Tabs Are Not Indented and Other Formatting Issues That You Create Yourself
We all want our written work to look beautiful. Whether you’re preparing a book for eventual publication, or just writing a document for colleagues or friends to read, you’ve probably struggled with formatting. Strange spacing, font mismatches, and other bugs can frustrate us in Word or Google Docs, but sometimes the problem, as they say, is between the keyboard and the chair. This weird formatting you’re struggling with is probably your fault. You are actually making it harder than it should be.
Don’t indent paragraphs with tabs or spaces
Of course, you can indent paragraphs if that’s your style, but don’t use tabs or spaces for that. When you hit the tab key, your word processing program (Word, Google Docs, etc.) will insert an invisible “tab” character. It looks fine at the moment, but different programs and different settings can change how this tab character is displayed. If you want to be picky about this, you can adjust the tab stops in Word, but all bets are off if someone else opens it on their computer. The whole concept of “tabbing” is inherited from typewriters, and we don’t need it here.
So should you use spaces instead? Not! It will look even worse with digital wear. The size of the space depends on the size and style of the font you are currently printing. Perhaps you think that four spaces are not enough and you are going to use six. But then, if you change the font right before printing, those six spaces might look too wide. How are you going to fix it everywhere? First, without getting involved in this mess.
The correct way to indent a paragraph is to turn on the first line indent in the settings. Here are instructions on how to do it in Word , and here are instructions for Google Docs . Now every paragraph will have the same indentation, and if you don’t like how it looks, you can change it throughout the document with just a few clicks.
By the way, you do not give up your creative freedom. You can still print paragraphs without indents. Just start a new paragraph and press Backspace to remove the indent. It will be saved as a paragraph without an indent.
Stop pressing the Enter key
Another way we usually mess up our own formatting is by pressing the Enter key too much.
Want to start a new page? Please do not press Enter until you are on the next page. The spacing here, again, depends on the font you choose (plus your margins and other settings you may want to change in the future).
Insert a page break instead. This is literally what it is for. A page break is an instruction to your text editor to stop placing words on the current page and move on to the next page. It will still do this even if you change the font, even if you add an extra paragraph, even if you are on page 503 of a 700 page document.
Another place to stop hitting the Enter key, and that’s what I’m begging for from the bottom of my heart (it’s a cherished pet peeve): after every paragraph . Please do not. If you need extra space after each paragraph, choose Format > Line and Paragraph Spacing > Add Space After Paragraph. (This is for Google Docs. Word instructions are here .)
Why is it important? Because if you’re going to write a draft in Google Docs and then paste it into another editor that automatically adds space (like the one we use for Lifehacker articles), someone has to remove all those extra Enters. (That someone is me.)
Bottom Line: Learn How to Use Formatting Preferences
If you sense a pattern here, it’s that your word processor is capable of doing all the formatting you want, as long as you let it. Ripping out the control, throwing spaces and line breaks around, just messes it up. There is a division of labor here: you provide the words, the computer provides the formatting. This ultimately benefits both you and anyone else who needs to read or edit your words.
So instead of changing the font style and size when you want something to look a little different, select it instead and apply the style. Chapter title? Think “Heading 2” not “Arial, bold, 18pt”. This way they will all be consistent (no more “oops, I made some of them like 20p”) and you can change them all to Papyrus in a jiffy. And then change them back when you decide that no, it’s still not quite right.
We no longer live in the era of typewriters, so it makes no sense to customize the appearance of a document on the fly anymore. We’re creating a copyable, editable document and we need to stop pasting things that will mess up the formatting for us in the future. And in this regard, here’s a bonus rule: don’t put two spaces after a dot .