Since I've not seen a reply to your question I thought that I would give it
a shot.

In Word the hard return defines a paragraph.  Within a paragraph, lines
will wrap differently depending on the margins, font size, page widths,
etc..  The reason that a tab character at the beginning of a wrapped line
is not treated like a "normal" tab character is that if any of the
variables are changed, the location of the tab character will change and
give a different layout.  Word has provided the "Hanging Indent" to make
the second and subsequent lines indent so that no matter what font, margin
or page setup is chosen, the second line would be spaced over.  If you wish
to have a certain word be the first word on the second line, then the hard
return and therefore a second paragraph would be the only thing that would
work using Microsoft design.

Hope this helps explain the reasons for the way it works, even though it
may not be the way you would want it to work.

Doug


At 9/5/2001 09:46 PM, bshaw wrote:

>When I type a document in Word, I often can't use tab to indent a line
>unless I put a hard return at the end of the previous line. Can anyone
>tell me why? Is there any way to change this?

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