Aligning and Indenting Text

On the Format toolbar, you find five buttons that control the position of a paragraph on the page (see Figure 20.14).

Figure 20.14. The alignment buttons and indent buttons control the position of text within the width of the page.

You can use these buttons (as described on the next few pages) on any paragraph, in any style. For example, you can use the Align Center button to center a paragraph whether the style of that paragraph is Body Text, List, Heading 2, or anything else.

Aligning Paragraphs

You can align any paragraph in any of three different ways (see Figure 20.15): tight against the left side of the page (the default choice), centered on the page (align center), and hard to the right side (align right). The following To Do shows how.

Figure 20.15. Left-aligned (the default), center-aligned, and right-aligned.

Most of the time, left alignment is best, especially for Body Text paragraphs. Center can be nice for large headings (such as Heading 1 or Heading 2 style), especially if it is not used too much. Save right alignment for special needs.

Our eyes are accustomed to left-aligned text, especially for body text. A big, centered heading looks good on some pages, and right alignment can create a nice effect when text is put to the right of a graphic [see Chapter 25, "Adding Pictures (and Picture Backgrounds)"]. However, centered Body Text paragraphs can appear a bit odd, and centered lists look downright strange .

Here's how you align paragraphs:

1. Select the paragraph or paragraphs you want to align (see Figure 20.16).

   Figure 20.16. Step 1: Select the paragraphs to align.

   

2. Click one of the alignment buttons on the Formatting toolbar: Align Left, Align Center, or Align Right (see Figure 20.17). (If the paragraph is already aligned in any way other than left, you also see an Align Left button when you point to the toolbar.)

   Figure 20.17. Step 2: Click an alignment button.

   

Indenting Paragraphs

Besides choosing the alignment of paragraphs, you can indent them, pushing them away from the left margin just as you would in a word processor.

Composer supports multiple indent levels; you can increase the indent several times to push the paragraph farther away from the left margin. Decreasing the indent pulls the text back toward the left margin.

• To indent a paragraph, select it and then click the Increase Indent button on the Format toolbar. To indent even farther to the right, click the Increase Indent button again.

• To decrease the indent (move the left edge of the paragraph back toward the left margin), click the Decrease Indent button.

Adding Blank Line Spaces in a Page

Except within the Formatted paragraph style, HTML does not recognize paragraph marks in the HTML file as blank lines or extra blank spaces as extra blank spaces. Thus, browsers generally ignore these characters when displaying a page. To create extra white space between paragraphs or extra spaces in a line, Web authors must use the HTML tags for line breaks and nonbreaking spaces, respectively.

Composer, however, figures that when you press Enter multiple times, you want to add white spaceso it automatically inserts the appropriate tags.

So trust your word-processing instincts : To start a new paragraph, press Enter. To add a blank line, just press Enter again.