If you are starting a new document or some control
that expects text from you, the first action you may take is to type,
using the keyboard and its keys as we reviewed in Lesson
2. To do this, you can first use the mouse and click in the area where
you are supposed to type.
When you click in an area that either contains text or
expects text from you, a short vertical bar appears and starts blinking
but doesn't move. This bar is called the caret. To enter text, you press the desired key on the
keyboard. When a letter or a symbol has been entered, the caret moves one
character to the right (in US English and Latin based languages) and
starts blinking again, indicating that it is ready. If you keep typing,
the caret keeps moving to the right. If the caret gets to the most right
position but you keep typing, it gets automatically moved to the next
line.
The presence of the caret lets you know where the next
character would appear if you type. For this reason, before typing, you
must make sure that, at all times, you know where the caret is.
There are various categories of items you will create by
combining keys:
As we saw in Lesson 2, a letter is a
symbol recognized by the alphabet and that is used to create spoken
words. To get a letter in your document, you can press its corresponding
key or the necessary combination to get its uppercase equivalent
A space is an empty character; that is, a character
non-visible and non-readable. A space can be used to separate two
characters or two groups of characters. To
A word is a combination of letters that produce
a recognizable item of your language, which could be part of the English
language. Therefore, to get a word, you type the desired characters
together. This means that there is no empty space inside of a word. Examples
of words are computer, world, floor, mean.
Although most words are readable, you can also use or make up words that
are not known to anybody or are known to only a few. Example are #define,
_stdcall
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Abbreviations
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An abbreviation is a word or a
combination of words that represent something that would take too many
characters or words to use. Abbreviations are not known to everybody and
there are no strict rules as to how they are created. For these reasons, a
group of people who use a certain abbreviation agree on it. This also
means that an abbreviation that is familiar to one group of people may not
be familiar to another group of people. This also means that an
abbreviation is not part of a language: it is only agreed upon to have
meaning to, or by, those who use it. Examples are EAU, US, SW,
USA, U.S., U.S.A, UN, RDC, LOL, MI,
i.e., etc, eg.
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Expressions
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An expression is a group of words that a
group of people decide on its meaning. Like an abbreviation, an expression
is created by people and is not necessarily part of a language but those
who use it agree on its meaning. Like an abbreviation, an expression known
to one group of people may not be known to another group of people, whether
both groups speak the same language or not. Examples of expressions are vis-à-vis,
H2O.
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Numbers
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A number is primarily a digit or a
combination of digits. Examples are 2 or 508 or 32793. To make large
numbers easier to read, there are rules applied in some languages. For
example, to make a number such as 15423576497 easier to read or present,
you can separate its thousands with a special character. Such a character
is called the thousands separator. To know what this character is, you can
open the Control Panel window (if you are using Microsoft Windows Server
2003, you can click Start -> Control Panel), double-click (if you are
using Microsoft Windows Server 2003, then click) Regional and Language
Options, click Customize and observe the character of the Digit Grouping
Symbol combo box:
This character depends on the language that your
computer is configured to use:
Based on this, the character used in US English as the
thousand separator is the comma. Therefore, you can use it to easily read 15423576497
by representing it with 15,423,576,497.
The numbers we have mentioned so far are referred to as natural numbers.
Another category of numbers is referred to as decimal. This type of number
uses a fractional part to specify that the last part of the number is not
a complete digit. To indicate this, the number includes another character
called the Decimal Symbol. This character also depends on the language of
the computer. You can find it out in the Customize Regional Options dialog
box from the Regional And Language Options dialog box of Control Panel.
The character is represented in the Decimal Symbol combo box. In US
English, the Decimal Symbol is the period. Examples are 3.15 or
70,449,579.64
The numbers we have used so far are
referred to as positive because they were higher than 0. In some cases,
you will deal with numbers that are lower than 0. Such numbers are
referred to as negative. To indicate that a number is negative, you MUST
use a special character. Once again, to find out what this character is,
refer to the Customize Regional Options dialog box. The negative symbol
can be identified in the Negative Sign Symbol combo box. In US English,
this character is the minus symbol "-". Therefore, to indicate
that a number is negative, in a US English document, you must type - to
the left of the number. Based on this rule, always remember that if you omit or forget
the - symbol, the number is considered positive (in computer programming,
if a number doesn't have a sign, it is referred to as
"unsigned").
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A Line of Text
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A line of text can be an empty space that stands on
its own but that can display a caret. For example, here is an empty line
of text between this text and the next:
A line can also be a group of letters, symbols or
words that use a common horizontal alignment. A line of text can be
characterized by its length. This means that a line of text can have a
length of 0, 1, 5, 20, 40, or 80 characters, etc. The length of a line of text can
depend on the application used or on the user. For example, in Notepad,
you can set the length of its lines of text by enlarging or narrowing the
Notepad window. Here is Notepad displaying a piece of text in four lines
of text. In this case, the maximum length of a line of text is 62
characters:
Here is Notepad displaying the same text in seven
lines. In this case, the maximum length of a line of text is 37
characters:
In some other applications, you can modify the length
of a line of text inside of the document. For example, in Microsoft Word,
Corel WordPerfect, WordPad, or OpenOffice.org Text, you can narrow the margins.
To create a line of text, simply type the desired
text. If you continue typing and the caret gets to the end of the line, it
would automatically be moved to the next line. This means that the application
would automatically create the lines of text as it judges them
necessary.
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Paragraphs
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A paragraph is an empty line of text, a
character, a word, a group of words, or a group of lines of text that
stands on its own. Unlike a line of text, and it is very important to
understand the difference, a paragraph must be explicitly created: the
application is not meant to create paragraphs for you.
To create a paragraph, at any time, you must press
Enter. Once again, notice that you don't create a line of text by pressing
Enter:
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Keyboarding
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Introduction
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Now that you know how to use the mouse, the keyboard,
and the Internet, you should learn keyboarding. Keyboarding is the ability
to type professionally. Although it may appear as a waste of time, it
absolutely is not. In fact, you should invest in learning it.
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Keyboard Practicing
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If you are taking a class at an institution, the
school may (should) provide equipment to you to learn keyboarding. If you
are on your own, you can go to a computer store and purchase software that
would guide you with keyboarding. Just ask the sales person if the store
has a keyboarding software, that is, software that teaches how to type
professionally. You can also go to your local library, if you have one,
and ask the clerk about keyboarding books. Some of them may come with
software in them.
There are many sites that provide good lessons on
keyboarding. On a search engine web site such as Google,
Alexa, or Yahoo,
do a search on "keyboarding". Check different sites to see what
they offer. Because of our position, we cannot give a recommendation.
Besides, sites change all the time. The features to look for are that: the
early lessons should show you how to position your fingers, the early
lessons should start on the middle characters, for QWERTY keyboard, these
should be asdf;lkjg and h. Other than that, the whole thing is about
practicing and, unfortunately, no one else can do it for you.
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Practical Learning: Introducing Word Processing |
- As we have done in previous lessons, start WordPad
If you have OpenOffice.org, click Start -> (All) Programs -> OpenOffice.org -> Text Document
If you have Microsoft Office, then open Microsoft Word
If you have Microsoft Works, click Start -> (All) Programs -> Microsoft Works -> Microsoft Works Word Processor
If you have WordPerfect, click Start -> (All) Programs -> WordPerfect Office -> WordPerfect - In the empty white area, type Leaving Sydney
- Press Enter
- Type the following text without pressing Enter
When we decided to leave, we knew we were making a hard decision. We had spent so much time this had become our new home. A few weeks or months earlier, we wanted to make Sydney our newly found settlement, a permanent place we could proudly call ours. It appeared that, unpredictably, fate had decided otherwise. - Press Enter
- Type the following paragraph without pressing Enter
As the time to leave approached, we gathered what were left as our belongings. We managed to meet, for the last time, our neighbors and every one we had been accustomed to. Everybody wished us all the best. - Press Enter twice and type Author: Arthur D. Pale
- Press Enter and type Title: Stories of my Life
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