Setting paragraph alignment, indentation, and line height
You can directly change the alignment, indentation and/or line height of a particular paragraph, or you can include these paragraph-related properties in a style that you apply to some or all paragraphs. These properties also affect other block elements, including headings, list items, and preformatted blocks.
To directly set the alignment of a paragraph
- Place the insertion point in the desired paragraph.
- Do one of the following:
- Right-click and click click Paragraph Properties from the shorcut menu
- On the Home menu, go to Paragraph, click
(Align Left), 
(Align Center), or 
(Align Right).
The Justify alignment setting, which distibutes the words in each line of a paragraph so that both sides are even, is only available when you use the third method listed above.
To directly set the indentation of a paragraph
- Place the insertion point in the desired paragraph.
- Right-click and click click Paragraph Properties from the shorcut menu.
- Under Indentation, enter the desired amount in either or both of the Left and Right boxes for left and right indentation, respectively. If you do not specify a unit, pixels will be used.
- If you want the first line of the paragraph to use a different indentation amount, enter the desired amount in the First line box.
To quickly change only the left indentation of a paragraph, click 
(Increase Indent) or 
(Decrease Indent) on the Formatting Toolbar.
To directly set the line height of a paragraph
- Place the insertion point in the desired paragraph.
- Right-click and click click Paragraph Properties from the shorcut menu.
- Under Spacing, do one of the following:
- Click the Presets box and select a preset:
- Normal sets the line height to the default value determined by the browser
- Tight sets the line height to the default and the top and bottom margins to zero
- 150% sets the line height to 150% of the paragraph’s font size
- 200% sets the line height to twice the paragraph’s font size
- Enter a number in the Line height box. If you do not specify a unit, the value will be interpreted as a multiple of the paragraph’s font size.
- Click the Presets box and select a preset:
- If you want to specify the top and bottom margins for the paragraph, enter values in the Before and After boxes.
Specifying Before and After values has the same effect as specifying top and bottom margin values.
To specify alignment, indentation, and line height in a style
- On the Home menu, go to Style, and then click Define Styles.
- In the Styles list, select the style you want to modify. (Or create a new style.)
- Click the Paragraph tab and specify values for the properties you want to include in the style. (See the instructions above for each type of paragraph property.)
Related topics
Style dialog box – Paragraph tab
Setting character-related properties
Setting margins, padding, and borders
Setting background colors and images