Everybody knows Microsoft Word. It’s on almost every PC in the world and fair few Macs as well. However, a lot of users have picked up bad habits, things that detract from the usefulness of the document being created. This article looks at the most common basic errors among Microsoft users.

* Are you ever guilty of pressing the Return key at the top of a document to move the cursor down, perhaps when creating a document to be printed on your company stationery? If so, this means that you are creating a document with unwanted characters at the start. Much better to click on File – Page Setup and change the top margin (in Word 2003) or click on Custom Margins in the Page Layout tab of the Word 2007 ribbon.

* The habit of putting two spaces after a period goes back to the days of typewriters and monospace (fixed-width) typefaces like Courier where having two spaces after a period made the end of each sentence easier to detect when reading. Since modern computer-generated typefaces are proportionally spaced, the extra space is superfluous and should not be used.

* Do you habitually press the Return key two times to indicate the end of a paragraph? If so, you should consider pressing the Return key just once then using the paragraph spacing commands which can be found by clicking on the Page Layout tab of the ribbon in Word 2007 or by clicking on Format then Paragraph in Word 2003.

* Casual users who have never attended any Microsoft Word training courses are often at a loss as to how tabs work. At worst, they use the space bar to attempt to align elements on the page. This never works and when the document is printed the columns do not align properly. The Tab key should be used instead of the space bar.

* Although you can get away with pressing the Tab key to create columns of text without actually setting any tabs, it’s not usually a good idea. This method uses Word’s default tabs and means that the user often inserts a varying number of tabs between columns. It’s much better to set up your own tabs by clicking on the Word ruler. That way, you will only ever need to press the Tab key once between columns.

* Some Word users, even experienced ones, are so seduced by the Format Painter, that they rely on it to maintain consistency of formatting throughout a multi-page document. It is much better to use Microsoft Word’s styles to make your text formats consistent. With styles, at any time, you can go back and change the attributes associated with a style and your changes will update all text in that style.

* Word has a number of AutoCorrect options which can seem intrusive to new users and who complain about them without attempting to switch them off. To modify Word’s AutoCorrect and other settings, choose Options from the Tools menu (Word 2003/2002 etc.) or choose Word Options from the Office button in Word 2007.