More Is Not Always Better If you use too many different colors in your document, it usually becomes something that is not easy to read or to even look at – which means that your audience will be lost. How many text colors is too many? Typically, you shouldn’t use anymore than 3 text colors for your whole document.

This worked very well with typewriters and even most word processors because you could count every character (including space) to be exactly same size. For example, let’s say you wanted to create 4 rows of text divided into three columns. You would start off by simply typing text you wanted in first column and then hit spacebar repeatedly until you got to where wanted next column of text, and repeat these steps for third column of text. For next 3 rows, you would press enter, type your first block of text and hit spacebar again until you were in same spot that previous 2nd column started, and same with 3rd column.

This technique stills works in today’s word processing programs, as long as you continue to use fixed width fonts like Courier or Courier New. There’s catch, you typically won’t use fixed width fonts to type your documents with. Instead, you’ll be using TrueType fonts like Times New Roman and Arial where each character size is different; therefore, old spacing technique will never work. Don’t be lazy and settle for jagged alignments; learn new and improved techniques to line up text.

Using Default Tab Stops The simple way to line text is to use default tab stops that are set with every new document (typically every half inch). You would use same technique as before, except you would hit tab key instead of spacebar. Using tab key actually gets you to your spot a lot faster and you don’t have worry about lining up text because tab stops are in exactly same place on every line.