Work-accelerating function buttons

Today, let us start to home in on the idea of the most frequently used hotkeys in Microsoft Office. Before we start the introduction to them, I would like to tell a brief story of mine.

I had an experience of conducting a simple preliminary research in elementary school. For I and my classmates were all young kids, the teachers had made a brief list of the content so that we didn’t have to worry about of the structure of the final report. Feeling easy, we start to do some tricks in Microsoft Word for we were using it when doing the report. Out of curiosity, we’ve tried various button combination aiming to discover some novel functions, thus, we found many hotkeys and learned to use some interesting Unicode.

Now we’ll begin the introduction from the most basic but important ones:

Ctrl + C: copy

Ctrl + V: paste

Ctrl + X: cut

Ctrl + Z: undo

Ctrl + A: select all

Ctrl + Q: align text left (靠左對齊)

Ctrl + R: align text right (靠右對齊)

Ctrl + E: center text (置中)

Ctrl + B: boldface (粗體)

Ctrl+ I: italic (斜體)

Ctrl + +/=: subscript (下標)

Ctrl + Shift + +/=: superscript (上標)

Usually, the signs on the keys of the keyboard have their arranging logic. You can acquire the symbols on the upper left corner by pressing “Shift” and then press the target button. If you substitute the additional button with “Ctrl”, then you can get the lower left icon, at least in some specific input method.

At last, let me tell you some interesting trick done by Unicode. First, switch the input method to “新注音” or “新倉頡”, then press the button right under “esc”, the “~/`”. You may see a block popping out like this:

   

Now, you can type many interesting symbols applying the Unicode. There’re some examples below, to name just a few:

`U2605 ★

`U2606 ☆

`U2192 →

`U03BC μ

`U25B2 ▲

`U25B3 △

If you want to discover more of them to make good use of, you can look it up in “Insert – Symbols” in the toolbar on the top row:

The content encircled by the red frame is the hotkey of the symbol chosen. 

That's all for today's introduction. Thank you for watching!

Some mistakes easily made by novices - 3

To everyone’s relief, finally it comes the last week of this series! In this week we’re gonna introduce the last two simple things to notice, and thus finish our demo presentation. But don’t assume that it will be the final version to propose, there are still something to do with. That’s what we’ll talk about in the following weeks. Hope you will find them more useful then~

First, it’s quite common to have some tables in the document. As every of you can imagine, tables of raw data are desperately undesirable.

Feeling dizzy…right? So, how can we remedy the table? One way is to divide the table into several parts, and use the data to compose diagrams so as to express your idea. Another way is to make some handouts and deliver it to all the audiences before your speech.

After making considerable efforts, the main frame of our report is established. Usually, unless there’s a handout already, we will insert a page where all the contents are concisely listed. It’s called “preface”, or “table of contents”, which helps the listeners to have a overview of your presentation.

(Usually, we’ll make the preface first, then use those terms as the titles in the following pages)

Honestly, there’s still another thing to notice: the composition of the content. The arrangements must be logical. The concept is simple, but sometimes you will be puzzled with it. A recommendation is to think through all your topics and try to compose a plausible story combining all of them. This can also be the summary of your speech.

Take those tips in mind, then all of you can compose a simple, but well-constructed presentation. In the following weeks, we’ll go through several different methods and functions to polish your document and PowerPoint skills, which may make you like a genuine professional.

That’s it for today’s discussion, hope to see you next week~

By the way, the PowerPoint document has been uploaded to Google drive. Here's the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwa5RmUSbHyXbW5fbGhaeWoxSE0/view?usp=sharing

(If you want to know more interesting facts pertaining water, you can click the link and browse my document~~)

Some mistakes easily made by novices - 2

Welcome to the third post! Today we’re going to continue talking about the mistakes a novice may easily make.

Considering the question “Why we can’t make those mistakes intentionally just for fun?” a reader commented below, I’d like to say that, it’s totally acceptable and may be praised for creativity. 

But what matters is whether you’re aware of those errors or not. The aim of these posts is to raise everyone’s consciousness of these. Thanks for all the comments~~

Now, let’s go on the third thing to notice: the fonts and their sizes. If used properly, your presentation will be more inspiring. But if you utilize like the picture below, it won’t be a good choice.

As you all can see, we may want to do some fancy tricks using the various implanted font types and sizes. But we may fail when we take them altogether in a single page. So, what is needed? The answer is simple but hard: proper tricks in proper place:

The following issue is item composing. When we want, or need to make a complex figure, for instance, a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell model, a set of items can be created:

If we keep those items independent, it can be hard to keep the whole figure intact after some further revise. Thus, a better way to get rid of those concerns is to group them altogether like this:

By using this technique, harnessing complicated made-up figures is just a piece of cake. You can even export the figure as a png file_[1] to use the picture outside this PowerPoint document. By the way, it’s also vital to make the picture concise, too.

Hope you enjoy today’s…lesson(?!) and wish you all have a happy holiday~ Glad to have you finished this post. We’ll usher in the end of this series next week.

[1]: PNG: Portable Network Graphics, a format of graphics which is loselessly compressed and is compatible with network data transportation.

( reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics )

Some mistakes easily made by novices - 1

Hi, everyone. Today’s topic is the beginning of a series called’ Some mistakes easily made by novices. We’ll go through two of them in today’s post. Then…let’s get started!

When making your first PowerPoint presentation, you may consider it important to let all the audiences know what you’re talking about. So, you may feel quite grateful to Lawrence G. Tesler, the inventor of  ‘copy and paste’ ,and try to copy the whole paragraph, like this:

DO NOT do this! First, plagiarizing other’s words is wrong. Second, it won’t let you have better understandings about the topic. Third, a page tucked with words can definitely exhaust the audiences.

It’s proper to list the highlights of the paragraph on your own. Using boldface to emphasize is also acceptable, like this:

Sometimes, we may want to insert a picture in our presentation to make it more convincing, humorous, or imaginable. It is quite convenient that PowerPoint can help you to make animations of chosen items. Moreover, you can even draw the path of item movement on your own! But, please never draw a path like this:

It seems very trivial, isn’t it? When you are designing animations, don’t forget to simplify their paths. That is, try to avoid making any unnecessary turns or circulations. If can, adjust the animation speed to your speech will make your presentation even better. There’s an example below:

This is the end of this week’s post. There’re still some basic concepts to know. I’ve tried to make the post more interesting and meaningful. If there’re still conspicuous defects or deficiency in the post, please give me feedbacks to let me know.

Thanks for your attention to read through the post. Hope you all enjoy it!