Writer Guide

cial resources for the purchase of fonts and cramped space to store them and too few person-
nel faced similar problems. In our times of laser and offset printers this is no longer necessary.
Italics have the advantage of sticking out just enough to be noticed without disturbing the
overall picture.
Another pretty old fashioned method used in literature lists to emphasise the author’s name is
the use of SMALL CAPITALS. Better resort to the method described in Section 25 on Format-
ting your Literature List.
36 Special Characters
To insert Special Characters, go to menu Insert › Special Character. If you need a
particular character or even a complete string of characters very often, say “[…]”, and don’t
want to keep on typing out the sequence, you can mark it once, go to Tools › AutoCor-
rect Options and type in on the left hand side under Replace a shortcut such as “xxx”.
Then press New and confirm with OK. Now every time you write your shortcut “xxx” fol-
lowed by a space it will automatically get replaced by a “ […] ”.
OpenOffice automatically replaces two “-” with a longer “–” and three “.” with a “…”. For a
complete list again have a look at Tools › Autocorrect Options › Replace.
37 Non separable combinations
Combinations such as “Mr. Soo”, “Dr. Who”, “§ 120”, “$ 120,000”, “26 %” and so on should
stick together. You wouldn’t want for instance the $ sign to appear right at the end of the line
and then have the amount in Dollars starting on the next line, instead you want both to appear
next to each other and in case of lack of space to move together to the next line. This “stick-
ing together” is achieved by using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + Space between
the two elements instead of a simple Space (menu Insert › Formatting mark › Non-
breaking space).
38 Shortcut keys
OpenOffice Writer has a bunch of shortcuts to make life easier. Here some of the most use-
ful:
• Ctrl + 0 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Text Body
• Ctrl + 1 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 1
• Ctrl + 2 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 2
• Ctrl + 3 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 3
• Ctrl + 4 the paragraph where the cursor is will become Heading 4
• Ctrl + i marked text will be italicized
• Ctrl + b marked text will change to bold
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