I've written a letter that has several paragraphs, and to make each paragraph stand out just
a little more, I want to add a first line indent.
The easiest way to do this is to place the insertion point at the beginning of a paragraph
and then press the Tab key.
You may have noticed that when I did this, this little marker on the Ruler moved forward
1/2 inch.
This is the First Line Indent marker.
There's also the Hanging Indent marker, the Left Indent marker just below that, and the
Right Indent marker.
We can move them to create various types of indents.
They don't affect the whole document, just the parts that are selected, so let's select
all of these paragraphs.
Now, drag the First Line Indent marker.
We can also create a Hanging Indent, which moves all of the lines except the first line.
The Left Indent will move all of the lines at the same time, and the Right Indent is
useful if you want to make the paragraph narrower.
But for this letter, I want a more traditional look, so I'm just going to do a first line
indent of 1/4 inch.
Indents are a good way to keep things lined up in your document, but for more complex
documents, such as resumes, they're not always enough.
I'd really like all of these dates to line up.
I could just use spaces, but it's going to be difficult or impossible to get them to
line up exactly.
So I'll need to use tabs.
If I place the insertion point right before the text I want to align, and then press the
Tab key, it's going to jump forward in half-inch increments.
It's much easier to align these dates this way.
If you click the Show/Hide command, you'll be able to see the tabs, and they show up
as these little arrows.
You can delete them by pressing the backspace key.
That works pretty well, but I'd like to have a little more control over exactly how the
text lines up.
I think a tab stop is exactly what we need here.
Tab stops tell the text exactly where to line up, so you're not limited to half-inch increments.
On the left side of the screen is the tab selector.
If you click it, it will cycle through all of the different types of tab stops that determine
whether the text will be left aligned, centered, right aligned, or aligned at the decimal point
if you're using numbers.
I'm going to select the Right Tab.
Just like with indents, tab stops only apply to the selected paragraph, so select all of
the paragraphs that need tab stops.
Then, click on the bottom edge of the Ruler where you'd like the tab stop to be.
Now, to align the dates, we want to add just one tab before each date, and they will jump
to the new tab stop.
Generally, you'll need to add one tab for each tab stop.
If there are more things that you'd like to align, you can add more tab stops, and to
remove them, just drag them off the Ruler and they'll disappear.
If you select the text again, you can move the tab stop.
But be sure to allow plenty of space for the text.
If I move the tab stop too far to the left, the dates won't have enough room, so they
won't line up correctly.
I think this looks a lot better now, and I think having everything lined up gives it
a neater, more professional appearance.