See Collapse or expand parts of a document to learn more. The level at which the paragraph appears in Outline view.Ĭhoose Collapsed by default if you want the document to open with headings collapsed by default. At the bottom of the dialog box, you can see a Preview of how the options will look before you apply them.Ĭhoose Left to align text to the left with a ragged right edge (or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+L).Ĭhoose Center to center text with a ragged left and right edge (Ctrl+E).Ĭhoose Right to align text to the right with a ragged left edge (Ctrl+R).Ĭhoose Justify to align text both left and right, adding space between words (Ctrl+J). If only it were that easy.There are general, indentation, and spacing options available in the Paragraph dialog box options. You are now well on your way to becoming a publisher’s favorite author. If you want to make it so that every new document you start has a half-inch indent for the first line of every paragraph, go through the same steps as above, but remember to click the Save As Default button before clicking OK. Just think how grateful the publisher will be that you took over this task instead of leaving it to them. Now you’ll see why publishers hate receiving manuscripts with Tabs!
But if you’re converting an existing document to use indents instead of Tabs, you have one more step: you have to delete all those Tabs. If you’re setting up a brand-new document with this indent setting, good for you! You’re done. If you’re using different word processor, like Google Docs or Scrivener, search for “how to adjust indent settings in ” to find easy step-by step instructions. Make sure the By field next to it is set at 0.5”. Click the drop-down menu under Special and select First Line. In the Paragraph menu that appears, make sure the Indents and Spacing tab is open, then locate the Indentation section. Then open the Paragraph formatting section at the top of your document (same section that has bullets and line spacing).
#INDENTING PARAGRAPHS PC#
If you’re using Word, press Ctrl-A on a PC or Cmmd-A on a Mac to select the whole document. The setting you want to change is located in your “Paragraph Settings” option. Since publishers want us to use indents instead of Tabs, it’s important to understand the difference and to use the correct one (indents). It’s much easier to set up a document correctly at the beginning, but it’s still easy to fix your Tabs later. So what’s the difference? A Tab is a space inserted when you hit the Tab key, and it can be different for every line depending on what you do with those little Tab markers in the ruler along the top of your document.Īn indent is a paragraph setting you can set once, and it will apply consistently to every paragraph in your document (or in a particular section, if you want to get all fancy).
The secret is to use indents instead of Tabs. And lately, publishers and formatters are becoming more vocal about asking writers to fix this before we submit our work. Now the publisher must go through and remove all of those Tabs-sometimes by hand-to get their formatting to play nice.Īt least, that’s what I gather from hearing publishers sigh loudly whenever the topic comes up. However, when a publisher gets a manuscript formatted with all of these Tabs everywhere, it can wreak havoc with their formatting or typesetting software. Then we hit Tab again to fix the occasional goofy paragraph.
Easy, right? After that, Word sometimes remembers we want to start every paragraph that way, so it puts in a Tab for us. So when we begin a new document, we simply press Tab to indent our first paragraph. But we writers often want our paragraphs to start with indents. The problem is that the default setting in Word and some other word processors is to begin a paragraph without any indent at all. It’s apparently publishers’ biggest pet peeve we’ve never heard of. It’s not your fault-you can blame the default settings in your word processor.Īlthough I’ve been writing professionally for many (MANY) years, I only recently learned that editors and publishers absolutely hate when we use Tabs instead of indents to start a new paragraph. Based on my highly unscientific survey of some fellow writers, there’s a good chance you’ve been formatting your paragraphs wrong.
0 kommentar(er)
