Creating indentation with all its simplicity and prosaicity often raises many questions. They relate to how to indent paragraphs, and how to eliminate typographical errors, and what traditions should be observed when formatting texts for various purposes.
Why indent paragraph
The red line, or paragraph indentation, greatly facilitates the perception of the text, as it visually separates one paragraph from another, structuring the printed page and emphasizing the logical composition of the text.
In paper editions, paragraphs are distinguished by the fact that the beginning of each of them is moved a few characters either to the right (in plain texts) or to the left (in texts of presentations, booklets, or if the design idea requires it).
On browser pages (in Internet texts) paragraphs do not contain indentation, but are separated from each other by an additional line (or an extended interval).
You should not confuse these two design options. When layouting a paper edition, you should use indentation and do not separate fragments of the text with an extended interval, and when preparing text for publication on the network, it is better to use an empty line or an increased interval - in this form both paper and network text will be easy to read.
Create a red line using the Paragraph dialog box
Indentation in Word can be created in several ways.
Select the main text (the Select All tool or the Alt and A (F) key combination ) and call up the Paragraph dialog box: Page Layout tab, click on the dialog button (the small icon to the right of the word Paragraph is a triangle inscribed in a square). In the window that appears, select the Indentation and Intervals tab, find the Indentation option, and in the Indentation group, set the First Line parameter. The Paragraph dialog box can also be called up from the Home tab of the Paragraph group.
Create a red line using a ruler
Select the text and adjust the indentation using the slider on the ruler. On the right are two runners - upper and lower. The bottom is for aligning ordinary lines, the top is for aligning red lines. When moving the upper slider, the indentation will change.
Misspelling with spaces
Editors and proofreaders of book publishing houses, as well as university professors, often have to deal with errors in the design of paragraph indents in manuscripts.
The most common of these are paragraph indents created using spaces. For some reason, many people prefer to align text, headings, verses with the help of spaces. Often there are even empty lines and text wrapping on the next line with this character. Of course, this makes the work of creating the text time-consuming and the text naughty. When formatting and typesetting the lines “go”, indentation can be of unequal length, etc. To make such a text is very problematic: first you need to get rid of numerous spaces. Regarding the design of student qualification papers, unfortunately, the use of spaces strikes the student’s reputation, as he looks very “dense” and inept.
Inappropriate design using tabs
The second mistake 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 text, requiring the author to press the key endlessly. In addition, making paragraph indents using tabs entails errors: firstly, according to statistics, the author regularly forgets to press a key when starting a new paragraph, and secondly, errors appear when the author decides to split an existing paragraph into two or more.
It is better to use tabulation only when filling out such fragments of text that differ from the main block: these can be verses, formulations of rules, laws, conclusions, etc. Each such fragment is quite appropriate to draw out precisely with the help of the indent created by the tabulation.
How to quickly fix errors
If the paragraph indents in the text are already framed incorrectly, the text is filled with extra non-printable characters, they must be eliminated before preparing the text for printing. You can check the text for such errors using the tool “Display all characters” (tab “Home”, group “Paragraph”).
You can eliminate unnecessary characters using the Replace tool (Home tab, Editing group). In the field “Find” enter two spaces, in the field “Replace” enter one space. Click the Replace All button. All double spaces will be replaced with single spaces. Click “Replace All” until the report after the replacement indicates “The number of replacements made is 0”.
If the number of spaces before each first line was odd, then you will need to remove a single remaining space. In the “Find” field, insert the paragraph mark (“More” - “Special” - “Paragraph mark”) and a space, and in the “Replace” box - only the paragraph mark. The Replace All command will eliminate spaces after paragraphs.
In a similar way, you can delete tabs and many bizarre combinations of unnecessary characters (for example, sometimes, especially with prolonged work on the text and repeatedly returning to it, spaces are duplicated by tabs).
After cleaning the file from such errors, you can correctly draw paragraph indents.