Word Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 16 Tab Me to Your Leader

Tables have superseded tab stops, which have
largely gone the way of the IBM Selectric typewriter. However, tabs
are still the best tool for the job when working with leaders. This
hack offers some tips for taming those tabs.

People often use tab leaders to fill the spaces between entry spots on forms
filled out by hand, such as job applications or fundraising pledge
forms (see Figure 3-7).

Figure 3-7. Underscore leaders used to underline fill-in spots

Many of these forms are created in what can only be called The Hard
Way: you type the first entry, then type a series of underscores to
the next item, and then fill the rest of the line with underscores.
This method will cause trouble for the person responsible for
maintaining the form for two reasons:

If any text changes, the underscores from one line will either spill
over to the next or not match up at the end of the line.

Unless you use a constant-width font
such as Courier, in which every character
is the same width, the ends of each line will rarely line up
vertically or extend all the way to the right margin.

But with some planning and the use of one of Word's
Drawing features, creating and maintaining forms like this is a
breeze.

Because you want each line in the form to use different tab stops,
create a separate paragraph in your document for each line. Next,
select ViewToolbarsDrawing (the Drawing toolbar
may first appear docked to the bottom of your Word window). On the
Drawing toolbar, select DrawGrid to display the dialog
shown in Figure 3-8. Input 6
pt for horizontal and vertical spacing and
then check the "Display gridlines on
screen" box.

Figure 3-8. Turning on the drawing grid

The drawing grid can help you line up items in a lengthy form. The
grid will appear on your screen as shown in Figure 3-9.

Figure 3-9. Using the grid when setting tab stops can help ensure correct and consistent alignment

Next, double-click the square box at the left edge of the ruler,
shown in Figure 3-10, until you get a Left Tab
(looks like a capital "L"). If you
click your cursor in the ruler, you will insert the tab type (Right,
Left, Centered, Decimal) selected in the box.

Figure 3-10. You can use the box at the far left of the ruler to choose a type of tab stop

Put your cursor in the first line of your form. Hold down the Alt
key, click in the ruler, and drag the tab stop to the desired
position, as shown in Figure 3-9. Holding down the
Alt key displays the exact position of the cursor, measured from each
margin. The location of the tab stop will be where the next word
begins. After you've placed a tab stop for each
entry in the first line of the form, put one more tab stop at the
right edge of the ruler, at the location of the right margin.

Repeat this procedure for each line in the form, setting one tab stop
for each entry, then a final tab stop at the right margin.

Next, put your cursor in the first line of the form to create the
lines, or leaders, that will fill in the spaces
between entries. Double-click any of the tabs in the ruler to display
the Tabs dialog shown in Figure 3-11.

Figure 3-11. Adding the leader to the tab stops

Select the first tab stop listed, then select the radio button next
to the underscore leader and click the Set button. Repeat these steps
for each of the tab stops in the paragraph, then click the OK button.
Follow this procedure for each line in the form.

Though it takes a bit more work up front to set tab stops and
leaders, your effort will be repaid many times over.