This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
15 Create a Multicolumn Newsletter
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Before You Begin
See Also
About the Rulers
Apply Paragraph Formatting
When you want to create newspaper-style columns—such as those that appear in newsletters and brochures—configure Word to format your text with multiple columns. You can assign multiple columns to the entire document or only to sections. By applying multiple columns to certain sections, you’ll be able to span a headline across the top of two or three columns of text underneath; the headline resides in a single-column section while the news beneath resides in a multicolumn section.
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Type Your Document
Create your initial document without worrying about column placement. Type your headline and other text using Word’s default styles and formats. Feel free to add graphics and borders to spruce up your headline.
TIP
If you routinely write a newsletter or another multicolumned document, you may want to create a template that contains your
headline and column layout and then apply that template to create each issue. For more, see 
About Styles, Themes, and Templates.
Format Your Headline
Change your headline’s format to match the style you want your newsletter to take on. Not all multicolumn documents have headlines across the top of the columns, but many do.
Select the Text for the Columns
Select all the text that will be converted to multiple columns. This generally begins immediately following your headline.
Request a Section Change
Click your ribbon’s Page Layout tab and click the Breaks button to display the available section breaks you can insert. Select Continuous to convert your selected text to a new section and make it reside on the same page as your headline (instead of starting the section on a new page). Word adds Section Break (Continuous) to your nonprinting characters; this will disappear when you hide the nonprinting characters.
Format the Text in Columns
Click the ribbon’s Columns button and select the number of columns you want to convert your text to. For example, if you want two columns of text under your headline, select Two. Word converts the text to a two-column format. Because you converted this text to a new section, the headline will not be affected.
Make the Final Edits
After your document appears in columns, you’ll almost certainly need to make some final adjustments. For example, with three
or more columns, the text becomes lumpy with too many spaces between the words if you’ve justified the columns. Newspapers
often use full justification, but they suffer from this extra spacing at times. Most of the time, three or more columns look
best when you left-justify them. Also, subheadings that you formatted before converting to multiple columns may be too large
in their columns, so you can decrease the font size of such subheadings (see 
Apply Character Formatting).
Hide the nonprinting characters, and your newsletter should be complete.