How to indent the first line in word. Paragraph indentations. How to create a paragraph indent in Word

When formatting a text document in Microsoft Word, information should be visually divided into paragraphs. A paragraph is a piece of text, the first line of which is highlighted with a small indent. The formatting procedure itself is not complicated, but there are nuances that PC users may not be aware of. How to make a paragraph in Word correctly?

Option one: using a special slider

Above the worksheet there is a ruler on which you will see 3 sliders on the left and 1 slider on the right. To set the paragraph we need the top left slider. You need to move it to the right, which will ultimately lead to the same shift of the first line of each new paragraph.

Important: it is recommended to carry out the described procedure before starting work so that the function applies to all paragraphs. If the text has already been written, you must first select it and only then move the slider. Place the cursor before the appropriate paragraph to indent only one.

Option two: use the program menu

To do this, in Word 2016 go to the “Home” tab, and in older versions we find the “Format” tab. Next, click the arrow in the lower right corner of the “paragraph” subsection, after which a functional window will appear. There we find the “first line” field, where we select “indent”.

Important: to indent each paragraph in this way, be sure to highlight all the text.

An alternative way to format a paragraph is to select the text, right-click and find the “paragraph” button in the pop-up window. The next operation is similar.

Option three: interval

In Word, paragraphs can be separated not only by indentation, but also by a small space between lines. As a result, small sections of text information are visually highlighted. To adjust the spacing, you need to open the same functional window and select the desired length of the gap between paragraphs.

Option last: TAB button

To indent, just press the TAB button. Thus, the cursor immediately moves a certain distance to the right, and you can cancel the action by pressing backspace.

How NOT to indent

The process of creating a paragraph is simple, but beginners, not knowing the specifics of working in Word, try to indent using spaces. This can be clearly seen if you enable the “display all characters” function, where the space is displayed as a dot.

In some cases, this method can significantly spoil further work with text, so you should use the program functionality intended for this, and not the spacebar button.

Absolutely everyone knows what a paragraph is, or, as it is also called, a “red line”. After all, this is studied in elementary school. But times are changing: notebook sheets have been replaced by text editors such as Word, and ballpoint pens have been replaced by computer keyboards. That is why in this article we will talk about how to make 2007. Of course, most of the above methods are also suitable for other versions of the program, but examples will be given specifically for the specified version.

Turn on the ruler

Now we'll talk about 2007 using a ruler. This tool is standard for MS Word software, so there is no need to download and install anything, which, naturally, speaks in favor of this method.

But before you can make a paragraph in Word 2007 using a ruler, you need to turn it on. There are two ways to do this. Which one to use is up to you to decide.

The first method implies the following:

1. In the program, go to the "View" tab.
2. Find the area called "Show".
3. Check the box next to "Ruler".

The second is different:

1. Find the required icon to enable the ruler (it is located above the vertical scroll bar of the page).
2. Click on this icon.

Now you know how to enable the ruler in the program. When it is in place, you can safely move on to the main thing. Namely, how to indent a paragraph in Word 2007.

Making a paragraph using a ruler

It's very easy to do using a ruler. But first we need to explain what we need and what is responsible for what.

We will use only one ruler. The one on top.

On it you can see four sliders (one on the right and three on the left). We are interested in one of the left ones, or, to be more precise, the one on top.

It is he who is responsible for indenting the first line of a paragraph from the left edge. All you need to do is pull the presented slider to the right. As far as you move the slider, this distance from the left edge will indent the first line.

This method is good because it is very simple and quick to perform, but there are also disadvantages. You will not be able to set the distance exactly to the millimeter, because the indentation is made in accordance with the ruler scale.

Use a paragraph to indent the menu

The second way to make a paragraph in Word 2007 is to use the “Paragraph” settings window. It is responsible for this element of text formatting. First, let's figure out how to get into it.

You need to go to the "Home" tab if you are on a different one. There, in the “Paragraph” area, you need to find and click the corresponding icon, which is located in the lower right side. You can see its exact location in the picture below.

Now in the “Paragraph” settings window, in the “Indentation” column, you need to open the “First Line” drop-down list. In it, select “Indent”, then in the field on the right, specify the exact distance by which the first line of the paragraph will be indented.

After the completed manipulations, you can safely press the “OK” button and observe the paragraph in the selected text fragment.

Changing the spacing between paragraphs

Finally, I would like to tell you how to change the spacing between paragraphs in Word 2007. This is done in the same “Paragraph” settings window, so if you want to increase or decrease the distance between paragraphs, then do not rush to leave it.

This setting is carried out in another column - “Interval”. In it, on the left side, there are two fields, in front of which are the inscriptions “Before” and “After”. By setting some parameter in these fields, you will change the distance between paragraphs. If in “Before”, then before the paragraph, if in “After”, then after the paragraph.

After making adjustments, be sure to apply the changes by clicking OK.

If you want to quickly remove all spaces between paragraphs, you can use the button on the toolbar. It is located in the "Paragraph" area, in the "Home" tab and is called "Interval".

Select the paragraphs between which you want to remove the space and click on this button. Then select “Remove space after paragraph”.

Good day everyone! In this article you will learn how to make paragraphs in Word. Dividing texts into paragraphs is an indispensable attribute of a well-formed document or website. Continuous text is unreadable. Its presence serves as a sign of disrespect for the user. Having stumbled upon such text, the reader will most likely move on to another similar site.

In the simplest version, paragraphs are automatically formed with each click on the Enter key. The “red line” of a paragraph is formed by first pressing the Tab button. The shift to the right side of the cursor of the first line will be equal to an unshakable 1.25 cm.

However, there are significantly more options for formatting paragraphs in the 2010 version of files. By configuring them optimally, you can save your own time when typing large amounts of text or designing already printed documents.

When formatting paragraphs, you should know how to highlight them. The most efficient method is to triple-click on any of the words in the paragraph. Selecting part of a paragraph before or after the cursor is performed using the Ctrl, Shift, and up or down arrow key combinations.

The process of formatting paragraphs in Word files can be done visually using the top ruler or by specifying and remembering exact values.

Ruler

To display the ruler at the top, you need to go to the “View” tab, and in the display section, check the box next to the “Ruler” tool.

Then a ruler will appear at the top, equipped with several sliders - three on the left, and one on the right. By hovering your mouse over them, you can read the purpose of each:

By moving the first and third sliders, the indentation of the paragraph from the edges of the sheet on the right and left sides, that is, from its margins, will change. Indenting text instead of indentation is not often used. The last slider in the form of a triangle displays the indentation of the “red line”. “Paragraph” section of the “Home” tab

Tools

Several of the tools in this section relate to paragraph formatting. Each time you click on the increase indentation tool, the paragraph indicated by the arrow will shift by a specified distance, which is equal to 1.25 cm. The tool located on the left side of the highlighted red rectangle is called “Decrease indentation”. Thanks to it, a paragraph shifted to the right side returns to the left by the same distance.

Using the next group of tools, outlined in a red rectangle, the paragraph text is aligned accordingly to the left edge, center, right edge, and also to the width.

The last case deserves explanation. The following screenshot shows the change in the distance between words when aligned to width.

In addition to adjusting line spacing, you can also control the spacing that separates paragraphs using the drop-down tool called Spacing.

The following screenshot illustrates the downward shift of a paragraph (marked by a red arrow) when selecting the line to add space before the paragraph. Obviously, clicking on the next line will return the paragraph to its original position.

Dropdown windows

It is extremely possible to customize paragraphs in the drop-down window of the section called “Paragraph”. An alternative way to open this window is to select a paragraph and call its context menu.

The list called “Alignment” duplicates the above discussed options for aligning words in a paragraph. In the “Indent” field, you can specify exact indentation values, both on the left and on the right. The “Spacing” field is intended to accurately specify the paragraph spacing, both before and after it in points (1 point equals 0.35 mm). The user has the ability to prohibit adding spacing between paragraphs if they belong to the same style.

Using the “First line” list, you can optimally configure the “red line”. By default it does not exist. By selecting “Indentation”, the initial value of 1.25 cm can change to any other value.

Having finished setting up the paragraph, the user can save the selected values ​​by clicking “Default”. In the future, as you type, they will be implemented automatically. In particular, by selecting the standard “red line” indentation, the user will not have to click on the Tab key before typing the first line of each paragraph. In this case, the left triangle at the top will have a permanent position, which is indicated by the red arrow in the next screenshot.

The essence of special formatting

We'll cover almost all of the more complex paragraph formatting options that matter.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to cancel the previously implemented division of texts into paragraphs. To remove paragraphs, you will need to get rid of unnecessary paragraph markings. In the case of standard work in Word files, they are invisible. In order for them to be displayed in the “Home” tab, in the section called “Paragraph” you need to click on the last tool called “Display all characters”.

To remove a paragraph mark automatically:

1. On the main page, open the tool called “Editing” and click on the “Replace” item;
2. Open the list called “Special” and click on the first item - “Paragraph Mark”. A special icon will appear on the search line;
3. In the “Replace with” line, type one space by clicking on the corresponding key.
4. Click "Replace All".

As you can see, the previous two have been replaced by a single paragraph.

In the process of document preparation, it may be necessary to prepare multi-page files, and it will probably be necessary to ensure that each paragraph begins on a new page. In other cases, on the contrary, you should delete the page in order to place a large paragraph on it in its entirety. To do this, select the entire text, then click “Paragraph” in its menu, and then go to “Page Position”.

In order to enter a page break after each paragraph, you need to check the box next to the “from a new page” item. And to prevent a paragraph from moving to another page, you should activate the item called “do not break the paragraph.”

So, you can see that by default Word has activated an item called “prohibition of dangling lines”. It blocks the output of the last line in a paragraph on the page separately from its other lines, which is incredibly convenient. I hope now you know how to make paragraphs in Word and write a review in the comments...

Preface

This article is the first in a series of publications devoted to technical issues in preparing book texts for publication.

According to our classification, these works belong to the preliminary formatting stage.

At the next stage, layout and conversion are carried out, which is carried out by the publishing house. At the same time, many issues of preliminary formatting are quite capable of being resolved by the author himself.

The most common mistake

One of the most common mistakes when formatting book text is indenting the first line of a paragraph using spaces.

While this is normal for paper printing, certain problems arise when publishing an e-book. The fact is that when reading an electronic version of a book, the computer skips spaces and does not consider them as separate characters. As a result, the text can “float” and turn into an unreadable array of characters.

To prevent this from happening, you should set the indentation using the standard Word function.

How to see spaces

Let's assume that the text has already been typed on the computer. And now, when we know that there should be no extra spaces, how can we see and check whether they are in the text or not?

To do this, you need to enable the service symbols display mode.

To do this, go to the main menu of Word, find the “Non-printable characters” icon and turn it on.

After this, paragraph marks and spaces appear in the text - see Fig. 1.

Figure 1 Displaying hidden non-printing characters

The example above shows that the first lines in the text in question are indented using spaces. On the screen they appear as dots in front of letters.

The picture is clickable - double-click with the cursor and it will open in an enlarged form. You can view other pictures in this article in the same way.

Set first line indent using standard Word function

To correctly indent the first line, you must first remove spaces and then use the standard Word function.

Removing spaces is simple - select and delete. And then we place the cursor in the paragraph where we need to indent (and if there are many such paragraphs, then select them all) and go to the main menu of Word, where we select the “Format” - “Paragraph” section and the “Indents and Spacing” tab.

On this tab, find the “First line” option, click the arrow and select the “indent” value from the drop-down list.

All! Word will immediately automatically set the necessary indents.

Figure 2 shows all the menu options that are used in this action.

For clarity, we will show how the text looks in the same mode of displaying hidden non-printable characters, but after setting the indentation - see Fig. 3.

As you can see in Figure 3, there are indents in the text, but there are no spaces (dots before letters).

Announcement of the next publication

In addition to the first lines, spaces are sometimes found in large numbers within paragraphs between individual words. How to make the process of removing them automated will be discussed in the next publication in this series.

In addition, you can suggest your own topics for publication in this series. This can be done by using the contact form below to request more information.

The book order form is located at the top of the right sidebar.

A paragraph (or red line) is a structural element that is logically complete and includes the micro-topic of the main text. This is a necessary element of any document, helping the text not to merge into a single whole, but to have a logically designed structure. From the point of view of computer programs, a paragraph is any text that ends by pressing the enter key.

Rules for changing paragraph width

There are two ways to change the paragraph indent width in a Word document. First, you can select the text with the left mouse button, then right-click on the selected text. In the window that opens, select “Paragraph”, then “Tabulation”. You can see that by default the paragraph indent is 1.25 cm. If the paragraph should be of a different size, then you need to enter the data and save the changes. Now the indentation will be as needed. This is a method in which the paragraph will be set exactly to the millimeter.

The second way to change the red line is implemented using the ruler tool located on the toolbar. The ruler is located on the left and top, but it can be hidden. To activate the tool, left-click on the small square in the upper right corner - a scale with divisions and a marker on it will appear.

When you hover over the marker, or slider, of the horizontal ruler, you will see tooltips “ ”, “indent” and “first line indent”. To change the paragraph width, you need to indent the first line. Fix the mouse cursor near the first line, left-click on the marker at the top, where the inscription “first line indent” appears, and use the ruler to set the desired size. If the text has already been typed, but there are no paragraphs yet, then you need to select the entire text, then again use the slider. Paragraphs of the required size will appear throughout the text. This is more of a visual way of forming a paragraph, less precise than the previous one.

Paragraph indentation can be positive, zero (when text is aligned to the center) and negative when the first line appears closer to the left edge of the sheet. Paragraph indents in Word documents are measured in centimeters.

Need to know

It is important to remember that paragraph indentations should never be made using the spacebar. In this case, problems will arise during further formatting, since the lines may “shift”. Correct formatting of paragraphs will later save time when restructuring the document.