Aligning a “Paragraph”

Depending on the type of “Placeholder box”, the alignment of the text has a standard setting.

For example, the text in a title box will be center aligned and the text in an object box will be left aligned.

The various options for the alignment of text are found in the “Paragraph” section under the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon”.

I will not explain all these alignment buttons, because these remain the same for every “Microsoft” application.
But what I can tell you is this:
To align the text , select the entire “Placeholder box”, select a paragraph or the text, and then select the alignment of your choice.

The “Line spacing” button, which is the fifth button on the top row, by default is set to 1. You can increase this distance by clicking the arrow pointing downwards and selecting a different setting from the drop-down menu. Then the size of the text is adapted to the size of the “Placeholder box”.

The three buttons on the right side of the “Paragraph” group will be 1) to modify the text direction, 2) to change the vertical text alignment, and 3) to convert the text to a “SmartArt” graphic. You will learn more about “SmartArt” graphics in a later lesson.

Finally, to add bullets or numbering to the the text, press the “Tab” key on your keyboard.
To remove this, press the “Shift”+” Tab” keys on your keyboard.

The “Ruler”

We use tabs in our presentation to align the information in the same way we use tabs, in “Word” 2007.
The easiest way to do this is to make use of the “Ruler”.
If you do not see the “Ruler”, click the “Ruler” check box in the “View” tab on the “Ribbon”.

To the left of the “Ruler”, we find the tab selector.
The tab selector contains the different types of tabs that we can use in our presentation.
By clicking on the tab selector, you change the type of tab.

The left tab stop sets the starting position of text to the left, i.e, from left to right, while typing.

The center tab stop sets the starting position of text to the center. Thus, while typing the cursor is positioned at the center of the page.

The decimal tab stop aligns numbers around a decimal point. The point remains in the same position, regardless of the number of digits.

With the help of a right tab stop, we set the starting position of the text to the right. As you type, the text moves towards the left.

By default, the left tab stop is set.
To set a tab in the “Ruler”, first select the type with the help of the tab selector, and then click on the required position in the “Ruler”.

Pressing the “Tab” key on your keyboard, will automatically move the cursor to the next tab.
This way, all data is aligned nicely in our presentation.

To emove a tab setting out your “Ruler”, click and drag it down from the “Ruler”.
If you want to know more about tabs, read Lesson 15 of the Word 2007 course.

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