# 8.6. Formatting Characters

This section will cover the changes you can make to individual or blocks of characters including:

- Size

- Font

- Font Style

- Character Set

- Character Color

## 8.6.1. Changing Size, Font, Font Style and Character Set

### 8.6.1.1. Using the Keyboard or Toolbars

There are several keyboard shortcuts which you can use to make common changes to character formatting. After selecting the text, you can use these key combinations to toggle each attribute.

The Basic Formatting Toolbar also has buttons which you can use to toggle these same attributes.

The following table details each attribute, the toolbar buttons and the keyboard shortcuts.

Attribute | Toolbar Button | Key Combo
--- | --- | ---
Font Size |  | -
Font |  | -
Bold Face |  | Ctrl-B
Italics |  | Ctrl-I
Underline |  | Ctrl-U

| You cannot change the Character Set using the keyboard or the toolbar, you must use the dialog box.

### 8.6.1.2. Using the Dialog Box

If you have many changes to make, you can also use a dialog box to set these same attributes.

You can open the Character Formatting Dialog box in one of two ways:

- Select Format->Font from the Menu bar

- You can use the keyboard shortcut: Alt-F

Either method will open a dialog box

Using this dialog box, you can select the font, size, character set, italics and boldface options.

The preview box along the bottom, will show you how your current settings will appear.

Clicking "OK" will commit your changes to the document.

Clicking "Cancel" will abort all changes made.

The default sentance for the preview box is "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog".

You can change this sentance by clicking once within the sentance. You can then change the sample sentance to anything you want.

This can be especially useful if you need to view numbers, special characters, or non-arabic characters

The sample sentance will revert to the default the next time you open this dialog.

## 8.6.2. Changing Font Color

The "Change Font Color" command can be invoked 3 ways:

- By selecting Format->Font Color from the Menu bar

- You can use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Alt-C

- or by clicking on the toolbar.

You can now choose a color for the selected text using the Color Selection Dialog Box.