Recognize good practice in aligning text: use align, indent, and tab tools rather than inserting spaces.
While aligning text in a document, it is always advisable to use the different alignment and indentation tools instead of inserting spaces into the document. This is because when we insert spaces into a document, we actually create a character in the document, which is just an empty space. These space characters are actually useless but they do occupy some disk space which makes the document size large without providing any value to the user.
Also, when we make any edits to the document at a later stage, the empty space characters too will get affected and will affect the overall formatting of the document. But if we use the different indentation and alignment tools, no such space characters will get created and the document will be a lot cleaner and will also not occupy any extra disk space.
Align text left, centre, right, justified.
To align text in different ways in LibreOffice Writer, click on ‘Format’ from the main menu bar and from the resulting drop-down menu, click on ‘Paragraph’. This will open the ‘Paragraph’ dialog box.
In this dialog box, under the ‘Alignment’ tab, we have the ‘Options’ area. Here we have a list of all the alignment types in the form of radio buttons. Select the appropriate alignment from this list and then click on ‘OK’. This will align the document in the chosen style.
Indent paragraphs: left, right, first line.
In the same ‘Paragraph’ dialog box, under the ‘Indents & Spacing’ tab, we have the ‘Indent’ field. In this field, we have certain options for providing the appropriate indentation to the paragraphs. To provide indentation only for the first line, make changes to the ‘First line:’ option. To provide left and right indentations, use the ‘After text:’ and ‘Before text:’ options respectively. This is how we can provide appropriate indentation to paragraphs.
Set, remove and use tabs: left, centre, right, decimal.
In the same ‘Paragraph’ dialog box, under the ‘Tabs’ tab, we have the ‘Type’ and ‘Position’ fields. From the ‘Type’ field, we can select the appropriate tab type which is required. The available options are ‘Left’, ‘Right’, ‘Centered’ and ‘Decimal’. From the ‘Position’ field, we can select the position for this tab.
After selecting both the type and the position, click on ‘New’. This saves the tab and the tab gets stored and becomes visible in the list given below the ‘Position’ option. Finally click on ‘OK’ to make these changes effective in the document.
To remove a tab, simply select the tab which needs to be removed from the list given below the ‘Position’ option and then click on ‘Delete’. This will remove the selected tab.
