You’ve probably noticed that there is a ruler at the top of Microsoft Word. You may have wondered what it is for. I didn’t know until this year that that ruler is used to align elements of a Word document – like bullets.
As I discussed in the previous post, you definitely want to chunk your info into bullets for easier reading. But it doesn’t do anybody any good to have the bullets misaligned. It’s actually quite jarring to have a point out of place. At best, it makes the resume look sloppy. Definitely not an impression you want to make.
On the ruler you’ll notice three marks – two triangles and a rectangle. These are the marks that you move to align the bullets and text. I’ll describe what each one does:
- The top triangle moves the bullet to wherever you want to place it.
- The second triangle moves the first line of text.
- The rectangle moves the rest of the paragraph if there is more than one line.
To Move Bullets
To align the bullets, place the cursor at the beginning of the line. Click on the top triangle and you’ll notice a dotted line appears all the way down the page. Hold the mouse button down and move the triangle to the left or right and let go. The bullet will be placed where you let go. You can use that line to match subsequent bullets and they will all be lined up on the page.
To Move Text
The process is the same for moving text. Place the cursor at the beginning of the line. Click on the second triangle, hold the mouse button down, and move the text to the left or right.
To move a whole paragraph or section of a document, highlight the section and then use the rectangle to move the text. If you use the second triangle, you’ll get a hanging indent where the first line stays where it is and the rest of the section moves to the right.
To make sure that the bullets and text align over multiple pages, click on the Print Preview button on the Toolbar at the top of your screen or go to File -> Print Preview. There is a ruler there too that you can click on to make sure alignment is correct.
Next time, I’ll discuss your paper choice.
Warmly,
