Tab stop

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A tab stop on a typewriter is a location where the carriage movement is halted by mechanical gears. Tab stops are set manually, and pressing the tab key causes the carriage to go to the next tab stop. In text editors on a computer, the same concept is implemented simplistically with automatic, fixed tab stops.

Modern word processors generalize this concept by offering tab stops that have an alignment attribute and cause the text to be automatically aligned at left, at right or center of the tab stop itself. Such tab stops are paragraph-specific properties and can be moved to a different location in any moment, or even removed.

[edit] Types of tab stops

A tab stop is a horizontal position which is set for placing and aligning text on a page. There are at least five kinds of tab stops in general usage in word processing.

Left: text extends to the right from the tab stop.
Center: text is centered at the tab stop.
Right: text extends to the left from the tab stop until the tab's space is filled, and then the text extends to the right.
Decimal: text before the decimal point extends to the left, and text after the decimal point extends to the right.
Bar: a vertical line at the specified position on each line in a document.