10th January 2001

Type, type, type. What's this? I didn't want the text to be red and underlined. Why did my word processor do that? Well, I hate to tell ya, but it did NOT do that. You did. Albeit, inadvertently. Rich text is prettier than straight ASCII, no doubt. But when you start messing with font sizes and colors and spacing and whatever, you're creating a potential headache (as witnessed at the beginning of this tip). How can you avoid these problems? Fight the urge to "fluff" as you move forward -- wait until you're completely finished with the document before doing anything to it. This way, you'll be able to target the exact text string(s) you wish to tweak and no other areas should be impacted. To save even more time, use the Format Painting tool. Right next to the Paste icon, you should see another icon with a little paintbrush and i-beam cursor inside. Highlight the formatting you want to copy, click the 'paint' icon, then highlight the text to which you wish to apply that formatting.