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Shannon
(new)
Jan 10, 2018 06:44PM
Hey! I haven't been on here in a long time, so if you don't know me, hi. I'm Shannon. I have been using Word for years until a recent problem. I had to switch over to Google Docs. The problem I'm having is trying to figure out how to indent. When I hit the icon that says 'indent' what it does is indent everything instead of just the first line of the paragraph. I'd be grateful if anybody has words of wisdom for me on how to navigate this program. Thanks in advance!
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Yeah, the "indent" icon is for nested paragraphs, quotes, bulleted lists, and that sort of thing. To indent just the beginning of a paragraph, you'll want to look at the ruler. Usually right around the 0 mark there's a set of arrows. I think the one on top sets the first-line indent.Alternately, right-click on a section and pull up the Paragraph menu. In the Indentation section, look for "Special: First line" for the indent setting.
I'm using word 2016, so depending on your versions it might not be quite like that, but it should be close.
If you're using desktop, just press tab on your keyboard and it will indent. Unfortunately, if you're using your phone, I don't think there's a way to do it.
I've heard you want to avoid using tab to indent. 1) It can mess with layout/formatting later.
2) Why do it manually when the software can do it automatically? If you use tab, it's easy to miss now and then and have some un-indented paragraphs.
Using the hard tab is definitely not the way to go. Doing that adds an in-document special character which can cause a lot of headaches down the road.That being said, I can't imagine using Google Docs for actually writing a manuscript. In my mind it's really only good for sharing documents and even then I find it clunky.
I gave up Word for writing and now use Scrivener for all writing, as it's so much more project oriented. I have my save files go to Dropbox as well so that I can access the files from multiple computers and not worry about keeping multiple copies updated (plus I can share from Dropbox if I want to).
It's not free, but it's not uber expensive either ($40 when I got it). Great program.
Oh, and if you want to see exactly how to do it there's a youtube video for that. Just go to youtube and in the search bar type the following: paragraph indent google docs
There are a bunch of tutorials there.
