How To Use The Ruler In Word

Word'south rulers let y'all control the margins of your page and the indentation of paragraphs. They're smashing for precisely lining upwards images, text, and other elements. If you're printing a document, the rulers tin help ensure that what y'all see on your screen translates into what you'll become on the printed folio.

The problem is, rulers aren't even visible past default in Discussion anymore. Hither's how to plough them on, and how to make the most out of them.

Annotation: We're working with Function 2016 in this article. The rulers have been effectually pretty much forever, though, and piece of work similarly in previous versions of Word.

Activate the Rulers

First, brand sure you're in Impress Layout view. On the Ribbon, switch to the "View" tab (all the way on the right). If "Print Layout" isn't already highlighted, click information technology now.

Now await towards the center of the Ribbon. In the "Evidence" section, enable the "Rulers" option. Y'all should immediately run across the horizontal ruler in a higher place your document and the vertical ruler to its left.

Note: The horizontal ruler is as well visible in Spider web Layout and Draft view. The vertical ruler is not.

Admission the Page Setup Window

Double-click any empty space on the ruler to open the Page Setup window. This is the aforementioned window you can open from the Layout tab on the Ribbon.

The "Page Setup" window shows you about of the physical layout properties of the document. The "Margins" tab lets you lot set up the margins for the top, bottom, left, and right, which you lot can verify with the markers on the ruler (see below). The Gutter is actress space on the page, usually used as an extra blank space for things like rummage binding (those little plastic corkscrews that make a cheap notebook). It's set as blank by default. You can also use this tab to control page orientation.

If you're printing your document, the "Paper" tab lets you can change the concrete size of the newspaper to match different newspaper sizes in your printer. The default is 8.5 inches by 11 inches, the standard "Alphabetic character" size for U.s.a. paper printing (215.9 x 279.4mm). Y'all tin can encounter the upshot of this setting in the digital rulers on the folio, with the default i-inch margins resulting in a 7.five-inch horizontal ruler and a 10-inch vertical ruler. If you're planning on printing via a standard home printer or you're using the primary tray in your office printer, exit this as is.

Change Margins On the Wing

Margins are indicated on the ruler by the greyness and white areas. The gray areas at either end of the ruler correspond your margin; the white areas the active page. The scaling of the rulers seems a little foreign at first. Information technology actually starts on the far left (or top for the vertical ruler) with a number indicating the size of your margin so counts down. When information technology reaches the white, agile area, it starts counting upwards again. You can see this in the image below, where I've set up the margin to ii inches.

In Give-and-take's default 8.five by 11-inch page setup, the horizontal ruler starts at 1 (indicating a one-inch margin), then resets at zero where the margin ends, and then counts up to 7.5 for the remaining horizontal space. Ditto for the vertical ruler: starts at i for a one-inch margin, restarts at cipher at the white infinite, and only goes up to ten.

Note: Word's rulers bear witness whatever measurement yous have prepare in File > Options > Advanced > Show Measurements In Units Of. You tin modify measurements to centimeters, millimeters, points, or picas. Be aware, though, that this settings controls the units of measurement used throughout Word—non just the ruler.

Y'all tin also quickly conform margins right from the ruler. Hold your mouse over the line separating the white and grayness area. You'll see the pointer turn to a double pointer and will likely run into a tooltip letting y'all know y'all're betoken at the margin. Now, just click and drag that line left or correct to adjust that margin.

Alter Indents on the Fly

Those little triangle- and box-shaped markers on the ruler are quite handy. They control the indenting of individual paragraphs. Merely position your cursor in the paragraph you want to adjust and slide them around. If yous want to change multiple paragraphs, select the paragraphs you want to alter. And if you want to change indents throughout the whole document, but hitting Ctrl+A (to select everything), and then suit the sliders.

Hither'due south how each indent works.

Dragging the Left Indent marking changes the indentation for all lines of a paragraph. As you lot slide it, the other two indent markers movement as well. Here, I'k moving the Left Indent half an inch in from the left margin.

Dragging the First Line Indent mark changes indentation for but the offset line of a paragraph.

Dragging the Hanging Indent mark changes the indentation of all lines except the first line.

On the right end of the ruler, you'll find only one marker: the Right Indent marking. Drag it to constrain the paragraph on the correct side.

Add Tab Stops

A tab stop is the location your cursor moves to when y'all striking the Tab key. A default Give-and-take document has no tab stops, so each time y'all hit the Tab cardinal, the cursor jumps ahead about eight characters. Setting tab stops lets you better control and line up text.

Of form, Give-and-take offers plenty options that things become a little more than complicated than that. If you lot expect all the way to the left edge of your document, just above the vertical ruler, you'll see the Tab Stop push button.

Clicking this button lets you cycle through the different types of tab stops Give-and-take makes bachelor. Here they are:

Left: Left tabs are Word'due south default tap stop. They're what virtually people think of when they think of tab stops, and what you'll probable use most of the time. Text is aligned against the left edge of the tab finish.
Centre: Eye tabs align the text around the center of the tab terminate.
Right: Right tabs marshal text against the tab finish'southward right edge and are a dandy way to marshal the rightmost digits of lengthy lists of numbers as yous enter them.
Decimal: Decimal tabs align numbers (or text) based on decimal points. They are great for aligning currency figures. Be careful, though. Text is besides aligned on decimals, so if you type a sentence with a period, the period will align on the tab terminate.
Bar Tab: Bar tabs do not create an actual tab stop. Instead, they create a vertical line wherever you lot insert them. You could utilize these for putting vertical lines betwixt tabbed columns in instances where you'd rather non employ a table.
Indents: Select commencement line and hanging indent options and then click anywhere in the active ruler space (the white surface area) to place the indent there. This works the same every bit dragging the indent markers the way we discussed in the previous section.

A trivial tip for yous. If you're cycling through tab stops and don't remember what each symbol means, movement your mouse away from the push button and so dorsum to actuate a tool tip describing that tab stop.

To insert a tab stop, just utilize the push to select the type of stop you want. Now, indicate your mouse anywhere on the white portion of the horizontal ruler (toward the bottom of the ruler line), and then click. A symbol appears indicating the blazon of tab terminate you lot've placed. This is a tab marker, showing where the text will jump to if yous printing the Tab button on your keyboard.

Here'southward an example. In this paragraph, the Left Indent is half an inch from the left margin, the First Line indent is some other half inch further in, and I've ready a tab stop at 2 inches. I pressed the Tab button with my cursor in forepart of "Lorem," and then the text jumped to my manually-set up tab indicate.

You tin insert multiple tab markers if you lot want, and you can click and drag them around to reposition them on the wing.

To become rid of a tab marker, just drag it down (away from the ruler) and release the mouse push button.

And, if y'all adopt to set upward your tab stops manually (and a little more precisely), double-click any tab marker to open up the "Tabs" window.

The ruler is just one of the lilliputian features in Word that packs a whole lot more functionality than virtually people realize. Information technology provides a quick way to control margins, set up various indents for a paragraph, and keep things in line using tab stops. Why Word leaves it turned off past default is beyond us, but at to the lowest degree now you know how to turn it dorsum on and put it to use.