# Formatting Paragraphs

This section will detail all the options available to format your paragraphs.

Before you start formatting a paragraph, ensure your cursor is currently located in the paragraph you want to format.

The formatting paragraphs dialog consists of 5 tabbed sections labeled Indent and spacing, Aligns, Borders, Bullets/Numbering, and Tabulators

## Indents and Spaces

This dialog box allows you to set the paragraph margins, the spacing between lines, and the spacing between paragraphs.

The first section of this dialog box is labeled Indent, and consists of three parts:

Left

- You can indent all the lines of a paragraph by entering a value in this box. The first line is unaffected by this box. If you want to alter the first line, you must specify that separately.

Right

- Entering a non-zero number here causes all lines of the paragraph (including the first line) to be moved away from the right margin.

First Line

- Any non-zero value entered in this text box, will shift the left margin of the first line.

The next section controls how &kword; divides paragraphs when they occur over a page or frame edge.

The first option is labeled Keep lines together. If this option is selected, then all of the lines of the paragraph will remain on the same page. If this is not selected, &kword; may choose to move to a new page or frame while in the middle of the paragraph. For most work, this option is usually left unchecked.

The option labeled Keep lines together, works as follows. When this option is checked, and the paragraph moves to the next frame in the frame set, a hard frame break will be inserted in front of the current paragraph. This will serve to keep the paragraph in the next frame, even if text prior to that frame is deleted. This option is often used in conjunction with Keep lines together, to ensure that the paragraph does not creep back onto the page during editing.

The next section is labeled Line Spacing. It consists of two elements:

Drop-down box

- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!Blacked out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Text box

- By entering a value in here, you can adjust the spacing between lines from the default. If you enter a positive number, you will increase the spacing between lines. If, on the other hand, you enter a negative number, you will decrease the spacing between lines.

  Changes to this entry do not affect the line spacing between lines of different paragraphs.

The last section is labeled Paragraph Space. It consists of two entries:

Before

- By entering a value in here, you can adjust the spacing before each paragraph from the default spacing. If you enter a positive number, you will increase the spacing before a paragraph. If, on the other hand, you enter a negative number, you will decrease the spacing before each paragraph.

After

- By entering a value in here, you can adjust the spacing after each paragraph from the default spacing. If you enter a positive number, you will increase the spacing after a paragraph. If, on the other hand, you enter a negative number, you will decrease the spacing after each paragraph.

On the right of the dialog box, is a preview box, which will approximate the final layout of your document.

## Aligns

This section determines how the text is placed within the line. With other applications, you may have referred to this as Alignment, or Justification.

As you can see, there are only 4 choices.

If you choose Left, Right or Center, the text will be moved on the line so that it aligns with the left margin, aligns with the right margin, or is centered between the margins respectively.

If you choose Justify, &kword; will increase the space between words, so that each line (with the exception of the last line in a paragraph), reaches both the left and right margins.

On the right of the dialog box, is a preview box, which will approximate the final layout of your document.

## Borders

The next section is used to define and configure graphical borders around your paragraphs.

You can tell &kword; to surround (on some or all sides) a paragraph with a border. This border can be solid or not, of any color and of any size. You use this dialog panel to adjust the borders.

To define some borders for a paragraph, you first determine how the borders should appear on the document. Then you select which paragraph borders should be used. You can mix and match styles, weights and colors of paragraph borders for maximum flexibility in you document.

Style

- You can use this drop-down box to select the overall type of the new border.

  Your choices are previewed in each selection.

Width

- This will determine how wide the resulting border will be. It is measured in points.

Color

- Clicking on the color bar will allow you to select a color using a new dialog box

Now that you have determined how the borders should look, you need to tell &kword; which edges of the paragraphs need borders.

| Select/Unselect Left Border. Clicking this button will apply the current options to the left paragraph border. Clicking a second time will remove the left paragraph border.
| Select/Unselect Right Border. Clicking this button will apply the current options to the right paragraph border. Clicking a second time will remove the right paragraph border.
| Select/Unselect Top Border. Clicking this button will apply the current options to the top paragraph border. Clicking a second time will remove the top paragraph border.
| Select/Unselect Bottom Border. Clicking this button will apply the current options to the bottom paragraph border. Clicking a second time will remove the bottom paragraph border.

The Preview window will show you how your paragraph borders will look.

## Bullets and Numbering

A very common element of a document, is a list of items. The list contains several elements. These elements may be numbered, for easy reference. Alternatively, the list elements may be simply set off from the rest of the text with a special character. These special characters are called bullets.

You can use this dialog box to define your bullets or the numbering method of your list.

The first thing you may notice about this dialog box, is the large preview window on the right side of the box. This can be used to approximate the final look of your list.

Along the left side, the top section of the dialog box is divided has three options.

## Tabulators

This dialog is used to adjust the tab stops. For more details, see Using Tab Stops.