What Are Word Processing Skills?

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Word processing skills refer to the know-how of using word processing software to create professional word documents. These skills are necessary to create letters, emails, organizations’ reports and other documents.

Word processing skills help an individual create and organize word documents that are attractive and readable. Skills include aligning text in the document and using various fonts to create a presentable document. It is also important to learn how to set the correct line spacing and margins to produce presentable word documents. In addition, the use of the thesaurus tool built into many word processing software helps create professional documents.

Popular word processing software, including Microsoft Word for Windows and Pages for Mac, have built in spelling and grammar check capability that should be used to create documents free of spelling and grammar errors.

Another word processing skill one should master is the use of headers and footers. This skill includes important details that need to appear in the document such as dates and page numbers. Creating and formatting tables is an important skill, especially when dealing with research data. In addition, one needs to know how to set tabs appropriately. Learning to use page breaks appropriately is very useful, especially when creating large documents.