Paragraph Not Centered Correctly

[mae]

Using Word 2003 SP2 in Windows XP.

In my document, I entered a header, and it centers correctly.

In the body of the doc, with page setup and paragraph formatting identical
to the header, I noticed that "centered" text is shifted. I have
non-printing characters showing and see no indents, tabs, etc. I double
checked Page Setup and Paragraph Formatting and see nothing different.

Something weird that I noticed for the first time (after being a Word
super-user for over 10 years) is that when I double-click whitespace next to
the mis-centered text, tab marks appear and there are tab stops in the ruler.
I tried clearing all tabs, but it doesn't make a difference, they still show
up next time I double-click. Since they show up with the correctly centered
heading too, I assume they aren't a problem. Maybe it's always been like
that and I've just never noticed.

When I right-align the text, it aligns from the 5.75" mark instead of 6.5"
where the margin is set. This is probably why the centering is wrong, for
some reason it thinks there's a margin or indent at 5.75.

I have a table below the text (separated by 2 paragraphs just to make sure
there's no formatting carried over anywhere) whose last column ends at 5.75.
I doublechecked to be sure my text wasn't accidentally made part of the
table, and it's definitely not. Also when I change the column width, it does
not change my alignment, so I don't think it's related. Suspicious that
they're both at 5.75 though.

Any suggestions as to where I can look or what I should do?

Thanks for any help!

Thanks for any help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It sounds very much as if the paragraph in question has a right indent. But
also check to make sure that the number of columns where the paragraph is is
set to one.

 

[mae]

Definitely no indent.

I think the columns thing was the answer: I checked that, and it was set to
one column, but with a width of 5.75! I changed that to 6.5 and it fixed it.
I think that block of text was originally part of the table, and was
converted from table to text. It must have kept that column width, even
though there was only one column and it was no longer part of the table.

I would not have thought to check the column formatting, since as far as I
knew, there wasn't any. Thanks so much for the suggestion!