Comments on: Reference Question of the Week – 6/17/12

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 23:38:19 +0000

When I’m writing a long document myself, I always type everything out first and then go back and do the formatting afterward (often using just the ruler, triangles, and tabs). I always suggest this strategy to patrons, but not one person has adopted it – I guess people like to see things looking right as they go (and this particular patron has struggled with the triangles in the past).

In this case, the patron wasn’t doing anything fancy – I think two pages, just regular paragraphs. She had two paragraphs written, so the first thing I told her was to Select All, so make sure the setting would be applied to existing text as well as new paragraphs.

@sharon thanks for the tip about Headings – I never using anything other than Normal, but that’s good to keep in mind for the future.

Microsoft Office definitely seem to conform to the 80/20 rule: I’m familiar with about 20% of what the software can do, but that will get the job done 80% of the time (with Photoshop it feels more like 95/5).

By: sharon

sharon — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 17:04:04 +0000

You’re 90% there. The Paragraph setting only changes the current paragraph and subsequent paragraphs that are created by hitting the Return key. You were probably working in the default “Normal” style, but if the patron were then to insert a Heading or List or other type of paragraph, she may have to reapply the indent setting. The permanent solution is to modify the “Normal” style to always indent.

I’ve always gotten into trouble with the triangles on the ruler, because they interact in strange and mysterious ways. If I want to change the margins, I do it for the whole document on the Page Layout or Page Settings. If I want to change the margins on one paragraph, for a lengthy quotation, for example, I’ll use the Paragraph Indentation settings for that one paragraph.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:20:18 +0000

Another, and in my opinion slightly easier, way to accomplish the same thing is to use the ruler at the top of the page. Simply move what looks like the upside-down triangle on the top left a half inch (which is standard), or however far you want your paragraph to indent, to the right and every new paragraph after that will automatically indent to that specification. Moving the triangle below will create a hanging indent (where the first line is flush with the margin and subsequent lines will be indented).