Writer Guide

Example: Rotating the text in a paragraph style
As an example, we will apply rotated table headings to a pre-existing
table.
1) Create a new paragraph style. Name it Table Heading Rotated.
2) On the Position page of the Paragraph Style dialog box (Figure
229), in the Rotation / scaling section, select 90 degrees. Click
OK to save the new style.
Figure 229: Rotating a paragraph 90 degrees
3) Select the heading row of the table and apply the new style. Any
text in the cells of the heading row is now rotated.
4) If the headings are aligned to the top of the cells, you may want to
change the alignment to the bottom of the cells, as shown in
Figure 228. To do this, click the Bottom button on the Table
toolbar or select Format> Alignment > Bottom from the main
menu.
Spacing options
The spacing section of the Position page allows you to control the
spacing between individual characters in the paragraph. When
selecting an option other than default in
the drop-down menu, use the edit box to
enter the value in points by which you
want to expand or condense the text.
Selecting the Pair Kerning option
results in increasing or decreasing the
amount of space between certain pairs
of letters to improve the overall appearance of the text. Kerning
automatically adjusts the character spacing for specific letter
combinations (see an example of kerning pair in Figure 230). Kerning
is only available for certain font types and, for printed documents, only
works if your printer supports it.
Controlling tab stops
Although borderless tables are generally considered a much better
solution to space out material across a page, there are still many
situations where tabulations are sufficient to do what you need with
the added advantages of being simpler to manage and quicker to apply.
234 OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide
Figure 230: Kerning disabled
(left) and enabled (right).