Creating Tab Leaders

A tab leader allows you to automatically fill the space between the tabbed material with a repeating character. Tab leaders are often used in the tables of contents of books (such as the one in this book).

Tip

Tab leaders are added when the reader needs to move horizontally across a wide column from one entry to another. The tab leader helps the reader's eye stay on the correct line of text.

To add tab leaders:

1.

Select the tab stop arrow on the Tabs palette ruler.

2.

Type up to eight characters in the Leader field of the Tabs palette. Tip Add spaces between characters in the Leader field to give the leader a more pleasing look . An example of adding spaces to separate the tab leader. Tip Press the Tab key on the keyboard to preview the characters in the Leader field. Tip You can select the characters in a tab leader as you would ordinary text and change the point size, kerning, or other attributes.

Choosing Between Tabs and Tables

For as long as I can remember, designers have wanted an easy way to create tables in page-layout documents. Now that InDesign lets you create tables, is there any reason to still use tabs?

Absolutely! I use tabs in this book to separate numbers from the text in the exercises. I also use tabs with leaders for the listings in the table of contents.

I use tables whenever I need side-by-side paragraphs such as in a resume. I also use tables whenever I need to separate the information with horizontal and vertical lines.

Table Styles

InDesign's table features are very powerful. There are all sorts of controls for how the table is formatted. Unfortunately, InDesign CS2 doesn't have any sort of styles to let you quickly apply intricate formatting to tables and cells.

If you work with a lot of tables, you should seriously consider investing in a plug-in to help automate table formatting. One of the plug-ins I have found useful is TableStyles and CellStyles from Teacup Software (www.teacupsoftware.com).

Not only does this plug-in let me quickly apply very intricate table formatting, it also lets me update all the tables in a document at once.