In this lesson, you’ll open and format a simple one page Business Report in Word. The goal of this lesson will be to correctly use Word’s alignment and font size features and format the business report with side headings and lists.
There are two basic styles of reports. The business report and the academic report. In this lesson, we will concentrate on the business report which contains side headings, paragraph headings and lists.
The parts of a business report are explained below:
- TITLE – Subject of the report typed 2 inches from the top of the page. Use 14-point font size, all caps, bold, center, single spaced
- SUBTITLE – Usually a secondary or explanatory title which is centered, bold and typed 1 line below the title in uppercase and lowercase letters
- BYLINE – Name of author, centered, bold and typed 1 blank line below the previous line
- DATE – Date of report, center, bold and type 1 blank line below the previous line
- BODY – Text of the report, single spaced
- SIDE HEADINGS – All caps, bold
- PARAGRAPH HEADINGS – If required – minor subdivisions of the report
- LISTS – Numbered or bulleted
Business Report Example
GETTING READY
When typing and formatting one page business reports, it’s best to use the traditional Single Spaced Template in Word.
Start Word and maximize the Word window and then Click the File tab > New and select Single Spaced Blank document for traditional single line spacing.
Now open up the business-report-start document I have provided for you.
Character Formatting
Character Formatting is used when you want to format text in a document such as individual words. This can be achieved by using the Mini Toolbar that only shows up when you point to selected text in a document or from the Font Group located on the Home Tab. The Font Group contains commonly used buttons that you can use to apply bold, italic, underline, shadow, strike through or color to your text.
The default font type and size is 11-point Calibri but once you have selected a font type, you can change its attributes, or how it looks. For example, you can change the size of the font or change its style by making the font bold, italic, or underlined. You can also add color and apply special text effects to jazz up your documents. Font size is determined by measuring the height of characters in units called points. Standard font sizes for text are 10, 11, and 12 points.
You can now also apply kerning to your text in word by adjusting the space between characters and words. You can also change the case of your document such as upper case or lower case such as demonstrated below.
Turn on the Show/Hide Symbol
Your I-beam will be flashing at the top of the page which is the current insertion point. Now turn on the Show/Hike Symbol so you can see your paragraph and line space marks.
- Click the Home Tab > Paragraph Group > Show/Hide Button
- Press ENTER 5 times to begin the first line of the report 2 inches from the top of the page
- Select the first two lines of the title in the report and from the Home Tab > Font Group, change the font size to 14 points, bold and center
- With the text still selected, click the Home Tab > Font Group > Change Case button and change the Case to UPPERCASE so the title is displayed as all caps as shown below:
- Press ENTER 1 time after the TITLE to add a line space between the TITLE and SUBTITLE. Select the next 3 lines (the SUBTITLE, BYLINE and DATE) and change the font size to 12 points, bold and center. Press ENTER after each line so the SUBTITLE, BYLINE and DATE are double spaced as shown below:
- Capitalize and Bold the SIDE HEADINGS as shown below. To do all three at the same time, select the first heading then hold the down the ctrl key on your keyboard and click the other titles.
- Select the 3 lines of text under the heading LIBREOFFICE WRITER
- Click the Home Tab > Paragraph Group and choose the Numbering Select the numbering style of your choice.
- Don’t forget to Spell check, proofread and preview your document for spelling and formatting