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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 before you add
an indent you may want to go to the View
tab and make sure the ruler is displayed
since it makes it easier to customize
your indents to create a first line
indent you can just 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 need a
more traditional look so I'm just going
to do a first line indent of 1/4 of an
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 the dates this
way
if you go to the home tab and 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
now works pretty well but I'd like to
have a little more control over exactly
how the text lives 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 is
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 ones that need tab
stops then click on the bottom edge of
the ruler where you'd like the tab stop
to be you can add more than one if you
need to and you can remove them by just
dragging them off the ruler now to align
the dates we want to add just one tab
before each year and they will jump to
the new tab stop generally you'll need
to add one tab for each tab stop you can
also move existing tab stops make sure
the text is selected and then move the
tab stop to the left or right 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
you
this document looks a lot better now and
I think having everything lined up gives
it a neater more professional appearance