Have you ever seen a document where people hit the return button repeatedly at the end of a page to move it to the next line? Or pressed the tab button over and over then the spacebar to get their text to line up with a specific item? You know, like this:

This type of textual coding is a carryover from the days of typewriters when we had fewer options, dinosaurs roamed the earth, and we had to walk uphill both ways to school. When you made a change to a page, you had to re-type the entire page. These extra returns weren’t as problematic…thirty years ago. Now, they hide in a document. If you add more text above the extra returns, those returns are pushed to the next page, leaving your text on the following page to start further down than it should. These can be easy to miss especially if you aren’t using Show/Hide. If an inserted page break is moved, you are left with an extra blank page, which is much easier to spot when quickly scrolling through. Plus, not inserting bad code saves your hand from having to hit the return or backspace to delete all your extra returns. Remember you’re managing a document not hitting the gym in the world’s most pathetic workout attempt.

Using multiple tabs to align-items is not as accurate as using preset tab stops, which we will cover in another section. Attempting to align text with spaces and tabs causes you more work and stress than necessary, and it’s so easy to set your tab stop. In most cases, all you need to do is click your Ruler.

Let’s all agree now to be nicer to ourselves, make our own lives easier, and use the features regarding breaks and tabs as described in the following sections.