I use the paragraph dialog for this purpose. “Paragraph” is one of those misleading MS terms because this dialog can be used for an entire document or for selected passages. Here’s how it works.
It sounds like you want all paragraphs in your document to be indented automatically by half an inch. So Control-a for select all. Applications key, or shift-F10. P for paragraph, even though you’re formatting the entire document. Tab five times to a list you access via the up and down arrows. Right now, it is likely set at 0.0. Up arrow five times until you hear “0.5.” Press enter. That will work for the current document. If you want to make this format your default for all future Word 2010 documents, keep open or reopen the paragraph dialog and tab until you get to the default checkbox. Here, I wouldn’t end by pressing enter, but keep going until you reach the Okay button. In this same dialog, you’ll find spacing, margins and many other essential format features. Another nice feature of this dialog is that you can change the format for specific paragraphs or passages within a document. For example, if you have a quotation you wish to set off separately from the rest of the text, highlight that passage, press the applications key, then p, then go through the options. In this case, I bring the paragraph indentation down to 0.0, indent both the left and right margins by 0.5, and select single spacing. I then tab to Okay. From: judith bron [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 1:17 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: indentations In the past I was able to set the formatting in the document that when I hit enter in a document to begin a new paragraph the first word was indented by 0.5 inches. Is there a way to do this with Word 2010? From: Brian Vogel [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 12:32 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: indentations Judith, I'm unclear as to whether you're asking how to make it such that if you hit an enter each new paragraph automatically starts with an indent or simply how to make an indent. Hitting the Tab key will give you an indent at the beginning of the paragraph and you, of course, are controlling this entirely manually. You can also set a hanging indent using the top slider on the horizontal ruler at the top of your document (which, unfortunately, I do not know how to control with JAWS) which sets an automatic indent when you hit Enter to start a new paragraph. Also, open Word Help and search on the phrase "set tab stops." There is a section in there which describes how to set a hanging indent not with the slider, but using a dialog box, but you will likely understand how to bring that dialog up in JAWS after reading what's there. Happy Holidays to you and yours as well. Brian
