A Summary of Word Processing Features

Store documents for later use.

Store in many formats (e.g., RTF, PDF, HTML).

Erase and insert text.

Search and replace.

Move or copy text.

Allow word wraparound.

• Rich Text format (RTF) removes all or most formatting commands so other word processors can read the file.
• PDF format allows files to be read as formatted documents with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• HTML format allows documents to be placed on the Internet.

Allows easy insertion of additional letters, spaces, lines, paragraphs, or pages.

One command allows all occurrences of a word or phrase to be changed as specified.

Allows cutting and pasting (deleting text and inserting it elsewhere) or copying and pasting (repeating text in several places).

Automatically goes to next line at end of a line without pressing Enter or Return (Also hyphenates words, as needed.)

Alignment

Change styles/appearance.

Insert automatic headers, footers, and pagination.

Insert graphics.

Insert colors and shading. Insert tables.

Insert text boxes.

Insert drawn figures.

Centers or right- or left-justifies text.

Allows a variety of fonts, type styles, font colors, margins, line spacing, tabs, and indentations in the same document.

Automatically places text at the top (header) or bottom (footer) of each page in a document with or without page numbering (pagination).

Inserts clip art or image files into documents and formats them; some programs allow image editing.

Graphics can be filled with color or degrees of shading.

Organizes information into rows and columns without using tabs or indentations.

Allows text blocks to be inserted in any location in or around a document.

Allows inserting shapes, call outs, and other figures to enhance documents.

Check and correct spelling.

Suggest words.

Check grammar and usage.

Spell-checker feature compares words in a document to those stored in the program's dictionary files.

Thesaurus feature suggests synonyms for any word.

Grammar checkers review documents for items such as sentence length, frequency of word use, and subject-verb agreement. Also marks phrases or sentences to be corrected.

Insert "live" URLs.

Create web pages.

Allows person reading the document to click on text and go automatically to a website. (Nate: Web browser must be active.)

Acts as simple web page development software and creates HTML pages.

Use templates.

Offer voice recognition.

Merge text with data files.

Users can easily adapt preformatted models of resumes, newsletters, and brochures to their own needs.

Allows text to be received and entered via dictated words rather than as typed entries.

• Automatically inserts words (e.g., names and addresses) into documents such as letters.

• Lists of data can be stored within the word processing program or merged from a database.