Drop cap is short for dropped initial capital letter. Typically a drop cap is an oversized, single capital letter designed to stick up above a line of text or to stand out in a block of text.

One of the most common word-processing mistakes is using spaces to align text. Using tabs ensures that your text is aligned perfectly and makes it much easier to modify settings.

This feature allows you to review quickly the font and paragraph formatting (and section formatting) used in your text.

With Research pane you can: find synonyms (a word that means essentially the same thing as the word it replaces) and antonyms (a word that means the opposite of the selected word), while Word's thesaurus primarily finds synonyms; search words in public dictionaries (e.g., Encarta World Dictionary); translate words and texts.

By default, hyperlinks are used with pressing or holding Ctrl. But you can turn off this function.

When you need as much space as possible on screen to view a document, you can collapse (or minimize) the Ribbon to only its labels by double-clicking the label of the tab you're currently using.

When you typing a document, Microsoft Word recognizes certain values, such as Web and UNC addresses (a network resource), and automatically makes them hyperlinks. However, after you enter a space, Word stops creating the hyperlink because it has no way of knowing whether you've finished the address and are now typing another word or whether the address contains spaces.

Unlike previous versions, Word 2007 does not provide users the ability to create your own menu, but you can use the Quick Access Toolbar. Perhaps you miss the menu in earlier versions of Word that let you quickly switch between open Word documents. Also, say you're a big fan of AutoText, which lets you assign long strings of text to a couple keystrokes. You can add the AutoText button to the Quick Access Toolbar, so you can quickly create and use AutoText to collect frequently used commands.

If you're a fan of the way AutoText worked in earlier versions of Word, you may be dismayed to see it buried as one of the Galleries in the Building Blocks Organizer. Fortunately, it's as easy as ever to create and retrieve an AutoText entry using the F3 key.

If you want to send several letters with the same text, but with different attributes (e.g., names of recipients and their addresses), you can merge a document with a database (e.g., a table of Excel).