Lesson A: Tabs

At the dawn of the twentieth century, typewriters were given a key that would move the carriage that held the paper to a predetermined location. Those positions, called tab stops, could be adjusted with some fiddling at the back of the machine. Today, when we press the Tab key in InDesign, a tab character is produced in the text. The position to which any text after a tab character is aligned is also set by a tab stop. So unlike a space, which is relative to the current point size, tabs move text to a fixed position. The default position (the nearest half inch) is rarely useful, however, so we set our own.

Setting Tab Stops

• Open the downloaded document called 4 Tabs & Tables.indd. Set the magnification to fit a page in the window (⌘-0/Ctrl-0) and go to page 3.
• Insert the Type tool cursor into the longest paragraph in the larger frame on page 3 (it begins with “Very Cool Gadget”).

We will set tab stops in this paragraph first, and then get that info to the other paragraphs. Since a paragraph style controls the formatting of the paragraph to which we’re adding tab stops, we will afterward redefine the style so it has this new tab information. The other paragraphs using this paragraph style will then literally fall in line.

• Make sure your tab characters (and other normally hidden characters) are visible: choose Type > Show Hidden Characters or use the shortcut ⌘-option-I/Ctrl-Alt-I. Note the presence of small double arrows in each paragraph in that frame. Those are the tab characters for which we need tab stops. A solid rule of thumb is to have one custom Tab Stop for each tab character we have, so we’ll need two.

• Open the Tabs panel by going to Type > Tabs. (This is the only panel not accessible from the Window menu!) It will be positioned nicely along the top of the active frame.

If the Tabs panel gets away from the text you’re editing, click the small magnet icon on the right side of the Tabs panel to have it jump atop the text frame.

• In the small gap over the Tabs panel ruler, click just over the 3 3/4-inch mark.

This position can be fine-tuned with the field labeled X: (the tab stop position field).

Immediately, any of InDesign’s default (and always invisible) stops to the left of that new stop are eliminated, and the text after the tab character is aligned to the custom tab stop.

The first time you ever do this, it’s likely that the text will left align on that stop, as the default type is a Left-justified stop. However, we want the text following that first tab character to center around the position of its stop.

• With that stop highlighted, click on the second icon for a Center-justified type, or option/Alt-click the stop itself to cycle through the types until you find the correct one.

Now the text between the two tab characters is centered around your first tab stop. We want the last bit of text (after the second tab character) to be right-aligned at the 7-inch position.

• In the small gap over the Tabs panel ruler, click just over the 7-inch mark. Ignore the fact that text may have wrapped onto the next line! With that new stop still highlighted, click on the icon for the third type: Right-justified.

Only that one paragraph, which uses a paragraph style called product list, is affected by our labor. Setting those stops has triggered an override condition on that style, too. But it’s an override we like!

Including Tab Stop Position in Paragraph Styles

• With your cursor still in the edited paragraph, either use the Properties panel to redefine the style by clicking the icon to the right of product list (the style’s name), or right-click on the style’s name in the Paragraph Styles panel and choose Redefine Style.

The other paragraphs should line up with the one we edited, including the top one whose style is based on the one we redefined.