Word processing

Document properties

Metadata stored with the file: Title, Subject, Author, Keywords, Comments. Open File → Info, then Properties → Advanced Properties → Summary tab. The Info pane also lets you click directly into Title and Author on the right.

These five fields are stored in the document's own metadata, separate from anything typed in the body text — a .docx file is really a small zip archive, and properties live in their own internal XML file (core.xml), not in the page content. That is why examiners check them through File → Info rather than by reading the page: typing "Title: Township Innovation Hubs 2026" as a line of body text does not set the Title property, and setting the Title property does not add any visible text to the page. The two are completely independent, which is also why the mark exists at all — it tests whether you know where document metadata actually lives.

A common point of confusion: the window/taskbar title usually shows the file name (e.g. "1_TownshipHubs.docx"), not the Title property — don't mistake one for the other. The Advanced Properties dialog's Summary tab is the fastest single place to set Title, Subject, Author, Keywords and Comments together, because the simplified Info pane on the right only exposes a couple of these directly.

Page set-up: margins and hyphenation

• Layout → Margins → Normal gives 2.54 cm on all four sides.
• Layout → Hyphenation → Automatic breaks long words at line ends to even out spacing. It is a document-wide setting.

A margin is the blank border between the text and the edge of the page — it exists both for print safety (most printers can't print right to the paper's edge) and for readability (a page of text with no border is harder to scan). 2.54 cm is exactly 1 inch, which is why it's the universal "Normal" default across almost every word processor and print standard, not a number Microsoft picked arbitrarily.

Hyphenation solves a specific visual problem: in justified (or near-full-width) text, a long word that almost fits at the end of a line either gets pushed entirely to the next line (leaving a ragged gap) or stretches the spacing on that line to fit it (leaving visible "rivers" of white space). Automatic hyphenation lets Word break the word at a sensible syllable point and carry the rest to the next line, closing that gap. It uses a built-in hyphenation dictionary for the document's proofing language, so it occasionally makes an odd-looking break — that's expected, not a fault, as long as hyphenation is switched on at all.

Styles: the engine behind everything

A style is a saved bundle of formatting (font, size, alignment, spacing). Applying a style is better than formatting by hand because changing the style once changes every paragraph that uses it.

• Modify a style: Home → Styles pane → right-click the style → Modify. Change font size and alignment in the dialog. Click Format → Font for effects such as All caps.
• When you modify the style, all text using it updates automatically. That is the "automatically update all text" requirement.
• Paragraph styles (¶) affect whole paragraphs. Character styles (a) affect selected text. Linked styles (¶a) do both.

This is the single most important idea in the whole Word section, because it is tested in some form almost every year: styles separate "what this text is" from "how it looks." A heading styled with the HubHeading style is tagged, structurally, as a heading — Word just happens to currently render that tag as (say) 16 pt bold. When you modify the style, you are editing the rendering rule for that tag, and every paragraph carrying the tag updates at once, instantly and consistently. When you instead select text and change its font size by hand, you've only changed that one paragraph's appearance — the tag, and every other paragraph using it, is untouched. That's why hand-formatting a heading can never satisfy an "update all text using this style" instruction, no matter how many headings you manually reformat to match: you'd be fixing the symptom paragraph by paragraph forever, instead of fixing the one underlying rule.

Every style also belongs to a type: a paragraph style (marked with a ¶ in the Styles gallery) always applies to the whole paragraph, even if you only select one word in it, because it carries paragraph-level properties like alignment and spacing as well as font properties. A character style (marked a) only ever affects the exact characters selected. A linked style (¶a) behaves as a character style if you select some text first, and as a paragraph style if you don't select anything — most of the built-in Heading styles are linked styles. Knowing this matters when a question asks you to change formatting for "this text" versus "this paragraph."

Table of contents (TOC)

A TOC is a field built from heading styles (Heading 1–3 or any style given an outline level). Insert via References → Table of Contents → Custom Table of Contents. In the dialog choose Formats (From template, Classic, Distinctive, Fancy, Modern, Formal, Simple), the tab leader, and how many levels to show. A TOC does not update itself: right-click it → Update Field → Update entire table, or press F9. Always update it last, because changing heading styles (e.g. All Caps) alters the entries.

A field is a placeholder instruction that Word computes a result for, rather than literal text you typed — page numbers, dates, citations and the TOC are all fields. Word scans every paragraph in the document for an outline level (set either by using a built-in Heading style, or by manually giving a custom style an outline level under Paragraph → Outline Level), collects the text and current page number of each one, and formats the result as a contents list. Because it's computed from a snapshot at the moment you build or refresh it, a TOC is only ever as current as its last update — add a new heading, delete a paragraph, or change a heading's wording, and the TOC silently goes stale until you refresh it.

This is why the exam instruction "automatic" matters so much: a hand-typed list of headings with hand-typed page numbers is indistinguishable at a glance from a real TOC, but it is not a field, will never update, and earns none of the marks. You can confirm something is a real field by clicking into it — Word shades the whole block grey — or by pressing Alt+F9 to reveal the raw field code (it will read something like { TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u }). Always build or refresh the TOC last, after every heading-style change is finished, because editing a style after the TOC exists (for example, applying All Caps to HubHeading) changes how the existing entries display too, and only a fresh Update entire table picks that up.

Sections and section breaks

Many layout settings belong to a section: columns, line numbering, page orientation, page borders (can apply to first page only or by section), headers and footers. Create a section with Layout → Breaks → Next Page or Continuous. Applying a setting "from this point forward" or "to selected text" makes Word insert section breaks for you. Show them with the ¶ button (Home).

It helps to separate two ideas that look similar on the page but behave completely differently. A page break (Ctrl+Enter) only forces text onto a new page — it carries no settings of its own. A section break creates a new, independent "settings container": from that point on, the document can have its own margins, orientation, columns, line numbering, headers/footers and page borders, all different from the section before it. That's why instructions like "first page only," "from this point forward," or "for the selected text" are really asking you to create a section boundary, not just move text down the page — without a section break, a setting you apply always applies to the entire document, because there's only one section to apply it to.

A Continuous section break starts the new section on the same page (useful for a mid-page column change); Next Page starts a fresh page. Headers and footers add one more wrinkle: by default each new section's header/footer is "Linked to Previous," meaning it's still sharing content with the section before it — you generally need to click Link to Previous to switch it off before a header/footer can genuinely differ between sections. Always turn on Show/Hide ¶ (Home) while working with sections, since section break marks are otherwise invisible and easy to delete by accident, silently merging two sections back into one.

Line numbering

Layout → Line Numbers offers Continuous, Restart Each Page, Restart Each Section, Suppress for Current Paragraph. Line Numbering Options → Layout tab → Line Numbers… gives the full dialog: Add line numbering, Start at, From text, Count by, and Numbering: Restart each page / section / Continuous. The Apply to box (This section / This point forward) controls how far it reaches.

Line numbering is a section-level property — exactly like margins or columns — which is the direct reason "turn on line numbering from page X onward" and "page borders on the first page only" use the same technique: insert a section break at the boundary, then apply the setting to that one section only. Continuous keeps counting upward through page breaks (line 1, 2, 3… right across the whole section); Restart Each Page resets to 1 at the top of every page; Restart Each Section resets at every section boundary. Legal, scientific and technical documents use line numbering so a reader can refer precisely to "line 14" without needing page numbers at all — it's the same reason exam papers sometimes ask for it, as a check that you understand section-scoped formatting rather than document-wide formatting.

SmartArt

Click the graphic to reveal SmartArt Design and Format tabs. Layouts gallery → More Layouts → category (List, Process, Cycle, Hierarchy…). Change Colors shows Primary Theme Colors, Colorful, Accent 1 and so on. Add text through the Text Pane: place the cursor at the end of the last bullet, press Enter, type the new item. Add Shape also works.

A SmartArt graphic is really two things kept permanently in sync: a small outline of text (the Text Pane) and a visual layout that arranges shapes to represent that outline. That's why typing a new bullet in the Text Pane and clicking Add Shape on the canvas produce the identical result — you're editing the same underlying data two different ways. Tab demotes a bullet to a sub-level (a smaller, nested shape) and Shift+Tab promotes it back up, which is how you build hierarchy diagrams without touching the Layouts gallery at all. Switching Layout re-arranges the existing shapes to fit a new diagram type (e.g. a list becomes a process arrow) without losing any of the text — the content and the layout are independent, so changing one never requires retyping the other.

Captions and Table of Figures

A caption (References → Insert Caption) gives a picture or table a label ("Figure") and automatic number. Insert Table of Figures lists every caption with the same label. Untick Include label and number to show only the caption text. Place the cursor first on the page where you want it.

Like a TOC entry, a caption's number is computed, not typed — Word keeps a running count per label category ("Figure", "Table", "Equation" are the built-in ones, and you can define your own), so inserting a new captioned picture partway through a document automatically renumbers everything after it. A Table of Figures works exactly like a Table of Contents conceptually, except it scans for captions instead of heading styles — which is precisely why a picture with no caption never shows up in it, no matter how important the picture is to the document. If a Table of Figures comes out empty, the fix is always the same: go back and check that every picture actually has a caption applied, not that the table itself is broken.

Hyperlinks and ScreenTips

Select text → Ctrl+K (Insert → Link). Address box takes the URL. The ScreenTip… button (top right of the dialog) sets the hover text. Do not confuse ScreenTip with the text to display.

A hyperlink in Word is really three separate pieces of information bundled together: the display text (what's visible on the page — usually whatever you had selected before pressing Ctrl+K), the address/target (where clicking actually takes you), and an optional ScreenTip (the small tooltip that appears on hover, before the reader clicks). These three are independent on purpose — the display text can read "click here" while the address points anywhere, and the ScreenTip can explain the destination without cluttering the visible sentence. An exam instruction naming a specific ScreenTip text is testing that you used the ScreenTip field specifically, not that you typed the words somewhere into the visible link text.

Citations, sources and bibliography

• References → Manage Sources → New to add a source. Choose Type of Source (Book), enter Author, Title, Year, Publisher and so on.
• A citation in text is like (Ndlovu, 2023). Click it → drop-down → Edit Citation → Suppress: Author / Year / Title. Ticking Year hides it, unticking shows it.
• The Bibliography is a field. After new sources are added, click it and choose Update Citations and Bibliography.

Word's citation system keeps two linked records for every source: the full bibliographic entry (author, title, year, publisher…) stored once in your source list, and a short in-text citation that points at that entry rather than duplicating its details. That's why editing a source's year in Manage Sources instantly changes every citation of it throughout the document, and why the Bibliography itself is a field — like the TOC, it's a computed list built from whatever sources are currently in use, which is why it needs Update Citations and Bibliography after you add or edit a source rather than updating on its own. Suppress options hide one part of a citation (typically because the author's name is already named in the surrounding sentence) without deleting it from the underlying record, so un-suppressing it later restores the exact original data rather than requiring you to retype anything.

Pictures and text wrapping

• Insert → Pictures → This Device.
• Picture Format → Picture Border: colour, Weight (pt) and Dashes (Solid line is the default).
• Size: Picture Format → Size group, or Layout dialog → Size tab. Untick "Lock aspect ratio" before typing Height 4 cm and Width 3 cm, otherwise Word changes the other value.
• Wrap Text (Layout Options icon or Picture Format → Wrap Text): In Line with Text (default, no text beside it), Square, Tight, Behind, In Front… To appear beside a paragraph, use Square or Tight and place the picture at the paragraph start.

Every picture is anchored to a paragraph (shown by a small anchor icon when selected) and has a wrap setting that controls how body text flows around it. In Line with Text is the default and treats the picture like one giant character sitting inside the paragraph — it pushes text down onto its own line rather than letting anything sit beside it, which is why a picture that's supposed to appear "next to" a paragraph never will until its wrap is changed to Square or Tight. Aspect ratio lock exists to stop a picture looking stretched or squashed when you resize it by dragging a corner — it's genuinely useful for freehand resizing, but it actively fights you the moment an exam gives two independent exact measurements (a specific height and a specific width), because changing one with the ratio locked automatically recalculates the other to match the original proportions. Untick it first, then the two measurements can be set completely independently.

Find and Replace with wildcards and formatting

Ctrl+H → More >>. Tick Use wildcards. Click in Replace with, then Format → Font to set the new colour. The replace box can stay empty and still apply the format.

Wildcard	Meaning	Example
[0-9]	any one digit	[0-9]{4} = exactly four digits in a row
{n}	repeat the previous item n times	[0-9]{4}
< >	start and end of a word	<[0-9]{4}> = standalone four-digit numbers only
*	any run of characters	S*t
?	any single character	b?t
^#	any digit (non-wildcard mode)	^#^#^#^#

With Use wildcards ticked, Word's Find box stops matching literal text and starts matching a pattern — closer to the regular expressions used in programming than to a normal search. [0-9] is a character class meaning "any one digit," and {4} is a quantifier meaning "exactly four of the previous thing," so [0-9]{4} together means "exactly four digits in a row," wherever they appear. The < > word-boundary markers matter because without them, a search for four digits would also match the middle four digits of a five- or six-digit number — <[0-9]{4}> only matches when the four digits form a whole, standalone word, correctly skipping over longer numbers or codes.

The Format → Font button (clicked with the cursor inside the Replace with box) attaches a formatting instruction to the replacement, independently of whatever text goes in that box — which is exactly why it still works with Replace with left completely empty: Word re-inserts each match exactly as found, but now wrapped in the new formatting. Always click No Formatting afterwards to clear that attached instruction; otherwise it silently carries over into your next search and starts reformatting things you never intended to touch.

Columns

Layout → Columns → More Columns: Number of columns, Line between, untick Equal column width to set widths manually, and Apply to (Whole document / Selected text / This point forward). Applying to selected text makes Word add continuous section breaks.

Word columns behave like a newspaper: text flows down the first column, then automatically continues at the top of the next one once the first is full — you never manually decide where the break between columns happens unless you insert a deliberate column break (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) to force it early. Because columns are section-level formatting, applying them to a selection rather than the whole document is only possible by wrapping that selection in its own section (which is why Word silently inserts continuous section breaks immediately before and after the selected text the moment you choose "Apply to: Selected text" — this is the same underlying mechanism as section-scoped margins or line numbering above).

Mail merge basics (used in Q7.2)

A merge joins a main document (the template letter) with a data source (Excel list). Each column header becomes a merge field such as «Name». Mailings tab order: Start Mail Merge → Select Recipients → Insert Merge Field → Preview Results → Finish & Merge.

Mail merge produces one personalised copy of the main document for every row in the data source, substituting each row's values wherever the matching merge field (shown in chevrons, e.g. «FirstName») appears. The data source's first row must be column headers — those header names are exactly what populates the Insert Merge Field dropdown, so a typo in a spreadsheet header becomes a missing or mismatched field in the letter. Preview Results lets you flip through a few merged records before committing, so you can catch a wrongly-placed field or an awkward space around it while it's still cheap to fix. Finish & Merge → Edit Individual Documents is the option that actually generates the full set of personalised letters as one new document (conventionally named "Letters1") — it's a separate, generated file, which is why the final step is always to Save As it under whatever name the task specifies, rather than expecting the original template to already be the finished result.

Useful tools for this paper

A handful of built-in Word tools aren't tied to any one question above, but make almost every question faster and safer to answer under exam time pressure:

• Show/Hide ¶ (Ctrl+Shift+8): reveals paragraph marks, space characters, tab marks and — critically — section break lines. Section breaks are invisible by default, which makes them easy to delete by accident or hard to locate when a question depends on one; leaving this on while you work is cheap insurance.
• Navigation Pane (View → Navigation Pane, or Ctrl+F): lists every heading in the document as a clickable outline, so you can jump straight to "Incubator timeline" or "A Platform for Youth Innovation" instead of scrolling. It only lists headings that use a proper Heading style — another reason styled headings matter.
• Find & Replace (Ctrl+H): for ordinary text replacements, not just the wildcard searches covered above. Useful any time an instruction names an exact phrase to locate ("find 'local funding database' on page 7") rather than scrolling by eye.
• Format Painter (Home → Format Painter, or Ctrl+Shift+C to copy / Ctrl+Shift+V to paste): copies character and paragraph formatting from one piece of text to another without needing to know which specific properties differ. Double-click the Format Painter button to apply it repeatedly to several places before switching it off.
• Repeat (Ctrl+Y or F4): repeats whatever the last action was. After manually applying a formatting change once, F4 reapplies the identical change to a new selection in one keystroke — faster than re-opening a dialog each time for a repetitive task.
• Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y): Word's undo history is deep and reliable across most actions (including style changes and section breaks), so there's rarely a reason to manually "fix" a mistake by reformatting from scratch — undoing back to before the mistake and trying again is usually faster and safer.
• Word Count (status bar, or Ctrl+Shift+C is Format Painter — Word Count has no default shortcut, click the status bar instead): a quick sanity check when a question describes "the paragraph starting X and ending Y" and you want to confirm you've selected the whole passage, not part of it.
• Zoom slider (bottom-right corner) and View tab: switching between Print Layout (what will print, including margins and page breaks — the right view for almost everything in this paper) and Web Layout or Draft can make certain things easier to see (Draft hides headers/footers and page boundaries, which can make large-scale text edits faster), but always finish a check in Print Layout since that's what a marker ultimately looks at.