Microsoft Word is available everywhere, and there is hardly anyone who hasn't used it. It's easy to get into it, and start writing; using it at this level is simply using it as it were an editor, just something into which you type basic text. Notepad would do just as well.
Most writing programs now support the basic features of boldface, italics, underscore, and sometimes
For those who write often, additional features are available, and you can get help anywhere. But when you write large volumes, and read large volumes, you begin to appreciate consistency of style. This is hard to explain, and I'm not going to try now; it is basically that similar things must look similar, e.g. an excerpt from a letter. This is done usually by indenting on both sides (making the paragraph narrower, side-to-side, or equivalently, making the margins wider). Similarly, you want to have the same spacing between paragraphs throughout. (Or you could indent paragraphs; this is just indenting the first line, to set it off from the previous paragraph.)
The first huge step towards consistency is to use Styles.
In the Home tab of Word (Since 2007, Word has begun to use Tabs, which are an array of boxes at the top, just below the title. This is so that Word can give you a different Toolbar for each task. You spend most of the editing time in the Home tab, with the standard toolbar on top, just below the tabs) there is a section in the toolbar called Styles. This section can be split off by clicking the little spot shown outlined in red, below.
Suppose you want to create a rather long document, and you want the main body of the document to be
(1) in Times New Roman font.
(2) line spacing 1.5.
(3) You want each paragraph spaced 6 points from the following paragraph.
(4) You do not want the first line indented at all.
What is most convenient is to modify the "Normal" style to be this way. To do this, you move your mouse over the word Normal in the styles list. Don't click! Just move the mouse pointer to hover over the word. This makes a little icon appear on the right--what is called a "Drop-down-list." Click on that, and the choices appear; move down to Modify --and click on that. You should see a grey window, what is called a "Pop-up box", appear.
This is where you tailor the Normal style to have all the properties you want in your normal text, just for this document. (If you want all your documents to have this sort of Normal text, we have to do something a little more invasive, which I will try to remember to tell you afterwards.)
Here is an illustration of the Modify Style dialogue pop-up box:
To do (2), (3) and (4), you have to click on the button shown outlined in red above. A list of choices appears; select Paragraph. Yet another dialogue appears. All three of (2), (3) and (4) are set inside this dialogue.
For (3), in the Spacing area, select 0 pt for Before, and 6 pt for After, or 3 pt for each.
For (4), you probably don't need to do anything; Word paragraphs are usually not indented. If you would like to indent the first line of each paragraph, by say 1/2 an inch, you go up to the Indentation area, to the Special area, click on the drop-down list, select First Line, and then specify By 0.5 inch.
Click on the OK button, and the Paragraph box disappears. Now if you click OK on the Modify Style box, your setup will be just for this document. If you want all your future documents to have these settings, you have to select Future documents based on this template. Click on the little white dot, and it should show a little black dot, to indicate that it has been selected.
There you have it. This should take you a long way.
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