Google Docs: Writing and Editing

Objectives and Overview

This lesson provides an overview of some of Google Doc’s writing and editing features.

Lesson Objectives

• Explore the formatting options: font size, text color, and highlight color
• Identify how to change text formatting before writing text
• Identify how to change text formatting for text you’ve already written
• Recognize how headings can add structure to your documents

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Writing With Google Docs

This section introduces two common methods used in writing: text formatting and document structure. Try practicing each thing in your own Google Doc as you read through. Text formatting is a lot of fun to play with and experiment as you learn!

Formatting Your Text

Google Docs has lots of options for formatting (changing, styling) your text. You should explore all of these tools. This section provides a walkthrough to guide your exploration.

If you click on the Normal text button in the formatting bar you can apply some preset styles. By default, you’re using the Normal text option. You can use preset headings to add more structure to your document. For example, if you click on the Title option, your text will be set to that style!

Here’s an example showing some of these preset options. Notice the difference in sizes. The Heading 1 is the largest, and the sizes decrease from there:

Exploring Font Formatting

Google Docs has lots of font options. You should explore these! You can find them in the formatting toolbar:

There are many ways to change your font. The first is to change it before typing anything:

Another way is to change the font for the text you’ve already written. To do this, select the text (hold down the left mouse button and drag over the text) and then change the font:

You’re able to select text and make it bold, italics, or underlined using the same process. Here’s an example:

You can also change your font size. The default size is 11, but you may need to change this. For example, you may want to change the size of your headings.

Just like when you changed the font, you can change the size before typing text or after. Here’s a gif showing how to change the size before typing:

You also may want to change the size of the text you’ve already typed. First, select the text (hold down the left mouse button and drag over the text) and then change the font size in the menu:

You’re able to change the text color as well. This can be done using the same way as with the other changes. You can either set the color before typing or after. Let’s look at before:

You’re able to use change the color of text you’ve already typed. Select the text, and then change the color:

You can also set the highlight (background color) of the text. Let’s look at how to do this to some text that you’ve typed:

To remove a highlight, select the text and then click None in the color options:

You can also combine highlight and text color. This is useful for adding some visual interest to your documents:

Document Structure

Using headings is a great way to add structure to your documents. This can help make them more organized and readable. Google Docs provides many preset formatting options for headings. You can access these from the formatting toolbar. Much like the other formatting options in this lesson, you can set the heading before or after you write text.

To set a heading before you write text, click on the dropdown and select the heading you want. This example shows how to set a Heading 1:

To change text you’ve already written, select the text by holding down the left mouse button and dragging your mouse. Once the text is selected, select the heading from the dropdown:

The text size changes once you select a heading. You can see this by looking at the formatting toolbar. In this example, the text for the Heading 1 is size 20 instead of 11 (the default for Normal text):

The next step is to begin using headings to structure your content. You want to avoid jumping around as much as possible. I typically have a single Heading 1 in my document, and then use Heading 2 for the next highest level (and so on):

Document Outline

Google Docs has a useful tool called the document outline. This is a really helpful way to see your document structure (and to quickly jump to parts in a larger document!). This outline is something that can be toggled (turned on and off). It may not always be visible. Here’s an example of a Google Document with the outline hidden (togged off):

Here’s a gif showing how to toggle the outline on and off:

Once you add headings to your document (and have the outline open), you’ll see them appear as an outline:

Clicking on the headings in the outline takes you directly to that section in your document. This is a great way to add structure to your content (and to move around a larger doc).