Exactly when we began printing text on to paper is open to some debate. European tradition looks to Gutenberg, his revolution of movable type putting books in the hands of millions. Chinese tradition gazes rather further into the past, to woodblocks in the third century; a similar technique emerged independently in Egypt within a hundred years of the Chinese; and others may point to the earliest Mesopotamian cylinder seals, rolling images onto clay and creating the first distributable form of communication.

But for hundreds of years - until the rise of lithography (making an image in wax on a smooth surface, the waxed areas repelling the ink and allowing the printer to easily reproduce a picture) at the end of the eighteenth century put illustrated publications within easy reach - augmenting printed text in any way was a difficult and costly process.

However, as technology developed and new methods for adding to the plain text were introduced, so publishers pushed ahead to make their work ever more appealing - so newspapers and periodicals that were once nothing but text began adding a few artist's impressions, then moved on to photographs, eventually introducing colour and becoming the bright, energetic tabloids of today. Whether the shift from columns of news to pictures of celebrities in disarray has been a positive development is a moot point; what's unavoidable is that when technology provides the opportunity, there will always be a race to publish the most attractive material.

So, if you're creating a document with Microsoft Word, it may well be worth brightening it up a little for the most effective and appealing results. We're all no doubt aware of the ever-growing range of fonts you can type in, but what about the Insert tab on the Word ribbon (in 2007 and 2010)? Sitting at the top of your window is a selection of tools to brighten up even the drabbest documents.

Illustrations

Adding an image has become an awful lot less complicated since the days when lithography was king. Up on the ribbon with the Insert tab selected is a picture icon: this does exactly what it says on the tin, it allows you to put any image into your document, and align and resize it as you choose (and also add a caption, which you'll find on the references tab). Alternatively, clip-art can be dropped in just as easily, Word linking to a clip-art collection and giving you direct access to all the available images (or just a selection, if you'd rather) in a side panel.

Elsewhere on the Insert tab, you'll find buttons to drop in charts and shapes, which do exactly what the name suggests: the shapes tool gives you all manner of circles, rectangles, arrows and stars for every purpose; the charts tool creates a range of bar, column, line, area and pie charts displaying data directly from Microsoft Excel (and Word will connect you directly to the Excel spreadsheet, so there's no need to leave your document). Between the two is the SmartArt tool, which gives you simple and engaging ready-made graphics illustrating lists, cycles, relationships, hierarchies and processes that can be combined with your own text and placed onto the page.

Text

Move across the ribbon a little - still with the Insert tab open - and you'll find a box marked text. This selection of tools, not surprisingly, tweaks your text to make it that bit more appealing. The text box button gives you a range of stylish boxes to write into, for attractive headers and sidebars, or to make a stat or quote stand out. WordArt can transform ordinary text into a variety of styles and colours, twisting or stretching or expanding it for extra appeal. And there's also a drop cap option, for enhancing the first capital of a paragraph.

When you could benefit from making your text that bit more engaging and attractive, Word has just the tools you need to add that extra sparkle, to make the information clearer or to illustrate your message more effectively - and it's certainly worth considering a short training course for yourself or your staff on how to create documents with the greatest visual appeal. After all, first impressions last, and with Word, you can be sure that your document will make just the right impact.