In this article we discuss the options for pasting text into a Word document.
A funny little article appeared in the Salt Lake City Weekly about cheating in student essays, which included this quote:
“Learn how to paste unformatted text in Microsoft Word. According to assistant professor Alex Halavais at Quinnipiac University, “When I am reading a document in black, Times New Roman, 12pt, and it suddenly changes to blue, Helvetica, 10pt … I’m going to guess that something odd may be going on. “
Office Watchers, Pam V writes: “I see essays from even lazier students who paste from web sites without even bothering to remove references to web links etc! Not that I want to encourage students to cheat, but how do you paste unformatted text in Word? “
Whenever you copy text into Word you have several options, depending on which version of Word you have.
In Word 2003 you have various options (depending on the exact circumstances):
Keep Source Formatting
As it suggests, this pastes not only the text but all the formatting attributes from the source document. Which attributes are copied depends on the named styles in the source document and whether you include a paragraph mark in the selection. The pasted text might be what you intend but more often the result is a horrible mess.
Match Destination Formatting
Generally this will apply the formatting of the destination document in the place where you paste the document.
Keep Text only
This is our preferred option – it drops all the formatting from the source and just pastes in the text. You can then edit or apply styles to your heart’s content. It’s also the best option when pasting from a web page because it’s easier to deal with table formatting and bits of web code.
Apply Style or Formatting
Will select the pasted text and open the formatting dialog or task bar so you can format it directly.
