Using Tab Stops and Tab Leaders for Layout in Word

You may not know it, but you see Tab Stops and Tab Leaders at work all of the time. The best examples in the business world are restaurant menus.

Every time you look at a menu that has an item listed on one side, followed by a series of dots or dashes and then the price on the opposite side of the page, you are looking at Tab Stops and Tab Leaders at work. Before we get started, be certain you already know how to Show/Hide Invisible Characters in Word and how to Turn On the Ruler in Word.

For definition purposes today, you’ll note that I am using the word Tab in a lot of different ways. Some common terms I’ll use today include the…

  • Tab Key on your keyboard;
  • Tab Stop in the Ruler;
  • Tab Selector in the upper-left corner of the Ruler; and the
  • Tab Leader, which creates the dots that fill in the space.

Today you’ll learn how to change the orientation of the Tab Selector, Insert a Tab Stop, and then add a Tab Leader. (If you’re asking “why on earth would I want to do that?” just hang in there… more will be revealed.)

Adding Tab Stops and Tab Leaders

In the sample file you can see that I want to imitate a two column restaurant menu with a line drawn down the middle of the two columns. You may not be able to see everything right away, but just try the steps and see if it doesn’t work for you.

  1. Highlight the text to which you want to apply the tabs.
  2. Click the Dialog Box Launcher in the Paragraph group on the Home tab.
  3. Click the Tabs button in the lower left corner of the Paragraph window.
  4. Adding the first tab stop
    1. Type the number 3 in the Tab Stop Position dialog.
    2. Click the Right Alignment button.
    3. Click the Tab Leader #2…
    4. Click the Set button
  5. Adding the second tab stop
    1. Type the number 3.25 in the Tab Stop Position dialog.
    2. Click the Bar Alignment button.
    3. Click the Set button
  6. Adding the third tab stop
    1. Type the number 3.5 in the Tab Stop Position dialog.
    2. Click the Left Alignment button.
    3. Click the Tab Leader #1 (None)
    4. Click the Set button
  7. Adding the fourth tab stop
    1. Type the number 6.5 in the Tab Stop Position dialog.
    2. Click the Right Alignment button.
    3. Click the Tab Leader #3…
    4. Click the Set button
  8. Click the OK button.
  9. Observe your changes

You can turn on the Show/Hide Invisibles button to see how that worked. I had used the Tab key on the keyboard when I typed the information for the menu. You can see where I pressed the Tab key represented with little arrows on the screen.

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