Word Insert Lines

When you want to quickly insert a horizontal line into your Word document instead of going through the Borders and Shading dialog box in the Ribbon there are some keyboard shortcut to save you time. Here are some creative ways to do it.

Most of you already know that you can quickly add a horizontal line to a Word document by typing three hyphens and pressing Enter—but there’s more. There are several line keyboard shortcuts and a built-in feature that lets you add predefined but artistic (fancy) lines.

How to Make Lines in Word

Just type 3 dashes — and hit ‘Enter’ immediately after. You can also change the type of horizontal line you are inputting by changing up the characters you use for this short cut. In the following Word screen shot the green highlighted area shows the various horizontal line breaks possible. Three asterisks ***, three underscores ___, three equal signs ===, three pound signs ###, and three tildes ~~~.

Insert a Graphic Horizontal Line

When you want a more colorful or decorative line, you can can insert one of many graphic horizontal lines available in Office 2007.

  1. Place the cursor where you want to insert the horizontal line.
  2. On the Format Text tab, in the Paragraph group, click the down arrow for the Borders and Shading command.
  3. Click Borders and Shading.
  4. On the Borders and Shading dialog box, click Horizontal Lines.
  5. Click one of the graphic lines shown, and then click OK.

Note: Graphic horizontal lines have a preset width. To increase or decrease the width of the image, click on the image, and then drag a sizing handle on either side. Sizing handles are the small circles or squares that appears at the corners and sides of a selected image. Resizing stretches or shrinks the dimensions of an image.

When you want to insert the same graphic line again, use the Horizontal Line command.

  1. Place the cursor where you want to insert the horizontal line.
  2. On the Insert tab, in the Symbols group, click Horizontal Line.

When you use the Horizontal Line command, the last graphical line selected is inserted. To select a different line, repeat the steps at the beginning of this section.

Tip: To delete a graphic horizontal line, click on the image to select it, and then press Delete.