Microsoft Word and Pages for Mac

This is the page with the links to the guides for Word and Pages. Please note that each link will lead you to a page with a Mac and a PC section. Please follow the appropriate one. Also, you may want to use Google Docs if possible, as it has better collaboration and can be accessed from anywhere. It will probably be better supported on this website (using Word or Pages is absolutely fine as well). If there is a guide you would like that isn't here, please request it in the comments section below.

Margins and Spacing

In Word 2010, change your margins by double-clicking the ruler at the top.

A window will come up.

The left margin is how far from the left edge of the page the text will start. Similarly, the right margin is how much empty space on the right there is. The top and bottom margins control the empty space on the top and bottom. The default margin for all of these is one inch. We recommend 0.5 inches to save paper. More will save more paper, but some printers can't print with very small margins.

Once you have changed the margins, you can set them as the default margins by pressing the button in the bottom left corner.

Great, you're done!

In Word 2010, the spacing is automatically set to 1.15 spacing and "Normal".

The "Normal" means that when you press enter, it skips down two "lines". You should probably set the normal to "No Spacing", which can be done by selecting all your text and clicking the "No Spacing" button.

The button to the left of the paint bucket is the spacing control.

Click it and you will see the current spacing (1.15 by default).

For normal writing, 1.15 is fine, but teachers often assign double spacing or 2 spacing. This will make for a very long document that requires a lot of paper. If your teacher allows it, you should use 1.5 spacing because it uses only three pages for every four.

Thanks for saving paper!