Word 2013: Indents and Tabs

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Indenting text adds structure to your document by allowing you to separate information. Whether you'd like to move a single line or a whole paragraph, you can use the tab selector and the horizontal ruler to set tabs and indents.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, please visit our site at http://www.gcflearnfree.org/word2013 to view the entire tutorial on our website. It includes instructional text, informational graphics, examples, and even interactives for you to practice and apply what you've learned.

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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, 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 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 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.
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 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 your 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.
This document looks a lot better now, and
I think having everything lined up gives it
a neater, more professional appearance.