Last time I talked about tabbed text. Now I’d like to talk about when you don’t want to use tabs. For example, if you are one of those people who like to put a tab at the beginning of each paragraph to indent it, please don’t. There is a better way. Instead, use Word’s first line indent setting. You can find this setting by highlighting the text and choosing Format|Paragraph. Change the setting and click OK. You never have to tab again.
If you have two paragraphs of text that you want to appear next to each other, you have yet another opportunity to use tabs badly. In this case, I suggest you not use tabs to move the text over into the second column. If you do, you make a large mess if you ever want to edit the text again later. Tabbed text doesn’t word wrap. So you should use a table instead. The text wraps within each table cell, so you can edit it later without pain. Many people don’t use tables because they think that they are either too difficult or that they always have to have borders. Neither is true.
To add a table, choose Table|Insert|Table. Select the number of rows and columns you want. In this case, if you want two columns of text, you’d set up a three-column table, so you have "spacer" cell in the middle. When the table appears, type text in the left and right columns.
You can turn off borders by choosing Table|Select|Table to highlight the entire table. Then choose Format|Borders and Shading and click None. Once you have learned how to set up tables with invisible borders, you’ll probably think of all kinds of ways you can use them. Any time you are wondering how you can make blocks of text line up, consider experimenting with a borderless table. It might be a lot easier than some of the alternatives.