Why Use Columns?

Columns are commonly used in newsletters, brochures, and similar documents. The shorter lines of text provided by columns are easier to read, and they provide greater flexibility in formatting a document with graphics, tables, and other elements. Word makes it easy to use columns in your documents. Figure 21.1 shows a document formatted with three columns.

The columns that you create in Word are newspaper-style columns, which means that the text flows to the bottom of one column and then continues at the top of the next column on the page. For side-by-side paragraphs, such as those used in a resume or a script, use Word's table feature (as discussed in Lesson 20, "Organizing Your Document with Tables" ).