Left right page word

99.9% of the time in English language writing, sentences start on the left hand side of the page. This is simply how we do things. But not every language uses this convention.

In Hebrew and Arabic, for instance, sentences begin at the right hand side of the page. Versions of Microsoft Word designed for these languages therefore default to right-to-left.

Whichever version of Word you’re using, though, you can adjust the text direction to suit your particular needs.

Writing in a Right-to-Left Language

If you need to write in a language that reads from right to left and your version of Word doesn’t support this, you will have to install the necessary language and keyboard settings.

If both left-to-right and right-to-left languages are enabled in a document, the ‘LTR’ and ‘RTL’ buttons should appear in the ‘Paragraph’ section of the ‘Home’ tab.

Changing the Text Direction

Even if you’re not writing in a right-to-left language, you may need to change the text direction if you’re using a version of Word where right-to-left is the default or if you’re editing a document written using this format.

In these cases, with Word 2010 or later on a Windows computer, your simplest option is to add buttons to the Quick Access Toolbar. To do this:

You can now use these buttons to set the text direction for all (or part) of a document.

Alternatively, you can also add these buttons to the main ribbon on Microsoft Word by right clicking on the ribbon and selecting ‘Customize the Ribbon’.

This opens a menu similar to the one used to customize the Quick Access Toolbar. The main difference is that you need to create a new ‘Group’ under one of the main tabs so that the commands have somewhere to appear.

Microsoft Hates Mac Computers

It’s a melodramatic subtitle, we’ll grant you, but it’s the only explanation for why Microsoft Word on the Mac has only recently added support for right-to-left languages.

If you want to change the text direction from right-to-left to left-to-right in older versions of Word on an Apple computer, you’ll need to cheat using this workaround:

• Copy and paste your text into Pages, where it will default to left-to-right
• Copy and paste your reformatted text back into Word

You can also change the text direction from left-to-right to right-to-left using this method if you have an appropriate right-to-left script installed on Pages.

The text direction should then match the settings you chose in Pages (or other compatible program). If not, it might be time to get a PC instead.

Two ways to put left and right aligned text on the same line in Microsoft Word.  There’s the commonly used option and the less well-known choice. BONUS: putting left, center and right aligned text on one line.

We’ll show how to make Left and Right aligned text looking like this.

You’ll often see it in Header or Footer.

As a bonus (because we can’t help ourselves) we’ll also have examples of Left, Right and Center positioning on the same line.

• Table with left and right positioning
• Table with left, center and right positioning
• Tabs with Left and Right text positions
• Tabs with Left, Right and Center positions
• Downside of tabs for right and center margin alignments

Table with left and right positioning

The easiest and most commonly used option is a table.  Office Watch readers know we’ve written many times about how tables with no borders or gridlines can solve many Word formatting conundrums.

Here’s how we created the above example, this time with the table gridlines showing.

Each line is a single row table with two cells.  The cells can have their own paragraph formatting (left, center, right or justified).

Make this by:

1. Insert a 2×1 table with one row and two columns.

• The first cell has Paragraph Left setting.  Type in the text or field codes you want.
• The second cell has Paragraph Right formatting.  Add text to the cell.

• Select the table (use the handle at top left of the table) and remove all borders with Paragraph | Borders | No Border.

The Table Gridlines are visible in Word but won’t appear in any printed or PDF version.

Table with left, center and right positioning

Clever readers will have guessed the same trick can be used to have left, center and right text on the same line.  Use a 3×1 table. The center cell has Center text positioning.

Word in-depth book Formatting Magic with Word has a whole chapter devoted to Tables including using them for formatting text in unusual ways.

Tabs with Left and Right text positions

The alternative is using Tabs.  Tabs are a hidden formatting marks that position text along a line. 

If you’re old enough to remember a manual typewriter, there was a bar with tabs that you slid along the bar.  Pressing the Tab key moved the paper along to the next tab stopper.

Word also has Tab stops but they have more power than the old typewriter stops.

Modern Word has Tab stops which can have different alignment settings. The old typewriter tabs could only be Left tabs – meaning text comes to the right of the tab.

As you can see in the Tab dialog, Word has FIVE different types of tab.  We’ll use three of them for single line positioning; Left, Center and Right.

Here’s some left and right text positioning using a Right align tab.

The left text is already left aligned against the left margin.  Nothing needed there.

Make the right tab by clicking on the ruler to make a tab.

Double click on that tab to open the Tabs dialog.

1. Click on the tab stop position you just created.
2. Change Alignment to Right.
3. Click Set

Now enter the text you need:

• Type the text for the left side
• Press Tab – the cursor should jump to the right side of the page.
• Type the text for the right side.

If the formatting doesn’t end up the way you want, choose Home | Paragraph | Show All – that will show the tab markers (right pointing arrows) across the page. There should only be one.

Tabs with Left, Right and Center positions

A single line with Left, Center and Right alignments is also possible with Tab stops.

Add a Tab stop in the middle of the line and change it to a Center alignment.

A Center tab alignment means the text is centered either side of the tab stop.

The great book Formatting Magic with Word has a whole chapter devoted to Tabs, all the uses and options.

Downside of tabs for right and center margin alignments

Tabs look like a great solution to positioning, but they have a major disadvantage. All Tab stops are absolute measurements in inches, centimetres etc.  There’s no way to drop a tab into a relative position like Center or Right as you can with Word objects.

If the page size or left/right margins are changed, the center and right tabs will be out of position.  They’ll have to be reset manually.

That’s not a problem with a table because the whole table (single row in this case) is set to 100% of the page width by default.

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Learn how the side to side page movement in Word makes reading documents easier.

Microsoft Word defaults to the vertical layout when you open a document. What if you wanted to read pages side-to-side instead? Word offers this layout too and it makes flipping through a multi-page document much easier on widescreens and touch screens. Let’s see how to use the Side to Side page movement in Word.

This feature is only available in Microsoft 365 right now.

Read Pages Side by Side in Word

The Side to Side command is another way to view your documents in Word. Follow these steps to set up the view.

1. Open the multi-page document in Word.
2. Go to View. Select the Print Layout option if you are in another view like the Web Layout.
3. Select Side to Side from the Page Movement group on the Ribbon. The Print Layout option activates this option.

With Side to Side, you can now see whole pages by sliding each page from right to left or left to right. On touch screens, you can use your fingers to flip through the pages like a book. On other devices, you can use the horizontal scrollbar or the mouse wheel to move the pages into view.

You can revert to the Vertical layout option from the Page Movement group on the Ribbon.

Jump to the Right Page With Zoom

The Side to Side option also activates another feature called Thumbnails in the Zoom group. You will see all other commands greyed out.

Select Thumbnails to display all the pages like tiles. Use the arrow keys to select any tile (or thumbnail) and then press Enter to jump to that page in an instant. Strangely, selecting with the mouse doesn’t work when Word displays the pages as thumbnails.

Toggle the Thumbnail button to quickly move from the tiled pages to the Side to Side layout. You can also use press Ctrl and use your mouse wheel to go back and forth between the views. On a touch screen, just pinch to zoom out from the thumbnails.

The Side to Side feature combined with thumbnails can make reading a long document easier on a touchscreen and the larger real estate of widescreen monitors.

Release Date: November 7, 2018
Category: Writing Tools
Author: Amanda W., Ph.D.

Many versions of Word allow users to enter text in right-to-left format to accommodate other languages.
Most of these change the formatting to left-to-right text direction when users select English for the text language.
However, a few versions have bugs in this process and the formatting remains right to left, such as the Arabic versions of Word.
If you receive a document originally written in one of these versions, the cursor, text direction, and/or punctuation will behave abnormally.

Here, we describe 1) how to fix this problem in a selected segment of text and 2) how to set all new comments to run in the correct direction.
The information in this guide was compiled from instructions for the 2010, 2013, and 2016 versions of Word, so these instructions should be accurate for those versions, but might not work with older versions.

Changing right-to-left to left-to-right formatting

To do this, we will add two buttons to our Quick Toolbar.
These will stay in Word as long as it is installed on your computer, so you can use them whenever you encounter this problem.

1. In the Quick Access Toolbar at the top left of the screen (where the save and undo buttons are), click the arrow at the right side and select “More Commands”.
2. Under «Choose commands from:» select «All Commands.»
3. Find «Left-to-Right Text Direction» in the alphabetical list and click «Add>>».
4. Find «Ltr Run» and click «Add>>».
5. Click «OK» to close the window.
6. You should now have two new buttons in the Quick Access toolbar at the top left of your screen: the Left-to-Right Text Direction button, which looks like an arrow and a paragraph symbol, and the Ltr Run button, which looks like an open, gray, or green circle depending on your version of Word.
7. Select the text that needs to be fixed, or select all text in the document by pressing Ctrl-A.
8. Click both the Left-to-Right Text Direction and Ltr Run buttons (it doesn’t matter which you click first).

Text should now run left to right as we expect in English writing.
If the text is suddenly right justified, meaning that it all lines up along the right margin, don’t worry – that means the author of the original document was trying to get around the bug and make the text look normal.
Just select the text and click “Left Align” in the “Paragraph” section under the “Home” tab.

Setting comments to default to left-to-right text

If you are providing feedback on this document, you will likely need to add comments to the document.
Although the directions above are effective in comments, it can get very annoying to click your two Quick Access buttons every time you need to write a new comment.
Luckily, we can set Word to use the correct formatting for all future comments.

1. If there are no comments, write one and fix it using the directions above.
2. In a properly formatted comment, click somewhere in the comment text that doesn’t have any special formatting (no italic, bold, superscript, etc.).
3. Go to «Home» tab and click the tiny arrow in the bottom right corner of the “Styles” section.
4. Click “Options…”
5. Change “Select how list is sorted:” to “Alphabetical”.
6. Change «Select styles to show:» to «All styles.»
7. Find «Comment Text» in the list and click it if it’s not already selected.
   • If there are no styles in the list and it’s just a blank white box, click the «Style Inspector» button at the bottom (the one in the middle with a magnifying glass), and the first item in the smaller box that pops up should be “Comment Text.” You’ll follow the next steps within that box.
   • If clicking “Comment Text” changes the comment back to right-to-left formatting, select all the text in that comment and click your two new Quick Access buttons again.
8. Hover your mouse over «Comment Text» and click the drop-down arrow that appears.
9. Click «Update Comment Text to Match Selection.»
10. Close all open style boxes.

Try adding new comments; the text should run left to right.
This will save a bit of time and a lot of frustration.
It will need to be done for each document in which you encounter this issue, but once you’ve done it, that style information should stay with the document even if you send it to someone else.

Keywords: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office, Text Direction, Editing, Comments

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