mistakes were highlighted and I hit the F7 key to start the corrections..

Writer Spell Check for English UK

Special Characters

Under the spelling paragraph type in Super and Sub and Special and Enter.

Writer does stuff automatically, start to type out Today is the 9th Writer makes the th Superscript sitting up on top of the 9, continue to type in the month Dec and on the third letter Writer prompts December, hit the Enter Key to accept.

Writer Auto Completion

To type in a Superscript manually such as 100 = 10 x 10 = 102 click on the Superscript Icon before you type in 2 and click on the Superscript Icon again, otherwise the rest of the text will appear as superscript and drive your eyes mad

The next Icon is Subscript and if you remember from you School Science Classes Water Molecule's are made up of Two Atom of Hydrogen to One Atom of Oxygen and the Chemical shorthand for water H2O so type in

Water = 2 atoms of Hydrogen and 1 atom of Oxygen H then click on the Subscript Icon then 2 then Subscript Icon again otherwise all your text will be in Subscript :-) then O.

Writer Superscript and Subscript

Sometimes you may want to enter text in a different Language like French for Very Good Très Bien start to type in tr and to insert the è an e with has a grave accent , click on the Ω Icon on the Standard Toolbar and choose More Characters or Insert ≫ Special Characters

Writer Inserting a Special Character

Scroll down through the List of Special Characters or Click on the Subset Menu and choose Latin 1, most of the characters that you need are here. Click on è and Click on Insert, continue typing s bien très bien!!.

Aligning Text

Now for our last piece of Content we will play with how our text is Aligned, type in Aligning Text and Enter.

By default text is displayed from Left to Right, this is called Left Aligned, sometimes you might want text to appear in the centre so do the following, type in Centre Aligned Text select that text and Click on the Align Centre Icon (Ctrl+E) and magic the text is centred

You may have to click » on the Formatting Toolbar to see the Align Icons.

Hit Enter again and type in Right Aligned Text, the text is still centred so select it and Click on the Align Right Icon (Ctrl+R), now this text is Right Aligned and so will any other text you type after this unless you Click the Align Left Icon (Ctrl+L) to go back to normal

Writer Aligning Text

When text is Left Aligned the unused spaces on the right margin of the page looks untidy so our last Align Option Justified Text sorts that out by padding out the lines of text so words end neatly at the right margin of you page which is more pleasing to the eye. Copy this Paragraph and Paste it into your document below Right Align Text. Is the paragraph Right Aligned or Left Aligned?? now try Justified, Select your new paragraph again and Click on the Justified Icon (Ctrl+J) to see the difference.