Chapter 21: Setting Up Tabs and Tables

Overview

If you ever used a typewriter, you may remember hitting the tab key to indent each paragraph. And you may have pounded on it repeatedly to align columns of data. In InDesign, you use first-line indents to distinguish the first line of a new paragraph, and you reserve tabs for separating columns of data. Although InDesign has a built-in table editor, you can create simple tables using regular tabs quickly with the tabs feature. For more sophisticated tables, use the table editor.

In InDesign, tabs are part of paragraph formats ‚ meaning that, when you set them, they apply to all the text in selected paragraphs rather than to selected characters within a paragraph. By default, when you start typing in a paragraph or you create a new paragraph style sheet, there are invisible, automatic tab stops every half-inch. Regardless of the measurement system your rulers are set to use, when you hit tab you'll jump to the next 0.5-inch increment on the ruler.

As soon as you set a tab stop of your own, it overrides any of the automatic tab stops to its left. The automatic tab stops remain to the right until you override all of them.

Tip ‚  

Any tabs you set in the Tabs pane when no document is open are added to all future documents you create. Therefore, if tabs at every quarter-inch would be more useful to you, add them with no documents open .

InDesign provides four different types of tabs so you can

• Left-align text to the left at a tab stop (the default setting, and the one you'll use most often)

• Center text on either side of the tab stop (very useful in column headers)

• Right-align text at a tab stop (useful for columns of integers)

• Align a specific character in the text with the tab stop (such as a comma or period in a number)

Figure 21-1 shows examples of tabs.

Figure 21-1: Under the Item column, Trifle and Whip Cream are positioned with right-aligned tabs. The three other column headings ‚ Ingredient, Amount, and Price ‚ are positioned with center tabs. In the chart, the ingredients are left-aligned, the amounts are center-aligned, and the prices are aligned on the dollar sign (top chart) and the decimal point (lower chart).