Indentation. How to arrange a paragraph indent in the "Word"

Creating a paragraph indentation for all its simplicity and prosaicness often raises many questions. They are concerned with how to make a paragraph indentation, and how to eliminate design errors, and what traditions should be observed when formatting texts for different purposes.

Why indent a paragraph

The red line, or paragraph indentation, greatly facilitates the perception of the text, because it visually separates one paragraph from the other, structuring the printed page and emphasizing the logical composition of the text.

In paper editions, the paragraphs are distinguished by the fact that the beginning of each of them is moved to several characters, either to the right (in ordinary texts) or to the left (in presentations, booklets, or if required by a design idea).

On the pages of browsers (in Internet texts) paragraphs do not contain indents, but are separated from each other by an additional line (or an increased interval).

Confuse these two options should not be. When you make a paper edition, you should use indented indents and do not separate the fragments of the text with an extended interval, and when preparing the text for publication on the network it is better to use an empty line or an enlarged interval-this is the kind of paper and network text that will be easy to read.

Creating a red line using the Paragraph dialog box

Paragraph indentation in the "Word" can be created in several ways.

Highlight the text (select All or Alt and A (F) and open the Paragraph dialog: the Page Layout tab, click the dialog box button (small icon to the right of the word "Paragraph" - triangle , Inscribed in a square). In the window that appears, select the "Indents and spacing" tab, find the "Indent" option and in the "Indents" group set the "First line" parameter. The "Paragraph" dialog box can also be called from the "Home" tab, the "Paragraph" group.

Create a red line using the ruler

Select the text and adjust the indents using the slider on the ruler. On the right are two runners - the upper and the lower. The lower one is used to align ordinary lines, the upper one is used to align red lines. When you move the upper slider, the paragraph indents will change.

Wrong design with spaces

Editors and proofreaders of book publishing houses, as well as university professors, often have to deal with mistakes in the design of indentations in manuscripts.

The most common of these is the paragraph indentation, created with spaces. For some reason, many people prefer to align the text, headlines, verses with the help of spaces. Often there are even blank lines and the transfer of the text to the next line with the help of this sign. Of course, this makes the work on creating the text laborious, and the text unruly. With formatting and layout, the lines "go", paragraph indentation can turn out to be of unequal length, etc. It's very problematic to make this text: first you need to get rid of numerous spaces. As for the design of student qualification works, unfortunately, the use of spaces strikes a blow to the reputation of the student, as he looks very "dense" and unskillful.

Inadvisable design using tabs

The second error is the inappropriate use of the Tab key. Not only does the text contain unnecessary characters that interfere with the final processing and preparation of the text for printing, they greatly complicate the work on creating the text, requiring the author to press the key endlessly. In addition, the design of indentation by tabs leads to errors: first, according to statistics, the author regularly forgets to press the key at the beginning of a new paragraph, and secondly, errors appear when the author decides to break an already existing paragraph into two or more.

Tabulation is best used only for the design of such fragments of text that differ from the main block: it can be poems, wording of rules, laws, conclusions, etc. It is perfectly appropriate to make each such fragment with the help of a paragraph indentation created by tabulation.

How to quickly fix errors

If the paragraph indentation in the text has already been made incorrectly, the text is filled with unnecessary unprintable signs, before preparing the text for printing, they must be eliminated. You can check the text for such errors with the "Show all characters" tool (Home tab, Paragraph group).

You can remove unnecessary characters using the Replace tool (Home tab, Edit group). In the "Find" field, enter two spaces, in the "Replace" field, enter one space. Click the "Replace All" button. All double spaces will be replaced by single spaces. Click "Replace All" until the report shows "Number of replacements made - 0" after the replacement.

If the number of spaces before each first line was odd, then you need to remove the single remaining space. In the "Find" box, insert a paragraph mark ("More" - "Special" - "Paragraph sign") and a space, and in the "Replace" field - only the paragraph mark. The Replace All command will remove spaces after the paragraphs.

Similarly, you can delete both tabs, and many bizarre combinations of unnecessary characters (for example, sometimes, especially when you work on a text for a long time and repeatedly return to it, spaces are duplicated by tabs).

After cleaning the file from such errors, you can correctly format indentations.