On typewriters, the
Tabs and tab stops still work the same way. A tab stop marks a location; typing a tab moves the cursor to thatlocation.
These days, the tab is used only for inserting horizontal space in the middle of a line. If you need horizontal space at the beginning of a paragraph, adjust thefirst-line indent. For a true tabular layout, use atable, not tabs.
The tab is not as vital as it once was, but word processors still shortchange its capabilities. A new word-processing document has default tab stops every half inch. These default tab stops exist so that something happens when you type a tab in the new document. But this default behavior also suggests that what the tab key does is move the cursor a half inch at a time. Not true.
WordPerfect displays its default tab stops on its ruler. Word does not (for no good reason). In Word, be aware that adding your own tab stops wipes out the default ones. So you’ll usually want to set tab stops before inserting tabs in the text.
To get the most out of tabs, you should set your own tab stops. Avoid relying on the default tab stops—they undermine the goals of control and predictability. As withword spaces, also avoid using sequences of tabs to move the cursor around the screen. You want to use one tab to create each gap, and you do this by setting one tab stop for each tab.
First, make your tab stops visible by displaying theruler.
With the ruler visible, you can edit your tabstops.
To insert a new tab stop, click in the ruler where you want the tab stop.
To move a tab stop, click and drag it in theruler.
To change a tab stop from one kind to another, double-click it in the ruler. In WordPerfect, you can also right-click it.
To remove a tab stop, drag it off theruler.
Many layout tasks traditionally handled by tabs are now better handled bytables. For instance, this illustration of tab stops was made with tabs, but it would’ve been easier to use a four-column, four-rowtable.
The default tab stop is a
Use the proper tab stop for the job. For instance, don’t use a center tab stop to line up decimal numbers. A right tab can be useful in a document footer to put two pieces of text (e.g., the document title and the page number) at opposite ends of the same line.
Tabs are used inbulleted and numbered lists to separate the bullet or number from the text. Tabs are also used in automatically generated tables of contents and tables of authorities to put the page numbers at the right edge of thetable.
Despite their names, automatic tables of contents and tables of authorities are not made with true word-processor tables. If you want to edit them, you need to be comfortable adjusting tabstops.
Tabs and tab stops have their place, but in most cases they act as a less-capable alternative to atable. Use tabs and tab stops if your formatting task is truly simple. If not, upgrade to atable.
You can fill the space in front of a tab (for instance, with periods or underscores) by using atab leader. Don’t approximate this effect by typing a hundred periods or underscores manually in front of a tab. You won’t like theconsequences.