INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE THE KEYBOARD FOR WRITING PURPOSES


The Keyboard
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  UNDERSTANDING COMPUTER WRITING   HOW TO TYPE

NOTE: System colors may vary per system, and your system's colors may be different than mine. That's OK.

UNDERSTANDING COMPUTER WRITING

     Computer writing is called text, and instead of saying writing, you say typing. Characters are simply non-letters and numbers, such as the spaces and punctuation marks. Special characters produce symbols, such as the copyright symbol. Do you understand how to type with the keys on your keyboard? What about text's different style and shapes?

     Each style and shape of text is called a font. Fonts provide you with more styles of typing other than typing with the same boring font over and over, like I'm doing! Think of fonts as the different kinds of "hand-writing" your computer can do. You know every human has their own hand-writing style, and a font has it's own "hand-writing" style as well. However, you can go even further in altering the font's style. You can make it appear darker (called bold-face, or "bold"; ), lean it to the right side (called italicizing; ITALICISED TEXT), or even underline it (UNDERLINED TEXT). You can make the font bigger or smaller by fooling with the size, or make it colorful by fooling with it's color. You'll have to do this in a word processor, and this tutorial does not teach this.

     But maybe you're new to typing, and you want to understand how to do a few things when typing. No matter what program you're typing in in Windows 98, the following will work in all word-processing programs (typing programs, like Microsoft Word; programs intended for word-processing). Do note that a keyboard's numbers go from 0 to 9.

     See that blinking horizontal line? That's called a cursor. What ever you type in the computer will replace it's position.


HOW TO TYPE

     Before you begin learning how to type, it is important to know what keys are used when typing. Besides the punctuation marks, numbers, and letters, here are the additional keys:

Tab: Indents a paragraph
Page Up key: Moves inside a document page by page to the previous page
Page Down key: Moves inside a document page by page to the next page
Spacebar (long key, called Space): Spaces between words, etc.
Backspace key: Moves back a space; used to delete mistakes if placed behind the mistake. Can move back a line (a straight invisible line where information is allowed to be typed)
Delete/DEL key: Used to delete mistakes if placed infront of it. Can move information closer to a line or up a line
Enter key: Moves down a line
End key: Moves you on a line to the farthest you've been down that line
Scroll Lock key: Used to disable the arrow keys on the number pad
Home key: This key will return you to the beginning of the line

     To make a capital letter, or to type with one of the symbols above a character, such as typing a !, hold down the Shift key, and press the key to be capitalized or to use the symbol above it. You'll learn more keys like this below.

     Let's type the following sentence in the box below. Underneath it you will find what all you do. The keys you type to type in words will be bold-faced, while the keys you press to perform a particular action will be italicized.

    The boy died.

SHIFT+T, h, e, [space] b, o, y [space] d, i, e, d, . Enter

     Now let's understand where our pronounciation is located (the keys not given a description is self-explainatory), and learn some names:

! (on the 1 key% (on the 5 key)

& (on the 7 key _ (called underscore, located on the hyphen (-) key by the 0 key)

()  (located on the 9 and 10 keys)  \ (called backslash)

;(located with the colon)  / (called slash, also known as forward slash)

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