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Indenting paragraphs12/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Now you’ll see why publishers hate receiving manuscripts with Tabs! But if you’re converting an existing document to use indents instead of Tabs, you have one more step: you have to delete all those Tabs. If you’re setting up a brand-new document with this indent setting, good for you! You’re done. If you’re using different word processor, like Google Docs or Scrivener, search for “how to adjust indent settings in ” to find easy step-by step instructions. Make sure the By field next to it is set at 0.5”. Click the drop-down menu under Special and select First Line. In the Paragraph menu that appears, make sure the Indents and Spacing tab is open, then locate the Indentation section. Then open the Paragraph formatting section at the top of your document (same section that has bullets and line spacing). If you’re using Word, press Ctrl-A on a PC or Cmmd-A on a Mac to select the whole document. The setting you want to change is located in your “Paragraph Settings” option. Since publishers want us to use indents instead of Tabs, it’s important to understand the difference and to use the correct one (indents). It’s much easier to set up a document correctly at the beginning, but it’s still easy to fix your Tabs later. So what’s the difference? A Tab is a space inserted when you hit the Tab key, and it can be different for every line depending on what you do with those little Tab markers in the ruler along the top of your document.Īn indent is a paragraph setting you can set once, and it will apply consistently to every paragraph in your document (or in a particular section, if you want to get all fancy). The secret is to use indents instead of Tabs. And lately, publishers and formatters are becoming more vocal about asking writers to fix this before we submit our work. Now the publisher must go through and remove all of those Tabs-sometimes by hand-to get their formatting to play nice.Īt least, that’s what I gather from hearing publishers sigh loudly whenever the topic comes up. However, when a publisher gets a manuscript formatted with all of these Tabs everywhere, it can wreak havoc with their formatting or typesetting software. Then we hit Tab again to fix the occasional goofy paragraph. Easy, right? After that, Word sometimes remembers we want to start every paragraph that way, so it puts in a Tab for us. So when we begin a new document, we simply press Tab to indent our first paragraph. But we writers often want our paragraphs to start with indents. The problem is that the default setting in Word and some other word processors is to begin a paragraph without any indent at all. ![]() It’s apparently publishers’ biggest pet peeve we’ve never heard of. It’s not your fault-you can blame the default settings in your word processor.Īlthough I’ve been writing professionally for many (MANY) years, I only recently learned that editors and publishers absolutely hate when we use Tabs instead of indents to start a new paragraph. Based on my highly unscientific survey of some fellow writers, there’s a good chance you’ve been formatting your paragraphs wrong. If you wish to create an indent affecting lines in a single paragraph, with an insertion point made in the text, from the Text menu, select Insert>Tabs and Spaces>Indent To Here to set an indent up to that point.Brace yourself. The right indent tab will ignore formatting set by the Frame Text Ruler and will set an indent on the right-hand edge of the text frame. To add an individual or one-off right indent tab, with an insertion point made in the text, from the Text menu, select Insert>Tabs and Spaces>Right Indent Tab (or press the -tab keys).
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