Formatting Paragraphs

You apply paragraph formatting for the same reasons as you apply character formattingthat is, to add emphasis and clarity to your documents. It is helpful to view the ruler in Notes as you work. To display the ruler, place your cursor in a rich text field (such as the body of a memo) and choose View, Ruler from the menu. As pictured in Figure 14.3, paragraph formatting includes working with the following characteristics:

• Alignment Move the paragraph to the left margin or right margin, center it between the left and right margins, fully justify it to both the left and right margins, or continue it past the right margin without word wrapping.

• Margins Set ruler measurements for your left and right margin. You can also indent or outdent the first line of a paragraph or the entire paragraph.

• Tab Stops Set ruler measurements for tab placement. Choices include left tabs, right tabs, centered tabs, and decimal place tabs.

• Line Spacing Set the amount of space you want between lines of text in your document. Choices include

  • Interline Determines the space between the lines of text within a paragraph.

  • Above Determines extra space added above a paragraph.

  • Below Determines extra space added below a paragraph.

  • Single, 1½, or Double Sets the spacing for the selected paragraph.

  • Lists Extremely helpful for adding emphasis to documents, each item on the list is preceded by sequential numbers, bullets, check boxes, square boxes, or circles.

Figure 14.3. Very effective documents are created when you combine both character and paragraph formatting.

Like formatting text, you can change formatting options before you begin typing or you can select your typed paragraph and then apply formatting. There are several methods of applying paragraph formatting after you have selected your paragraph:

• Menu Press Alt+T on your keyboard to open the Text menu. Select your individual paragraph formatting from the pull-down menu.

• Keyboard Hotkeys F8 for Indent, Shift+F8 for Outdent. Hint: Hotkeys are listed in the Text pull-down menu.

• Text Properties box Press Ctrl+K or select Text, Text Properties from the menu bar. Paragraph properties are changed in the second and third tab, as seen in Figure 14.4.

• Icons Alignment, Indent, Outdent, and List icons are available by default on the toolbar.

• Right-click Choose the most common types of paragraph formatting from the shortcut menu.

Figure 14.4. Click on the Paragraph tab of the text formatting properties box to select paragraph formatting options. Click on the third tab to set paragraph margins.

In Notes, a paragraph is defined as text contained between hard paragraph returns (which you create by pressing Enter). To see your paragraphs as you type, choose View, Show, Hidden Characters. To maintain formatting options but put a return within a paragraph (called a soft return) press Shift + Enter.

If you find yourself frequently reformatting paragraphs to look a certain way, you should use styles for this purpose. After formatting your paragraph the way you want it to look, and while the text cursor is still in the paragraph, open the Text properties box, click the last (Paragraph Styles) tab, and click the Create Style button. Give your style a name, select any of the other options you like, and choose OK. Later, whenever you want a paragraph to look as defined by the style, you can place the text cursor in the paragraph and select your defined style from the Paragraph Style list in the Status bar.