Tables Vs. Tabs In Word
Creating good-looking documents is what
Microsoft Word is all about. But in order to present text in an attractive way,
a lot of control characters—the supporting cast—have to be placed in the
background.
In the old old days, manual typists would simply
hit the space bar until columns lined up. Later versions of the typewriter
introduced the table key or the tab key. It moved the carriage not a specific
distance, but whatever distance was necessary to get to a prearranged stopping
place. We have all carried over these habits—even those of us who have never
used a clackity-clack-clack typewriter. (If you want to feel old, think about
kids in high school now who wouldn’t even recognize the sound that a
typewriter makes! Cheap laser printers are older than today’s high school-age
children.)
Many people still use the space bar or the tab key to line up columns
of text. If you’ve never had the pleasure of editing a document someone else has
created with a long list of tab-separated rows you may not realize the problem.
Once one “box” overflows with text, the rest of the document is ruined.
Watch the video in the
tips and tricks section
if you are unfamiliar with the effect.
You can immediately see how the document was
created by showing the control characters. Click on the symbol that looks like a
backwards P with two stems in your toolbar. Be sure to turn it back off when you’re
done editing. The next person who gets the document probably doesn’t want to
see the control characters! They’re just for editing.
Creating
a table is very easy in Word. In fact, tables are so important they have their
own menu on the main toolbar. Click on Table > Insert > Table… You
should see the dialog box below.
The table will be inserted wherever the cursor
is positioned. Don’t worry too much about the number of rows and columns, they’re
easy to change. Your table will have borders you can see both on the screen and
in printout.
If you want to see the edges of the table’s cells on the screen,
but not on your printout, select the table and click on the border tool. Choose
No Border. See the graphic below.
Then go to the Table menu and click Show Gridlines (if you only see
Hide Gridlines, the gridlines are already on!)
Working with tables involves some setup but will
save you a lot of time in the long run. Even if you believe your document is
complete, other people will edit it later and will be glad you used tables.
If you have text that should flow from the end
of one column to the top of another, that’s a different story. Next edition,
we’ll look at using multiple columns.
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