To Tab or Not to Tab?

While discussing Microsoft Word with my computer class this afternoon, I asked how you should indent the first line of a paragraph. This was a trick question of course. Virtually all the students said that you should press the Tab key, since this is what they were taught and what they have always done.

However, tabbing is really bad form. The best practice is to format the paragraph to include indents. That way when you start a new paragraph it will retain the indentation and all the formatting of the previous paragraph.

Better yet, create a style for the type of paragraph you need. Then when you change that style it will change globally throughout the document. There is nothing more tedious than having to go paragraph by paragraph through a long document to change the line spacing or any other formatting option.

I liked the statement by Woody Leonhard in one of his Office books, that the best thing to do with the Tab key when using Word is to prise it off the keyboard so that it can do no more harm! Of course that would leave a hole in your keyboard and prevent you from doing all the useful things the Tab key can do in other applications. Also, they might not approve of it in the computer labs.

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