Word glossary

A short description of a picture, chart or table that screen readers speak aloud and that also appears if the image fails to load. You write it by right-clicking the picture › View Alt Text, or from Picture Format › Alt Text; if the image is purely decorative, tick Mark as decorative. The Accessibility Checker on the Review tab flags every image that lacks it.

The feature that fixes things as you type: it capitalizes the start of a sentence, turns “teh” into “the” and (c) into ©. You configure it in File › Options › Proofing › AutoCorrect Options, and in the Replace text as you type list you can add your own entries: type “wpf” and Word writes “without prejudice to the foregoing”. It is the fastest text shortcut there is and needs no macros.

A gallery of saved snippets (a signature, a confidentiality clause, a full address) that you insert in one click with all their formatting. Select the text and use Insert › Quick Parts › AutoText › Save Selection to AutoText Gallery; afterwards just type the first letters of its name and press F3, or pick it from the gallery. It is a kind of building block, and it is stored in a template, not in the document.

The generic name for any content saved for reuse in Word: AutoText entries, cover pages, headers, footers, watermarks, tables or equations. They are all managed from Insert › Quick Parts › Building Blocks Organizer, where you can edit or delete them and see which template they live in. If you build a corporate template, store the blocks in it so the whole team gets them.

The numbered label that goes with a picture or table, such as “Figure 3: Sales over time” or “Table 1”. You add it with References › Insert Caption, which numbers automatically and lets you choose the label (Figure, Table, Equation or one of your own). Because it contains a field, the numbers fix themselves when you reorder pictures, and Insert Table of Figures gives you a thesis-style list of figures in one click. It uses the Caption style, so you can restyle every caption at once.

A note in the margin attached to a piece of text, for asking or suggesting without changing the document. You create one with Review › Comments › New Comment; others can reply in the same thread, @mention someone and mark it Resolved once it's dealt with. Unlike Track Changes, a comment never touches the text, but it does travel with the file: delete them all before sending the final version.

The feature that takes two versions of a document and produces a third one with every difference shown as tracked changes, even if nobody had Track Changes on while editing. It lives in Review › Compare › Compare: pick the original and the revised document and Word flags every word that was added, deleted or moved. It is the safe way to learn what the other side changed in a contract. Combine, right next to it, merges the changes of several reviewers into one file.

Microsoft's AI assistant built into Word, available when your Microsoft 365 subscription includes it. From the Copilot button on the Home tab it can draft text, summarize the document, rewrite a paragraph or answer questions about the text. It writes well, but it doesn't replace formatting: styles, the table of contents and numbering are still your job, just as with ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude.

An internal link that writes “see clause 4.2” or “figure 3” for you and corrects itself when the numbering changes. You insert it from References › Cross-reference, choosing the type (Heading, Numbered item, Figure, Table, Footnote, Bookmark) and what to show: the number, the text or the page. It is a field, so if you spot a stale number, select all and press F9.

The tool that finds and removes hidden information before you share a file: properties and personal data, comments, tracked changes, hidden text, forgotten headers and invisible content. It lives under File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document. What it removes can't be undone, so run it on a copy or right before saving the version you are about to send.

A field is a piece of data Word calculates and writes for you instead of you typing it: the date, the page number, the total page count, the file name or the table of contents itself. You insert them from Insert › Quick Parts › Field and refresh them with F9 (or automatically when printing, if you turn that on in File › Options › Display). Click one and Word shades it gray to warn you it isn't ordinary text.

The instruction behind every field, written between special braces, for example { DATE \@ "d MMMM yyyy" } or { PAGE }. Press Alt+F9 to switch between seeing codes and seeing results across the whole document (Shift+F9 does it for the selected field only); the braces can't be typed, you insert them with Ctrl+F9. Editing the code lets you change a date format or the way something is numbered without re-inserting the field.

A footnote is a comment or citation that appears at the bottom of the same page, with a numbered reference mark in the text; an endnote gathers all notes at the end of the document or section. You insert them from References › Insert Footnote or Insert Endnote; they number themselves and renumber if you add one in between. To switch from one type to the other, open the Footnote and Endnote dialog and use Convert.

Symbols Word shows on screen, but never prints, so you can see the invisible: ¶ for every paragraph, a dot for every space, an arrow for every tab and ↵ for every manual line break. Turn them on with the Show/Hide ¶ button in Home › Paragraph or with Ctrl+Shift+8. With them visible you understand why text shifts around: there are almost always extra spaces, Enters or breaks.

An indent where the first line of the paragraph sits at the margin and the remaining lines are pushed in. It is what APA bibliographies and bulleted or numbered lists use so the text doesn't run back under the number. Set it in Paragraph › Indentation › Special › Hanging, with Ctrl+T, or by dragging the lower marker on the ruler.

The areas at the top and bottom of every page that repeat by themselves: that is where the logo, the chapter title or the page number go. Open them by double-clicking the top or bottom margin, or from Insert › Header and Footer. Each section can have its own once you switch off Link to Previous, and the Different First Page and Different Odd & Even Pages boxes take care of the cover and double-sided printing.

The extra margin a paragraph keeps from the edge of the text area. It can be left, right, first line (only the first line moves in) or hanging. You control it with Increase Indent and Decrease Indent in Home › Paragraph, with the ruler markers or, precisely, in the Paragraph › Indentation dialog. Never fake it with spaces or tabs: it falls out of line as soon as the font changes.

The distance between lines within the same paragraph. You set it in Home › Paragraph › Line and Paragraph Spacing or in the Paragraph dialog, with options such as Single, 1.5 lines, Double, At least, Exactly and Multiple. Word's Normal style ships at 1.08, which is why a new document looks airier than an old one. To change it everywhere, modify the style rather than selecting all.

A recorded list of actions that Word replays for you from a shortcut or a button: for example, apply three formats, insert a header and save as PDF. You record one without programming from View › Macros › Record Macro and run it from View › Macros › View Macros (Alt+F8). To keep it with the file, save as a Word Macro-Enabled Document (*.docm); store it in Normal.dotm and it is available in every document.

The tool for producing many personalized letters, envelopes, labels or emails from a single document and a list of data, usually an Excel sheet. On the Mailings tab you follow the ribbon left to right: Start Mail Merge, Select Recipients, Insert Merge Field (name, address, amount) and Finish & Merge. Word creates one document per row without you copying anything by hand.

The symbol-based notation ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude use to mark formatting in plain text: ## before a heading, **bold** between asterisks, - for bullets. Word doesn't understand it: paste raw Markdown and you'll see the symbols themselves instead of headings and lists. The fix is to turn it into real styles (Heading 2, List Bullet) by hand or with Find and Replace, or ask the AI to copy the result with formatting.

Data about the document that travels inside the file even though it never shows on the page: author, company, creation date, total editing time, comments, tracked changes and hidden text. You can see it under File › Info › Properties. It becomes a problem when you send a contract and the other side discovers who drafted it or which clauses you deleted, which is why you clean it with the Document Inspector before sending.

A hierarchical numbering (1, 1.1, 1.1.1 or Article 1, Clause 1.1) where each level counts on from the one above. You create it in Home › Paragraph › Multilevel List, and the powerful version lives in Define New Multilevel List › Link level to style: each level is tied to Heading 1, Heading 2… and headings number themselves. It is how contract clause numbering survives inserting a new clause in the middle.

The side panel that shows the document's outline, its pages as thumbnails and search results. Open it from View › Show › Navigation Pane or with Ctrl+F. It only works if your headings use the Heading 1, Heading 2… styles: then you can jump to any chapter with one click and reorder whole chapters by dragging them, content included.

The template Word uses for every blank document: it is where the font, margins and styles you see when you open Word come from. If you change a style and choose New documents based on this template, the change is saved in Normal.dotm and appears in every new document. It lives in your user templates folder (on Windows, under AppData › Roaming › Microsoft › Templates); delete it and Word quietly creates a fresh factory copy.

A plain “continue on the next page” command that changes nothing else. You insert it with Insert › Page Break or Ctrl+Enter, and it replaces the habit of pressing Enter until you reach the bottom, which falls apart as soon as you edit a line. To keep a heading from being stranded at the foot of a page, use Keep with next in the style instead of manual breaks.

Word has several kinds of style, and you pick one in the Style type box when you create a style. A paragraph style formats the whole paragraph (Normal, Heading 1); a character style only affects the selected text inside a paragraph (Emphasis, Strong); and a linked style works either way depending on what you have selected. In the Styles pane, paragraph styles show a ¶ symbol, character styles an “a”, and linked styles both.

The Home › Paste › Paste Special dialog that lets you choose the form in which what you copied comes in: Unformatted Text, picture, linked Excel object and so on. For the most common case, copying from the web or ChatGPT without dragging in colors and fonts, the Keep Text Only paste option is enough (the other two are Keep Source Formatting and Merge Formatting; Ctrl+Shift+V also pastes text only). You can make it the default under File › Options › Advanced › Cut, copy, and paste.

The ¶ symbol, also called the paragraph mark, shows where each paragraph ends when formatting marks are on. It isn't decoration: it stores the paragraph's formatting (style, indents, spacing, numbering). Delete the ¶ between two paragraphs and they merge into one that takes the formatting of the second, because that is the mark that survives.

The Insert › Text › Quick Parts menu that gathers Word's reusable content: AutoText, Document Property (author, title, company), Field and the Building Blocks Organizer. It is the place to store anything you type more than twice, from a signature block to a formatted table, and bring it back without copying from another file.

A stretch of the document with its own page setup: margins, orientation, columns, headers, footers and page numbering. A new document has one section; every section break adds another. It is what lets you turn a single page landscape in the middle of a report or start numbering at chapter 1. To see which section you're in, right-click the status bar and tick Section.

The mark that splits a document into sections. You insert it from Layout › Breaks (in Word 2016/2019: Page Layout) and there are four kinds: Next Page, Continuous, Even Page and Odd Page. It is only visible with formatting marks on, and if you delete one by accident the two sections merge and the text above takes on the setup of the section below.

The gap Word leaves above and below each paragraph, measured in points. You find it in Layout › Paragraph › Spacing (Before and After) and in the Paragraph dialog. It is the professional replacement for pressing Enter twice: if the Normal style carries 8 pt of spacing after, paragraphs are already separated without empty lines that later drift out of place.

A style is a named bundle of formatting (font, size, color, spacing, indents) that you apply in one click from Home › Styles. Modify the style later and every paragraph that uses it changes at once, without touching them one by one. Headings, the automatic table of contents and the Navigation Pane all rely on styles such as Heading 1 and Normal.

The setting inside every style that decides which style Word uses for the new paragraph when you press Enter. It is why Word switches to Normal by itself after a Heading 1. You change it in Home › Styles › right-click the style › Modify › Style for following paragraph.

A complete collection of style definitions (Normal, Heading 1, Heading 2…) that you apply to a document in one go from the Design › Document Formatting gallery. You can save your own with Save as a New Style Set and make it the default for new documents with Set as Default. Don't mix them up: a theme changes colors and fonts; a style set changes sizes, spacing and the shape of every style.

A fixed point on the line that the cursor jumps to when you press the Tab key; with formatting marks on it shows as an arrow. Word sets one every half inch (1.27 cm) by default, but you can define your own by clicking the ruler (View › Show › Ruler) or in Paragraph › Tabs, with left, center, right or decimal alignment and a dotted leader. Use it to align short columns, like a signature on the right; for real data, use a table.

The chapter list Word builds by itself from paragraphs styled Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3, inserted from References › Table of Contents. It is a field: when headings or page numbers change, click Update Table (or press F9 with the cursor inside it) and choose Update entire table. Not to be confused with Word's Index, the alphabetical list of terms at the back.

A file that stores styles, margins, headers, logo and starter text so new documents are born correctly formatted. You save one with File › Save As and the type Word Template (*.dotx), and use it from File › New › Personal. Opening it creates a new document and leaves the template untouched; the .dotm variant is the same but can hold macros.

A theme is the package of colors, fonts and effects that gives the whole document its look. You pick one in Design › Themes and can save your own with Save Current Theme, which creates a .thmx file that also works in Excel and PowerPoint. Switching themes recolors every heading, table and chart that uses theme colors in one go.

The twelve base colors of a theme (four for text and background, six accents and two for hyperlinks) that appear in the top row of every color picker in Word. If you use them instead of loose custom colors, changing the palette in Design › Colors › Customize Colors updates the whole document. It is how a company keeps every document in its brand colors.

The pair of fonts in a theme: one for headings and one for body text. They sit at the top of the font list labeled (Headings) and (Body). If your styles use those two instead of specific fonts, changing the pair in Design › Fonts › Customize Fonts re-typesets the whole document.

The Word mode that records every insertion, deletion and formatting change with the name of whoever made it, so someone else can review them. Turn it on in Review › Tracking › Track Changes (Ctrl+Shift+E); afterwards each change is approved or discarded with Accept and Reject. The Simple Markup view shows clean text with a red bar in the margin; All Markup shows every strikethrough. It is the standard tool for negotiating a contract.

Visual Basic for Applications, the language Word stores macros in. Every recorded macro becomes VBA code you can read and tweak in the editor (Alt+F11 or Developer › Visual Basic), and it is what lets you ask an AI to write a macro and paste it in as is. Because a macro can do anything, Word blocks macros in files downloaded from the internet until you allow them from the Trust Center.

A pale gray text or image that sits behind the content on every page: “Draft”, “Confidential” or the company logo. You add it from Design › Page Background › Watermark; Custom Watermark lets you type your own text or pick a picture. Technically it lives inside the header, so if it is missing from one section, check that section's headers.