Introduction to MS Word

MS Word is the standard tool for writing anything longer than a quick note — essays, reports, letters, resumes — with formatting a plain text editor can't do.

Word's tools are grouped into tabs across the top — Home (text formatting), Insert (images/tables), Layout (page setup), References, Review. Clicking a tab swaps which tools the Ribbon shows below it.

What you see is what prints. This is called WYSIWYG — "what you see is what you get" — and it's the whole reason Word looks like a page rather than a text file.

File → New offers built-in templates — a resume, a formal letter, a report cover page — with the layout and formatting already done. Starting from a close-enough template and editing it is usually faster than formatting a blank page from scratch.