iWork® '09 Portable Genius

Chapter 4. What Special Formatting Can I Use to Give My Documents Impact?

Creating content for your documents is half the battle; to get maximum impact you'll need to format your documents so they are as powerful and persuasive as possible. This chapter shows you how to use tabs, tables, and columns to lay out your documents; how to add backgrounds, shapes, charts, and images to make the documents look great; and how to position text precisely where you want it by flowing it through a series of linked text boxes.

Using Tabs

Creating Tables

Creating Multicolumn Layouts

Adding Images, Shapes, and Charts

Flowing Text through Linked Text Boxes

Using Tabs

When you need to space out columns of text at precise intervals, you can use tabs. As in most word-processing applications, you set tab stops in the paragraph formatting to tell Pages where you want the tabs, and then press the Tab key to insert a tab that takes you to the next tab stop.

Whereas typewriters provide a single kind of tab, Pages provides four kinds:

• Left. This is the standard type of tab, just like the one on a typewriter. Text is aligned left at the tab.

• Center. Text is centered on the tab, so when you type text, it moves equal distances to the left and right of the tab. A center tab is useful for display text that's only part of a paragraph — for example, a centered part of a header or footer.

• Right. The opposite of a left tab. Text ...