Vertical Alignment of Sections

One of the formatting options you can apply to sections in Word is to vertically align the paragraphs in the section. You will probably not use this formatting option often, but it is very powerful. For instance, let's suppose you added a separate section at the beginning of your document for a title page or cover sheet. This section only has two paragraphs in it, as follows:

Widgets in the New World
A timely report by Joan Doe

Instead of trying to vertically space these paragraphs by trial and error or resorting to calculations to see how much space you should put before the first paragraph, you can use the vertical alignment capabilities of Word. To do this, after you have the paragraphs and the section set up, follow these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Position the insertion point in the first section (the one for your title page).
2. Choose Page Setup from the File menu. You will see the Page Setup dialog box.
3. Make sure the Layout tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. Using the Vertical Alignment drop-down list, select Center.
5. Click on OK.

If you are using Word 2007, then you can use these steps:

1. Position the insertion point in the first section (the one for your title page).
2. Make sure the Page Layout tab of the ribbon is displayed.
3. Click the small arrow icon at the bottom-right corner of the Page Setup group. Word displays the Page Setup dialog box.
4. Make sure the Layout tab is selected.
5. Using the Vertical Alignment drop-down list, select Center.
6. Click on OK.

If you had more paragraphs in your cover sheet, you could use the Justified option for vertical alignment. This would cause all your paragraphs to be evenly spaced between the top and bottom text margins.