How to Make a Paper Look Like a Newspaper in Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Word may not be the most professional document design tool, but it can still produce a reasonable facsimile of just about anything you may have seen in print, provided you lay out the text correctly. Newspapers, in particular, use a specific layout for each page that is more or less always the same, barring small variations, so to make your paper look like a newspaper, format it using that very same layout.

Examine the layout of various newspapers, noting both similarities and differences. If your paper has more than one page, also make a note of the differences between each newspaper's front page and the rest of the pages.

Sketch out a layout for your paper using a pencil and ruler. It doesn't need to be precise, nor mirror any particular newspaper's layout exactly unless you want it to -- but it should be detailed enough to give you a general idea of where you'll be placing your text and, if your paper includes any, your images.

Launch Microsoft Word and create a new, blank document. Select the "Insert" tab, click "Text Box," and then select "Draw Text Box."

Draw text boxes on your document to recreate the layout you sketched out on paper. Select all the text boxes, click "Shape Outline," and then select "No Outline" to remove their borders. If your layout includes any images, insert and position them as you normally would.

Type or paste your paper's text into the layout. To connect the text boxes serving as your newspaper's columns, click inside the first text box, click "Create Link," and then click the second text box. Repeat this process with the remaining text boxes to ensure the text of each article flows correctly between them.

Change the font face and size of each part of your paper to suit your needs. Article text is almost always typeset in a serif font such as Times New Roman, while headlines may use either a serif font or a sans-serif one such as Impact.

Set the text alignment for each part of your paper to suit your needs. Article text is typically justified, while titles may be centered or aligned to the left, depending on what looks better.