In this lesson, you'll learn how to use and set tabs.
Tabs provide a way for you to control the indentation and vertical alignment of text in your document. When you press the Tab key, Word inserts a tab in the document, which moves the cursor (and any text to the right of it) to the next tab stop. By default, Word has tab stops at 0.5-inch intervals across the width of the page. You can modify the location of tab stops and control the way that text aligns at a tab stop.
There are four types of tab stops; each aligns text differently:
Figure 13.1 illustrates the effects of the four tab alignment options. This figure
also shows the four different symbols that are displayed on the ruler to indicate
the position of tab stops.
Figure 13.1
The four tab stop alignment options.
You cannot delete the default tab stops, but you can change the spacing between them. Here are the steps to follow:
The default tab stop spacing affects the entire document.
Timesaaver Tip: Good-bye Tab To effectively "delete" the default tab stops, set the spacing between them to a value larger than the page width.
If the default tab stops are not suited to your needs, you can add custom tab stops.
Timesaver Tip: If your Ruler is not displayed, select View, Ruler.
When you add a custom tab stop, all of the default tab stops to the left are temporarily inactivated. This ensures that the custom tab stop will take precedence. Custom tab stops' symbols are displayed on the ruler for the paragraph containing the insertion point.
Follow these steps to move a custom tab stop to a new position:
To delete a custom tab stop, follow the same steps, but, in step 3, drag the tab stop symbol off the Ruler, then release the mouse button.
A tab leader character is a character displayed in the blank space to the left of text that has been positioned using a tab. Typically, periods or hyphens are used for leader characters to create effects such as that shown in Figure 13.2. This menu was created by setting a decimal align tab stop with a dot leader character at the 5.25" position. To change the leader character for a custom tab stop:
In this lesson, you learned how to set and use tabs. The next lesson shows you
how to indent and justify text.
Figure 13.2.
Using tabs with a leader character.
© Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.