Yes, you can teach an old techie new tricks

Today I learned that you can teach an old techie new tricks. My 7-year-old son asked me if he could type up a report in Microsoft Word (seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up). So I set him down in front of my laptop, opened up Microsoft Word and cut him loose.

That’s when he looked at me and asked if he could make the letters bigger (kid speak for wanting a larger font size). Before I could even get the first word of my reply out, my son said, “Oh yeah, I remember how to do this.”

Out of pure curiosity, I walked back over to the laptop to see what he was doing. That’s when I noticed he was clicking the wrong button. I’ve been using Microsoft Word for years and know the way to increase the font size is to use the drop-down list of font sizes to select a larger number.

Wrong button?

My son, on the other hand was clicking the button next to the drop-down list of font sizes. I told my son he had to move the mouse a little bit to the left since he was clicking the wrong button.

Then it happened. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “No Dad, I’m clicking the right button.”

I stared at the screen in disbelief. The letters on the screen were getting bigger each time he clicked the button.

And so I learned there are Grow Font and Shrink Font buttons in Microsoft Word. Each button steps the font size up or down a notch each time you click it.

These buttons have been in Microsoft Word since the beginning of time. And my 7-year-old son just taught me how to use them.