How to Use Microsoft Word to Write Shape Poem

A shape or concrete poem is a poem that takes on the shape of the thing you’re writing about. For example, if you were to write a poem about love, it would take the shape of a heart.

We’re going to do this in Microsoft Word but with a little bit of help from PowerPoint. Why? Because it has a feature called merge shapes which is not available in Microsoft Word. So first, we quickly jump into PowerPoint.

1. In PowerPoint, go to Insert, Shapes, and select heart.

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2. Draw a heart shape.

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3. Again, go to Insert, Shapes, and select rectangle.

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4. Draw a rectangle, but this time cover the left part of the heart shape.

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5. Now press Shift on your keyboard and click the rectangle shape first, then the heart shape.

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6. In the Shape Format tab, click Merge Shapes > Subtract.

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7. Your shape will look like this.

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8. Now open Microsoft Word. Prepare your text.

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9. Copy that shape from PowerPoint and paste it into Microsoft Word.

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10. Click Layout Options and select Through.

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11. You can see that immediately the result of the text being placed inside the shape. But the problem is, the text is not filling the top part of the shape.

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12. To fix it, right-click the shape, and select Wrap Text > Edit Wrap Points.

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13. Add a few more control points by left-clicking and dragging the control point around so it follows the shape.

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14. Right-click the shape and select More Layout Options.

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15. Uncheck the Move object with text and click OK. Now we can freely move the text around the page.

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16. Duplicate that shape by pressing Control + D.

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17. Go to the Shape Format tab and select Rotate >Flip Horizontal.

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18. Move it to the right side, and now you have a nice-looking text inside the heart shape.

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19. Of course, you don’t want to see the shapes themselves. To remove it, select both of them by pressing the Shift key and going to the Shape Format > Shape Fill > No fill.