stop different lines of text from aligning the same when pressing the interface button

[neuroman9999]

I think I've asked Richard this before, but I don't think this issue is the same one. Does anyone know how to shut off the feature in WORD whereby, if you have text one more than one line in a document, and you want to align one line of text to the left margin and the 2nd line of text to the center of the page, and you click the ""align left"" button after highlighting the SECOND line of text only and both lines of text align to the left instead of just the one you highlighted?

I have 2 rows of text right now. a title (centered), and a line of body text. I just tried what I described, and the dumb thing aligns both lines of text! I pushed the ""set as default"" button in the ""paragraph"" menu within the ""layout"" tab in word 365, 2016, but that didn't seem totally solve the issue.

help anyone? I searched the web but the specific question I have I did not find an answer for. although I did get close.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Adam, I don't recognize this question from our past discussions but I think I have enough understanding of Word that I might have an answer for you. At least, an answer of sorts.

Word is NOT oriented to lines as a formatted item. It formats by words, paragraphs or by sections. For instance, the only way to know what line or page an item is on is to count lines or pages from the start of the section. The collections in Word are Words, Paragraphs, and Sections. Lines and pages are properties that depend on other properties such as font size, line spacing, paper size, etc., so are not absolute objects that always have the same value for the same input text. I.e. Even though it has all of your text available, Word can't show you lines or pages until it knows HOW you want to display it and on what medium. Centering and justification, because they depend on font characteristics, are not fixed and therefore there is no hard "break" between the end of the first line and the beginning of the second line.

When you attempt to impose a format on something, Word looks for the smallest unit that it can clearly separate from other similar units in order to limit its action. That unit in the case you are describing will be a paragraph.

You COULD try to put a paragraph marker at the end of the first line and then "diddle" with the line spacing to make it NOT separate the lines as through they were separate paragraphs (with extra line spacing and auto-indentation.) Then left-justify the first line and center the second line. You could get the same effect by declaring a section break. However, again you might face issues of what blank space appears between the lines.

Note that doing this will look ugly if you ever have to go back and edit the first line to make it longer. In which case a hand-edit would be required. Therefore, IF this would involve a mail-merge operation with variable-length text substitution in the first line, what you want might be very difficult.

Hope this is clear enough to let you decide which way to go on it.