Paragraph Indents vs Tab Settings

Question

SaltSeaShark Author

Level 1

39 points

Paragraph Indents vs Tab Settings

Trying to format a book length document using paragraph styles. So far, so good.

I've made separate styles for 'chapter body text - first paragraph,' and 'chapter body text.'

I'd like regular 'chapter body text' to be indented by, say, 0.25".

Question is, do I use Paragraph Indents or Tab Settings to achieve this?

Paragraph Indents seems to work, but I don't really know what Tab Settings are, and haven't been able to determine their behaviour by experiment.

thanks,

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Apr 24, 2013 1:38 AM

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Answer 1

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,939 points

Apr 24, 2013 2:47 AM in response to SaltSeaShark

Hi SSS,

Your paragraph indent is the way to go! Keep with it.

Tabs: You might find View > Show Rulers helpful. To add a tab stop, click on the ruler. In this screenshot, there is a tab stop (blue right pointing triangle) at 1 cm in from the left indent (blue down arrow) on the ruler.

The Tab stop will align a Tab character typed from the keyboard. You can have several tabs stops per line.

Another way to add a tab stop:

Inspector > Text > Tabs > Tab Stops and click on the + button. The screenshot shows there is a left tab stop at 1 cm. You can double click to edit the position, or drag the Tab Stop on the ruler.

Page 94 of the Pages'09 User Guide: Setting Tab Stops to Align Text.

Download the Guide from the Help Menu in Pages.

Regards,

Ian

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Answer 2

Apr 24, 2013 3:38 AM in response to SaltSeaShark

Tabs work on a per line basis, margin indent works for the whole paragraph.

You need to read up and learn Word Processing basics. This is not Pages, nor Mac only stuff.

Peter

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