Underline Blank Spaces

Hullo Russ:

I think the Pages team have answered your question, rather than any of us.

In Pages 2 the underlines I take it you want - readily accessible in typed input without some complex workaround - can be inserted by using the new, if unheralded feature of "non-breaking spaces" - shortcut Option / Space instead of just the space bar. if you set Format / Font to underline on, you will find as you have noticed that inserting simply spaces will not result in the underline you want. However, by using Option / Space instead, you will find that a continuous underline is produced, just as I take it you require.

The underline choice can also be toggled by Command / u: so that in Pages 2 you will find it possible to generate the forms you want by direct keyboard entry. Which is not to say that there might not be other ways to do this if you want a "tuppence coloured" result/ This is for the "penny plain" one.

Please note that the intention of "non breaking" spaces as per the onscreen help is simply to enter spaces that will not be overridden by word-wrap. But they have other unadvertised uses, such as this one: and who knows what else?

Cheers.

iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Usually the best way to do this is with a tab with a line fill. Pages doesn't have a solid line fill like AppleWorks does, but experiment with the choices in the tab settings of the text inspector.

Peggy

I used to use underlined spaces but the results were very inconsistent. Just like trying to line up columns of text using spaces.

I created a form with fill-in spaces myself last night. In the first line I configured the tab to use the third line choice. Even though it looks dashed in the inspector, it is a solid line. This setting of the tab held for all new lines. I'm not sure why it would be easier to use spaces. You'd have to select the underline stroke & then type in the spaces for each line. Once I set the tab to use the underline fill, all I had to do was hit the tab key & there was my line. Using tabs also has the benefit of the ends of the underlines lining up. Just looks neater.

Peggy

Hello Russ,

if you use line shapes as "inline" objects (not "fix on page"), it is very easy to use Matthias suggestion. Insert the line, hold the shift key and drag the right handle to have a horizontal line. Set the line thickness and use the menu item "Format/Advanced/Define Default Line Style" to have this line thickness for every line in this document automatically.

Frank.

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Peggy

I suspect that the reason that Pages doesn't underline space characters is because it's grammatically incorrect to do so under ordinary circumstances.

Obviously, your circumstance is not "ordinary."

I'm a little late to the discussion, and there's some good ideas about using tabs, but under what circumstances can't you underline space characters?

If I type "The stops here."
and then go back and select most of the spaces, I can select Font>Underline and they'll be underlined.

The stops here.

If I use the Font panel, I can also have double-underline or a colored underline.

(Note that for the purposes of this post, using HTML, I used nbsp.)


PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

I find I usually can underline spaces as you described, but for some reason it doesn't always work. Using the tab fill is a lot less work once it's configured rather than having to go back, select the spaces & apply the underline each time.

Peggy

True. If you have several spaces at the end of a line of text - such that the line breaks on the spaces, then you may get no underlined spaces at all, or a few at the start of the next line.

Titanium PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Thanks:

But instruction books & etc. sometimes dissuade you from applying logic.
The rationale is this: if a space is to be allowed to wrap, it must have recourse to some indication from the program to make it do so - even though this would seem to be represented by the same "invisible" as spaces that don't actually wrap, but could. Overwriting this with a character would defeat this capacity of the text to allow wordwrap.

But a space that is not required to wrap need not have this limitation.

Ergo, QED.

Regards.

PS:

This effect can also be achieved, with a little more variety, by choosing Text Underline from the font panel. To implement this, "show effects" must be active, as shown from the cogwheel box at the bottom right of the panel.

The options are then to set a single or double underline, and also to set a colour for it, which may be different from that of the text.

To have this apply continuously (i.e., through separate words) the Option-Space means of separating them must still be used. Accessing this function has a slightly different effect, even for the single line, than the underline produced by Format / Font / Underline, or Apple / u.

Curiously enough, both ordinary and non-breaking spaces behave the same in respect of the strike-through function, which is also available from the font box. One of Apple's little mysteries!

But I shouldn't think it's a burning isssue, even for lawyers and editors. As far as I can see, you'd have to get around it by switching that option off for every space you wanted to be free of strikethrough. Assigning a shortcut might be tricky, since it's not a main menu item.

The easiest way to manage this, if it's ever needed, would be I think to assign both strikethrough on and strikethrough off to character styles in the styles drawer, which would enable toggling between them with that open.

Regards.

Oops:

That's bottom left of the panel in the first para.

If anyone could tell me how to do these postings in Pages I am open to instruction. Maybe you just copy and paste, but I am loathe to open Pages except for major work in progess.

However, if anyone should doubt the major advantage of Pages' excellent screen view, I don't make mistakes like that there, though I always have in every little text-edit app. (like this) and in most other word-processors too.

Regards.

Russ,

did you try Insert/Shape/Line?