typingpractice.doc printed for gwh1 on 11 November 2004

Basic IT Skills • Creating a simple document

This sheet will give you simple typing practice and show you how to save your work. If you feel reasonably happy with typing, you need not type all the text shown here.

Ø  Start up Word by double-clicking the icon on the computer desktop

Ø  Type the text about stag-beetles shown below. Note the following:

o  Do not press the Return key except where you want to force a new line

o  Your lines will not be broken in the same places as in the example

o  To get the space between paragraphs you can press Return twice, but later on you will learn a better way of getting a space before or after a paragraph

Gardening For Stag Beetles

Most Stag beetles (Lucanus cervus) in the UK are found in gardens. In recent years their numbers have been declining and they need all the help they can get.

There are some simple things you can do to help them. Just by letting nature take its course and doing very little you can make a difference.

Don't keep your garden too tidy!
Build a log pile in your garden.
Keep water butts covered.

Save your document

At the top of the Word window there are a series of menus headed File, Edit, View etc. The most common way of saying what you want the Word program to do is by choosing a command from one of these menus. Usually Word will come back and ask for more information by displaying a dialog-box.

Ø  Insert your floppy disk in the drive: metal bit first, label upwards or to the left. Push the disk in until the button beside the drive comes out. If your computer has two slits, use the narrower one. The other is for Zip disks.

Ø  Click on File to see the commands in the menu

Ø  In the list of commands click on Save

Because this is the first time you have saved this document Word will display the SaveAs dialog-box. There are two things you must do:

Ø  Click in the box labelled Save in: and you will see a list of possible locations for saving your document. This list is an example of a selection box. Click on 3½floppy(A:)

Ø  Click in the box labelled File name and use the Backspace or Delete key to delete what is there and then type in a name for the document, such as: stagbeetle

Another way to save your document is to click the Save button (the disk icon) on the toolbar just below the row of menus. Make some small change to your text and then click the Save button. Because Word already knows the name and location of the document, you will not have to complete the dialog-box this time. / The Save button

Library and Information Services • Basic IT Skills • Creating a simple document