Draw a Line in MS Word: 5 Simple Methods

If you want to add a horizontal line inside a Word document, you can do it by using the formatting tools. But inserting a vertical line is a little trickier. You have to insert the line as a shape. Word lets you tweak the line’s color, shape, style, angle, thickness and alignment. You can also add visual effects such as 3-D styles, outlines and shadows.

In this tutorial, you will learn the different ways to draw a line inside a Word document.

Method 1: Using Shapes Menu

The very basic method to draw a line inside a Word document is to draw it. You can do this by using the Shapes menu. This menu has several options such as lines with arrow points on one or both the ends. You can also customize the appearance and color of the line after drawing it.

Please follow the steps below:

Open Ms Word, Double-click a Word document that you want to edit, or double-click the Word App Icon and click Blank document to open a new document.

draw a line in ms word

Now place the cursor where you want to insert a line and click Insert

Click on Shapes drop-down arrow available in In the Illustrations group.

draw a line in ms word

Next,choose the shape of the line from the line group

draw a line in ms word

Inside the document, click on the shape and drag across the area where you wish the line to be placed.

draw a line in ms word

Creating Vertical Line

Put your cursor where you want the line to begin. Then, drag it to the area where you want the line to end.

draw a line in ms word

Note: If you press the Shift key and drag the mouse while drawing the line, you can easily get an absolute horizontal or vertical orientation.

Change Style of Line

You can change the style of the line, for that select the line and then click Format tab (Shape Format for some versions).

In this Format tab you change the color, style or apply effects to the line.

draw a line in ms word

Method 2: Using the Horizontal Line Tool

Another easy way to insert a line in the Word document is by using the Horizontal Line Tool present already. Let us see how you can use it.

Please follow the steps below in order to insert a line Horizontal Line Tool:

Place the cursor in the word document where you want to draw a line and click Home Tab

Note: When you open a New Word document or an existing one, the Home tab is selected by default.

Now go to Paragraph group and click on the Border drop-down and select Horizontal Line.

draw a line in ms word

A Horizontal Line will be inserted to your word document.

draw a line in ms word

Change Style of the Line

In order to change the style (look) of the horizontal line, double click on the line

A Format Horizontal Line dialog box will appear where you can change the width, height, color and alignment of the line.

Change Style of the Line

Method 3: Insert Line Above or Below Heading

Lines are commonly used in Word to decorate a heading or a subheading. It decorates the text and makes it eye-cathy, and also helps to divide the document into sections.

Please follow the steps below

First place the cursor on the heading (where you want to add line) and click on Home Tab.

Insert Line Above or Below Heading

Now go to Paragraph group and click on the Border drop-down and select Bottom Border to add line below Heading or Top Border to add line above Heading.

Insert Line Above or Below Heading

Method 4: Create Lines Using Keyboard

Another easy way to create a line in Word is to press the hyphen key 3 times and hit the Enter key. This will automatically create a straight line. You can also replace the hyphen key with an underscore or the equals symbol. This will give you thicker lines and doubles lines respectively. Hash signs can be used to drawing triple lines with thick centers.

You can use the Asterisk symbol to create a dotted line or use tildes to draw some wavy lines.