Riverbank It management

If the words “dot leader” don’t mean anything to you it’s time to get up to speed with using tabs in Microsoft Word. Other symptoms that you need tabs include struggling to line things up and adding spaces here and there until things do line up correctly.

Like so many aspects of word processing the ‘tab’ dates back to the days of typewriters. It was a mechanical stopping point along the carriage that enabled you to tabulate, ie to line up columns of text. It does exactly the same job, and more, in today’s word processing software.

Don’t add spaces

Let’s run through the basics first. The first step is to end your days of pressing the space bar repeatedly. Suppose you want the following text:

You type Name: then press the tab key. Then you type Fred Smith. If Word’s default tab stops don’t suit you, create your own tab. Note the type of tab you will get – in this case a left tab – and click on the ruler bar where you want the tab to appear. They are circled in the picture below.

Notice in the example above that I had highlighted two lines of text. Tabs only apply to the current line and any new lines you create after that. For existing text you must remember to select all the text, then set the tab.

Different types of tab

So far we’ve looked at the standard typewriter-style left tab. Now let’s do things that mechanical typewriters couldn’t do – right-aligned tabs and centred tabs. Just click the tab indicator in the top-left corner of the editing screen to step through the available types of tab. When you have the correct tab click on the ruler bar where you want the tab to be.

Here is a centred tab:

And here is right-aligned tab:

Meet your dot leader

Now let’s look at something fancier. You want to create a form that can be completed either on paper or electronically, with dotted lines to guide people. You want something like this:
 

So when it is filled in it looks like this:

The steps you need to take are:
1. Set a left tab at 3cm on the ruler bar.
2. Set a right tab at 9cm on the ruler bar. Your document should have two tabs on the ruler bar like the image below.

3. Now change the right tab to be a dot leader tab. Run through these steps:

a. On the Home tab click the arrow next to the word Paragraph to show the Paragraph dialog box (see below).

 

 

b. In the bottom left corner of the Paragraph dialog box click the Tabs button. You should see the Tabs window.
c. In the Tabs window select the tab stop at 9cm then in the Leader section click option 2 for a dot leader. Your screen should look like the one below.

d. Click OK.

4. The hard work is done. Just type your text – type Name: then press the tab key. Your cursor jumps to the first tab stop. Press the tab key again and your dot leader appears.
5. Press the Enter key to move to the next line. Notice that your tabs follow you as you create new lines.
6. Type Date of birth: and press the Tab key twice. Your second dotted line appears.
7. Now go back and enter a name at the start of one of the dotted lines. See how easy it is to fill in – the dotted line stays aligned with the tab and it all looks very professional. That’s all thanks to your dot leader!