How to split line with underscores

[Flower Gardener]

What is the Word notation for the typesetting technique called
auto-leadering. I want a left and right portion on a line with a series of
underlines in between such as one uses in an application form to indicate a
line where one enters his name.

 

[Karen]

Hi Flower,

I use Word 2003. I'm not sure, but I think you're looking for
Format>Tabs>Leader. There you can choose the style of the line that
appears each time you use the tab key.
You'll need to set your tab positions first and then in the Dialogue
Box "Set" the style only for the tabs you want to appear as lines. You
can leave the others as "none".

Good luck with this!
Karen

 

[Flower Gardener]

That sort of works. I have to reset the tab position and go through the
Format>Tabs>Leader screen for every line. Why doesn't Word save my settings?

Also it will not so three items on the line. E.g.
City___________State________ZIP

How do I accomplish that?

 

[Karen]

Hi Flower,

Another thing you might be able to do is to set up your page as a
Table. You can then select the cells in every other column and choose
to have them appear with a bottom border, while the rest of the table
cells have no border whatsoever.

Here's what I might do in your example above:

There would be 5 columns...1) City, 2) blank, 3) State, 4) blank, 5)
ZIP

On the Main Menu click on "Table>Insert>Table. When the dialogue box
pops up, choose "5" for the number of columns. The number of rows
usually defaults to "9" I think, but you can always add more rows
later.

What you should then see on your document is a Table with a heavy
outline around each cell. You can remove this outline completely by
selecting the entire Table (just to the top left you'll see a
four-headed arrow) and go to your Table Toolbar and click "no border".
(For ease of use, I usually also go back up to the Main Menu>Table>Show
Gridlines. These gridlines will not print, but make it easier to see
what you're working with...sort of like in Excel).

In column #1 you would type "City"
Column #2 (You would go back to your Table Toolbar and select the
bottom border option.
Column #3 you would type "State"
Column#4 you would leave blank, but again select the bottom border
option.
Column #5 you would type "ZIP".

Working within a table makes it so easy and uniform, and you can adjust
the width of the cells to anything you want or even to adapt
automatically to fit your text. It also looks after the problem of
manually setting tabs and spacing.

I'm not sure if this will help you, but I hope it does to some degree.

Best of luck with this!

Karen

 

[Karen]

Actually you'd probably want 6 columns. The 6th one for the ZIP
information!

K

 

[Flower Gardener]

A table makes a lot of sense. I will try it out.