Carol's Corner Office

Word provides you with a very handy method of shading text in your documents. Shading can be added together with any border you may specify for your paragraph. This is a great little feature – it even allows you to precisely control the level of shading.

 Follow the steps below to learn how:

1. Place your cursor in the paragraph that you would like to highlight.
2. Click the Home tab of your Ribbon.
3. In the Paragraph group, click the down-arrow to the right of the Shading tool that resembles a paint can to display the shading palette.
4. Select one of the ten theme colors at the top of the palette. Each color has options under them to represent a different level of shading for that particular color.

If you are using an earlier version of word:

1. Place your cursor in the paragraph that you would like to highlight.
2. Click on Format | Borders and Shading to display the dialog box.
3. Click on the Shading tab.
4. Using the Style drop-down list, select a degree of shading you want to use for your paragraph.

• Click OK.

Highlighting your text using the shading settings is completely different than highlighting text using the highlighter tool.  Personally, I think it is easier to do using shading and you have a lot more flexibility as well.

You can apply the shading technique to styles and create a character style that incorporates shading. You can then apply the character style to anything you would like to shade and you can easily remove the style, replace it with other formatting or search for the style.

The process is much more inolved when working with highlighting that has been applied using the highlighting tool.