Dotted leaders in a toc

[Paul Terrano]

The dotted leaders in a toc are a shade too long for my tastes.
How do you leave a small gap at each end of the leader?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You don't--at least not without a lot of tedious work. The way this *should*
work is as follows:

1. You set a right tab stop short of the page numbers and give it a period
leader, removing the leader from the page number tab stop.

2. You then have to get Word to honor an extra tab character in the TOC
entry (since two tab characters will be required to reach the page number
tab stop). This is where the trouble begins.

3. You insert a tab character at the end of the heading in the document,
then add the \w switch to the TOC field, which is supposed to preserve tab
characters in TOC entries (and apparently does in some situations), but this
just doesn't work: the trailing tab character is ignored.

It may occur to you to insert an extra tab character in each TOC entry
manually, but every time you update the TOC, it will be removed. The only
thing that will work, therefore, is to wait until editing is complete and
you are confident that no page numbers will change, then either unlink the
TOC and add the tab characters or add the tab characters and lock the TOC.

It's really annoying that all the above is true, but it's a sad fact. Sorry.

 

[Paul Terrano]

Surprisingly, I am no longer offended by the way the leaders
look. Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

<g> That's my reaction as well. For situations where it *really* matters to
me (printed books, important reports), I'll go to the trouble of formatting
it properly as the last step in tweaking the CRC, but for most documents,
it's just not worth the aggro.

 

[Bob S]

You don't--at least not without a lot of tedious work. The way this *should*
work is as follows:

1. You set a right tab stop short of the page numbers and give it a period
leader, removing the leader from the page number tab stop.

2. You then have to get Word to honor an extra tab character in the TOC
entry (since two tab characters will be required to reach the page number
tab stop). This is where the trouble begins.

3. You insert a tab character at the end of the heading in the document,
then add the \w switch to the TOC field, which is supposed to preserve tab
characters in TOC entries (and apparently does in some situations), but this
just doesn't work: the trailing tab character is ignored.

It may occur to you to insert an extra tab character in each TOC entry
manually, but every time you update the TOC, it will be removed. The only
thing that will work, therefore, is to wait until editing is complete and
you are confident that no page numbers will change, then either unlink the
TOC and add the tab characters or add the tab characters and lock the TOC.

It's really annoying that all the above is true, but it's a sad fact. Sorry.

With regard to the trailing tab characters being ignored:

It occurs to me that this may be Word suppressing trailing white
space, and that you might be able to avoid Word's "assistance" by
convincing it that the white space was not trailing.

Have you tried adding a tab plus a non-breaking space, or a tab plus
an ordinary letter formatted as white?

Bob S

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I have suggested both those tricks for investigation, but I hadn't actually
tried them. What I have just discovered, however, is that a nonbreaking
space does not work, but a character formatted as white does--even without
the \w switch! Note that this technique will work only for left-aligned
headings (the tab followed by a character would throw off the alignment of
centered ones); the length of the heading should not be a problem, since
headings longer than about 2/3 of a line (or less) should be wrapped to the
next line anyway.