What’s the Difference Between Gutter, Margin, and Indent in Word?
October 7th, 2008 | by Loren |
A gutter is used when you will have a bound edge on your printouts. If your printout will be bound in a 3-ring binder, you would have a gutter of one-half to three-quarter inch. The margins would be measured in from the gutter, so your printed page would continue to have equal margins all around. In Word 2007, gutters are turned on and adjusted in the Page Layout tab, Page Setup group, Page Setup dialog box. There you can set the distance for the gutter as well as what side of the page it will be on (top or left).
Margins are the white space that surrounds and frames your document. The top, bottom, left, and right margins are all measured from the edge of the page (or gutter) and can all be set to the same measurement or could be set to individual measurements. The margins are changed through the Page Layout tab, Page Setup group, Margins button. The Margins button will let you choose preset margins, or choosing Custom Margins lets you set your own margin specifications.
Indents are different from gutters and margins in that they are paragraph formatting, rather than page formatting. Indents only affect the specific paragraphs they are applied to, and don’t affect the overall page layout. Indents can be set for the left and/or right side of a paragraph through the Page Layout tab, Paragraph group, where the distance for Left and Right indents can be set. There are also First Line and Hanging indents; First Line indents the first line of a paragraph (like pushing the tab key at the beginning of a paragraph) and hanging indents let the first line in a paragraph extend to the left margin and the lines below are indented from the left margin. First Line and Hanging indents can be found in the Paragraph dialog box.
Margins and all indents can also be set through the ruler.
Popularity: 33% [?]
One Response to “What’s the Difference Between Gutter, Margin, and Indent in Word?”
By Philip on Aug 26, 2009 | Reply
Hello Loren,
I found your web site while struggling with Word 2007. Your site seems extremely informative, and well laid out, but I couldn’t find an answer to a question below.
But before my question, I have something that I did solve myself, and that others may find useful:
How to modify the font of Line Numbers.
Word 2007 sets the font of the line numbers to be the same as the “Default Paragraph Font,” but you can modify the font.
To modify the line number font you need to get to the style “Line Number,” and then modify the style.
Here’s how to do this:
In Home go to Styles.
Click on the bottom right hand double arrow of Styles to open a list of Styles window (this doesn’t list all the styles used in the document!)
In the list of Styles window click Options… (bottom right hand corner) to open a “Style Pane Options” dialog box.
In the dialog box, in “Select Styles to Show” choose All Styles (NOT “In current Doc” or “In use” – neither of these get to Line Number).
Select “Line Number,” and then Modify (you have to click the symbol on the right hand side of “Line Number” to get to Modify).
This gets you to the Modify Style dialog box, which lets you change the font of the Line Numbers.
Now to my question:
I can set upper and lower margins using Top and Bottom Margins in the Page Setup dialog box.
In the Header and Footer tools (double click header/footer of document to open this), I can set the distance of the Header from Top, and the distance of the Footer from bottom.
If I set the distance of the Header from top too big, it seems to push down the upper margin text. (Same problem for footer.)
So what is the relation between the “Top Margin” setting and the “Distance of the header from top” setting? (same question for the footer.)