Chapter 3 - Paragraph Formatting - I (PageMaker)

Paragraph Formatting:

Paragraph formatting is about the options that affect the paragraph or group of paragraphs, like centering, justifying, indentation, vertical spacing, hyphenation, paragraph breaks, etc. Most of these options are in the Paragraph Specification  dialog box, accessed by choosing Paragraph from the Type menu, the keyboard shortcut being Ctrl + M. You can also make paragraph formatting changes in the Control Palette. To access the Control palette’s paragraph formatting options, click the paragraph symbol (fig 1). This results in the palette’s paragraph view. To return in the Character View of the control palette, you have to click the capital T.

Aligning Paragraphs:

PageMaker offers four ways to align text: left, right, centered, or justified. The default paragraph alignment is left; that is, the text is lined up at the left edge of the text block. Left-alignment text is sometimes called ragged right because the right side of the paragraph is uneven. To eliminate this ragged look, you can choose justified alignment. With this alignment, small amounts of space are inserted between words so that the right and left ends of the paragraph are even and smooth. The last line of the paragraph is not justified unless you choose the Force Justify alignment option.

The main advantage of justified text is that you can fit more text on the page because more words are hyphenated. On the other hand, left-aligned text is the easiest to read because fewer words are hyphenated, and also as there are no extra spaces between words. When justified text is used, make sure that the Hyphenation option on the Type menu is turned on, so that you do not get large gaps between words.

The other alignment types, centered and right, are usually applied to single-line paragraphs or special text designed to stand out from the rest. The Force Justify option is almost often used on a single line paragraph so that the text spans the entire width of the text block.

You can change the alignment of a paragraph several different ways: by using the alignment submenu, filling in the Paragraph Specification dialog box, pressing keyboard shortcuts, or using the Control palette (for more details on Paragraph Specification click here Formatting Paragraph in PageMaker .

Indenting Paragraphs:

An Indent is extra space on the left or right side of the paragraph. Frequently, the first line of each paragraph of body text is indented. This can be done by specifying a first-line indent. After you set up a first-line indent, you do not have to press the Tab key at the beginning of each paragraph. However,  if the indent is too small, the purpose of the indent is lost – one paragraph is not easily distinguishable from the next.  On the other hand, when a first-line indent is too large, it looks out of place or amateurish. In most cases, a one-pica first-line indent works fine, unless your lines of body text are long, in which cases you might want to go up to two picas. (to know about setting indents click here Setting Indents and Tabs in PageMaker.