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Microsoft talks about reading with Word 2013

Microsoft's launch of the preview version of Office 2013 also included a preview of the new version of the popular Word software program. Today, Microsoft went over some more of the new features in Word 2013, specifially how the company has tried to improve how its users read documents.

In a post on the official Word blog, Microsoft says one of the first things the company wanted to do with Word 2013 was to revamp its layout so it looks better when seen on a digital screen. The company said the final result was a flexible layout, stating, "We take the original document and divide it into a series of columns arranged in a horizontal strip. Each column is sized to hit that optimal line length based on the current font and window size."

Zooming on both text and images in Word 2013 also received some attention. For text, the content is scaled so that it reads well no matter what the layout looks like and images such as pictures and charts can also be zoomed in separately.

Microsoft has also added two background colors for reading mode in Word 2013 to make documents stand out more. One is a sepia color and the other turns the background black and the text white for people reading on devices in low light settings.

Other reading features put into Word 2013 include adding a "resume reading feature" that will enable users to start reading again where they left off, even if the document is read on another device. There's also a "Define" feature that offers definitions of a selected word, synonyms for that word and even an audio pronunciation of that word. Word 2013 even allows users to add their own quick annotations to documents.

Source: Official Word blog | Images via Microsoft

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