Chapter 8. Page Setup and Sections

This chapter examines some concepts that might be a bit challenging if you're new to Word, or perhaps even if you're not new to Word. Grasping these concepts, however, opens up the marvelous and potential-filled world of section formatting, which enables you to do wonderfully creative things with your documents.

Page Setup Basics

To fully grasp what this part of the chapter is about, you're going to have to make sure that you can see section breaks and other nonprinting formatting characters. Although some users think these characters are an eyesore and distract from the basic business of putting words into the computer, they should instead be viewed as flashlights that illuminate otherwise dark corners that are home to the secret and mysterious powers of Microsoft Word.

It's time to turn on those flashlights, assuming they're not already on. In Figure 8-1, the upper paragraph has nonprinting formatting marks turned on, whereas the lower paragraph has them turned off. You press Ctrl+Shift+8 to toggle them on and off, or click the Show/Hide () button in the Paragraph section of the Home Ribbon tab. To truly understand what's happening in this chapter, as well as what's happening in your documents, you should toggle those ...

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