Facharbeit: Setting up the page

This page was translated from German with AI. It has not been checked by a native speaker. Original page in German

Before you write your Facharbeit, you set up the pages properly once: margins, font, line spacing and justified text. If you do this in the paragraph style instead of on selected text, it applies to the whole paper – including everything you write later.

📄 Open worksheet (PDF, German) 📝 Übungsdatei (.odt) 📝 Übungsdatei (.docx)

The video

In the video you see LibreOffice in the browser. The orange frame always shows where you click next. In other word processors the menus have slightly different names; the steps are the same.

Subtitles are available in ten languages. Choose them at the bottom right of the video.

The most important points

Your teacher's requirements come first

There is no uniform standard for a Facharbeit. Usual at universities are: margins 2.5 cm, serif font 12 pt or sans-serif font 11 pt, line spacing 1.5, justified text with hyphenation.

You set the margins under Layout › Margins › Custom Margins (Layout › Rand › Benutzerdefinierte Ränder).

Every paragraph has a paragraph style; in the raw text it is called Default (Standard). If you change font, line spacing and alignment in the style, all paragraphs with this style change at once – new ones too. If you instead select text and change it, the next paragraph gets the old font again.

In the paragraph style window: first line spacing 1.5, then under Alignment the justified setting.

The result: new font, more line spacing, justified text. The gaps between the words disappear only with hyphenation (part 4).

The worksheet

Here you can see the worksheet for the video (in German). If there is a practice file, you download it above and work in your own word processor. The hints are printed upside down – turn the sheet only when you cannot get on by yourself. You can also open it as a PDF.

📄 Open worksheet (PDF, German)

Show the worksheet solutions

Try it yourself

Task

a) You changed the font by selecting the whole text. A week later you write a new chapter. Which font does it have? b) Your teacher wants a 3 cm margin on the left. Where do you set that, and do you have to select anything for it?

Show solution

a) The old font of the style – the selection changed only the text that existed at the time. That is why you change the style. b) In the page settings (Layout › Margins), without selecting anything: margins belong to the page, not to the paragraph.

Keep learning with a language model

You are my teacher and help me with my Facharbeit. I am learning to set up pages in a word processor: page margins, font, line spacing and justified text in the paragraph style instead of on selected text. Ask me five short questions about it, one after the other, about why styles are used and what is usual. Always wait for my answer and then explain briefly. Remind me that my school's requirements come first.

How this was made: The idea and the choice of topics are mine. A language model (LLM) drafted the script, the sample paper, the tasks and this page following my instructions. The screen recordings were made automatically by a script in LibreOffice (in the browser, with Collabora Online), which checked after every step that the setting was really saved. The voice was generated with Qwen3-TTS, modelled on my own voice.

The sample paper about the thread pendulum is invented, and so are the person “Alex Beispiel” and the two sources in the bibliography.

The videos, worksheets, practice files, texts and prompts in this series are licensed under CC BY 4.0: you may use, change and share them if you name the source.