The ruler sits at the top of the document and displays the indents and tabs of the current paragraph. You can show or hide the ruler using the View menu.

You can show or hide the ruler. You can use the ruler to set paragraph indents, to create and move tabs, and to remove tabs. You can set the unit of measure that is displayed in the ruler and elsewhere in the document.

A paragraph has left and right indents. There are two kinds of left indent: the first line indent, and the left indent for the remainder of the paragraph.

You set the left and first line indents using the round marker on the left side of the ruler. It is divided into three parts:

The part labeled “First line indent” moves independently of the other two.

You set the right indent using the round marker on the right side of the ruler:

If a paragraph contains tabs, tab markers appear in the ruler. The shape of the marker indicates whether the tab style is left, center, right, or decimal:

To adjust both the left and the first line indents:

• Drag the left part of the ruler marker.

To adjust first line indent:

• Drag the upper right part of the ruler marker.

To adjust the left indent:

• Drag the lower right part of the ruler marker.

To adjust the right indent:

• Drag the round marker on the right side of the ruler.

You can also adjust indents using the Indents palette.

To move a tab:

• Drag its marker.

You can also move a tab using the Tabs palette.

You can add a tab marker by dragging from the lower half of the ruler (the hash marks area) to the upper half of the ruler (the markers area).

To add a tab:

• 1. Click and drag upward from the hash marks area of the ruler to the markers area of the ruler.
• 2. While continuing to drag, move the cursor to the location of the new tab and release the mouse button.
• 3. In the popup menu that appears, choose the tab style.

To remove a tab:

• Drag the tab marker off the ruler.

The ruler uses the unit of measure specified for the document.

To set the unit of measure used by a document:

• From the Format menu choose Measuring Unit, then choose System Default, Inches, Centimeters, Points, or Picas.