At 00:59 12/09/2008 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote:
I have a document with a lot of text formatted something like this:
WORD:
Some paragraph that might be long and should
continue to be indented on the next line.
WORD:
Some paragraph that might be long and should
continue to be indented on the next line.
I am having a really hard time creating this document and formatting
it like that. So far my technique, for each of those "sections", is:
1) Type "WORD", press enter to insert line break after it.
That's a *paragraph* break, not a line break, of course.
2) Type the paragraph, press enter twice to insert a line break after it.
That's two paragraph breaks - in other words, an empty paragraph. In
general, that's not the most flexible and convenient way of arranging
vertical spacing: it's better to apply the spacing to the paragraph
or to the paragraph style.
4) Drag the bottom of the little hourglass-shaped left-margin thing
in the ruler to the right to indent the paragraph. Eyeball it to try
to get it the same for every one of these sections.
You imply that you are not happy having to do something more than
once and try to get it the same each time. That's sensible: you
should always try to find a way of doing things once and applying
them more than once.
This is really tedious, really frustrating, and very error prone
(it's hard to get every paragraph to have the exact same indentation amount).
What is the most convenient way to format this document like above
as I'm entering the text?
See below.
At 02:20 12/09/2008 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote:
On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 1:54 AM, Joe Conner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jason Cipriani wrote:
I have a document with a lot of text formatted something like this:
WORD:
Some paragraph that might be long and should
continue to be indented on the next line.
Is hanging indents what you want, as in the attachment?
Joe,
Thanks a lot for putting that together. It's pretty close; except in
my case the first, unindented line is not part of the paragraph.
You can get around that problem directly by using a line break
(entered with Shift+Enter) instead of a paragraph break after the
headword. That makes the headword part of the paragraph whilst
keeping it on its own line.
Also, I realized I left out something important in my example, I
wouldn't mind being able to have more than one indented paragraph, ...
So more accurately, my document is divided up into sections and each
section "header" appears on a line by itself, followed by one or
more paragraphs that are indented on every line. The main problem is
having to drag the indentation marker in the ruler back and forth
for every section.
At 02:27 12/09/2008 -0400, Jason Cipriani wrote:
Page 9 is exactly the type of formatting that I am going for. Note
the bold lines of text, aligned with the left margin of the page,
and the content underneath each of those bold lines that is indented
and formatted arbitrarily (e.g. some has bullets, there are
paragraphs, images, all sorts of things).
As is so often the case, I think the magic word is
"styles". Although it would be possible have the headword as the
first line of each paragraph and arrange indenting on subsequent
lines, I think it makes sense - if you want flexibility in the
formatting of your indented paragraphs - to treat the headwords and
the indented paragraphs separately. And it's often easier to enter
the text first and format it afterwards. Try this:
o Enter your text. After each headword and each subsequent
paragraph, just press Enter once - so they are separate paragraphs
but there are no empty paragraphs ("blank lines" in typewriter-speak).
o Now apply suitable paragraph styles to the material. You will
need two styles: one for the headwords and another for the subsequent
paragraphs. You can either create your own or else use or modify
existing ones, of course. I tried "Heading 3" and "Text body
indent". Go to Format | Styles and Formatting (or the Styles and
Formatting button in the Formatting toolbar, or press F11). Select
the Paragraph Styles button. Select "Heading 3" (or
whatever). Click on the Fill Format Mode button: the cursor changes
to a paint can. (To cancel this, click on Fill Format Mode again or
just press Esc.) Now click somewhere in each headword. When you
have applied this style to all the headwords, press Esc. Now select
"Text body indent" and repeat the process for the subsequent paragraphs.
If you want to tinker with the details of this formatting, put the
cursor into an appropriate paragraph and use right-click | Edit
Paragraph Style... . Look in particular at the Fonts and the Indents
& Spacing tabs. Note that, since you are modifying styles, the
effects will instantly transmit to all your material with these styles.
As an extra trick, you could modify "Heading 3" to have "Text body
indent" as its Next Style (on the Organizer tab). Apply "Heading 3"
to each headword; when you press Enter, subsequent paragraphs will
automatically receive the appropriate style. But this works more
easily if you apply the styles as you enter the text.
In order to add other effects (e.g. bullets), you could set up
separate paragraph styles, but it may be easier just to format each
paragraph or collection of paragraphs directly.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
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