Center a bullet and associated text?

You can still use heading styles and a TOC even if you type the bullet manually--just use a regular heading style instead of a List style. But I believe then the bullet will also show up in the TOC, as it will be regular text.

Perhaps Pages is trying to convince you that spacing and size (and possibly color or font) would be a cleaner way of making centered heading styles stand out.

As Peter said, bullets are designed to help people read lists--here you are using them as a decorative feature. The Lists feature is not set up to enable bullets as a decorative feature. But you can complain to Apple:
http://apple.com/feedback/pages.html

May I gently suggest the idea of centring bulleted text is not good design.

The point of bullets, which are widely overused, is to draw the eye to a neat set of aligned targets that then lead onto, hopefully, short succinct points. If you centre the whole structure the bullets are staggered and lost in the general text and should be eliminated.

But getting back to your point, the bullets are held in place by tabs which are fixed points along the line of text. If you truly want to persist in this typographical faux pas, do not use the lists option. Instead type a bullet which is • (opt 8) with a fixed space after it, then all your lines will centre.

Think about what you are trying achieve though. Typography should be an aid to comprehension not a hindrance.

Peter

btw from your example it seems you are not talking about bullets but about line numbering.

Hi Drew -- I just happened to stumble across your post after spending some time trying to get Pages to do this exact same thing. An important point here is that you are not merely using bullets for decoration; they are numbers serving a functional purpose. Namely, indicating to the reader what section number the centered title corresponds to. While bullets are nearly meaningless in a centered list, a number next to a centered chapter title can be both useful and attractive.

If you really want to take full control of your organization and structure, I recommend you take a look at MacTeX ( http://www.tug.org/mactex/). It's got a learning curve, but can pump out truly striking documents, without deciding for you how your chapter titles are supposed to look. I've been using it for a while to typeset mathematical equations for presentations, but lately I've discovered that it makes a pretty classy word processor as well.

Good luck!
Will

William the problem was in using the lists function to create the *numbered heading*.

It is not a "bulleted head".

Bullets are what they sound like, graphic devices to lead into a point. Usually they are bold round dots but they can equally be hand pointers, stars etc.

The effect the O.P. wanted could have been achieved easily by not having a tab in the style and substituting it with fixed spaces.

Tabs are catches at specific points on the line and not set gaps between text. Nothing particularly difficult but a concept many seem to struggle with.

Peter

Peter, I am well aware of what the original poster was trying to do, and I am also aware of the difference between a bullet and a numbered heading. It is fairly clear from the first post that the OP was not actually trying to use bullets, but simply to have Pages automatically (and correctly) put consecutive numbers in front of each of his centered chapter titles -- not an unreasonable request, and one that Pages can almost accomplish. Each heading title is centered and numbered properly, but the number is left alone at the left hand margin -- an unattractive result that I can't imagine anybody wanting.

Tabs are not even a factor in this question. He is trying to center both a header AND its accompanying number. I have seen no acceptable Pages workaround proposed by you or anyone else. Being forced to manually renumber every heading if a new chapter is inserted is silly and, in my opinion, distinctly "unMaclike". Although this is a small issue, it is one of those little snags that can prevent users from achieving their intended results -- I hope Apple continues to improve their product, but in the meantime I like having options that can handle centered, numbered titles correctly.

The numbered list consists of an auto inserted number at the left-hand margin followed by a tab to a hanging indent.

All of this is hidden from the user by the programmers in an attempt to make it "easy" for the user who has trouble with such things.

If Pages behaved like a normal DTP program I could recommend ways around this, but as it does not, you must ask and whenever they get around to it, the programmers may or may not satisfy your wish.

Meanwhile you can construct the centred, numbered head the way I suggested.

Peter

Make a text box, type your chapter heading in the text box. Format the text as a numbered list. Adjust the text box width to fit your text. Center the text box (arrange>align objects>center). Make a new text box at the start of the next chapter and repeat. Link the 2nd text box to the first. In Inspector, choose "Text" window, select list>continue from previous.

Works great! I just tried it. I saw your post by chance, and it seemed like there had to be a way. Complicated formatting is easier in using text boxes.

True. And your suggested method would require typing (and retyping) the numbers manually, if I understand it correctly. And then, if and when a new chapter was inserted, it would require retyping all of the following numbers as well.

Or I can just use a program that does what I want, the way I want it, until the programmers "get around" to fixing Pages' remaining issues such as this one.

That's a good idea, illja. However, I still can't seem to get it to update correctly when I put a new chapter heading in between two existing ones. Have you found a way to do that without unlinking all of the text boxes and relinking them? Without the ability to update all following numbers on the fly, the easiest method within Pages is to do as Peter recommends and just handle numbers manually.

Leave the numbering till last and use a marker, e.g. <#>, to hold its place then at the end do a search and replace from the beginning to end replacing it with numbers in sequence.

If you need to shuffle the text around, try using the outline mode to construct the document then switch into ordinary WP mode to polish it.

P.

Actually, I just figured out something pretty cool. Click on the first textbox itself and format the whole textbox as a numbered list. Then, type all of the chapter titles in the first textbox; you will have an automatically numbered list of each chapter title. Each time you add a chapter, add a text box at the beginning of the chapter, but don't type text in it. Instead, type the chapter title in the first text box as a new item in the list. The first text box will thus have all of the chapter titles numbered in order.

The key? Make the first and all subsequent linked text boxes just long enough (top to bottom) to hold 1 chapter title. The linking feature forces the text to the next linked box as soon as it exceeds the size of the text box.

If you want to add a chapter in the middle, insert the chapter title in the list in the first text box. Insert the page, section, whatever for the new chapter into the document. Go to one of the text boxes that connect the chapters before and after the inserted chapter. When text boxes are linked, the little box that shows connection points is solid. Double click on the the appropriate link connection point and Pages inserts a new text box for you, correctly linked between the two original text boxes. Move the new text box to the top of the new chapter! Whew! hard to explain. Hope that makes sense. Way easier to do than to type.
No problem adding, deleting, or changing the order of the chapters.

Then do as I suggested but without the bullet.

You won't be able to use the List format unless you can create one without a following tab after the roman numerals.

Peter