Operation Manual

Inserting dashes and non-breaking spaces and hyphens
To prevent two words from being separated at the end of a line, press Ctrl+Shift when you type the
space between the two words.
In cases where you do not want the hyphen to appear at the end of a line, for example in a number
such as 123-4567, you can press Shift+Ctrl+minus sign to insert a non-breaking hyphen.
To enter en and em dashes, you can use the Replace dashes option on the Options tab under
Tools > AutoCorrect Options. This option replaces two hyphens, under certain conditions, with
the corresponding dash.
– is an en-dash; that is, a dash the width of the letter “n” in the font you are using. Type at
least one character, a space, one or two hyphens, another space, and at least one more
letter. The one or two hyphens will be replaced by an en-dash.
— is an em-dash; that is, a dash the width of the letter “m” in the font you are using. Type at
least one character, two hyphens, and at least one more character. The two hyphens will be
replaced by an em-dash.
See the Help for more details. For other methods of inserting dashes, see the Writer Guide
Chapter 3.
Setting tab stops and indents
The horizontal ruler shows the tab stops. Any tab stops that you have defined will overwrite the
default tab stops. Tab settings affect indentation of full paragraphs (using the Increase Indent and
Decrease Indent icons on the Formatting toolbar) as well as indentation of parts of a paragraph
(by pressing the Tab key on the keyboard).
Using the default tab spacing can cause formatting problems if you share documents with other
people. If you use the default tab spacing and then send the document to someone else who has
chosen a different default tab spacing, tabbed material will change to use the other person’s
settings. Instead of using the defaults, define your own tab settings, as described in this section.
To define indents and tab settings for one or more selected paragraphs, double-click on a part of
the ruler that is not between the left and right indent icons to open the Indents & Spacing page of
the Paragraph dialog. Double-click anywhere between the left and right indent icons on the ruler to
open the Tabs page of the Paragraph dialog.
A better strategy is to define tabs for the paragraph style. See Chapters 6 and 7 in the Writer
Guide for more information.
Tip
Using tabs to space out material on a page is not recommended. Depending on
what you are trying to accomplish, a table is usually a better choice.
Changing the default tab stop interval
Note
Any changes to the default tab setting will affect the existing default tab stops in
any document you open afterward, as well as tab stops you insert after making the
change.
To set the measurement unit and the spacing of default tab stop intervals, go to Tools > Options >
LibreOffice Writer > General.
92 | Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0