Leader: Advanced Tips

The leader command (LD) provides a powerful and flexible way of controlling spacing on a line and/or entering a line of dots, dashes or other characters. There are three ways to enter a leader: keyboard shortcut, menu and action line. For specific instruction on entering a leader, see Leader or Leader: ld command or Leader: keyboard shortcut or Expand/Convert/Shorthand.

Different types of leaders

To enter a leader consisting of a solid line at the level of a dash, you must use an en dash or an em dash as the leader character. These characters cannot be typed on the action line, so you cannot use the action line to enter this leader. Use the menu, keyboard shortcut, or type the command directly into codes view (to type an en dash in codes view, press F5 and then Shift+N). The underline character can also be used to create a solid line and this can be entered using the action line, the keyboard shortcut, or the menu.

A leader consisting of a line of spaces will separate text that is flush left from text that is flush right. Use the space as the leader character.

Additional spacing can be inserted between leader characters if you use the action line (this option is not available if you use the menu or the keyboard shortcut). To do this enter additional character(s) at the end of the command. The leader will consist of only the first character, but space of approximately the width of any additional character(s) will be added between each occurrence of the first character. For example, the command LD .. (LD followed by a space and then two periods) will produce a leader consisting of a line of dots, but the dots will be further apart than they would be if the command included only one period. The commands LD ... (LD followed by a space and then three periods) or LD .m (LD followed by a space, a period and the letter m) would produce a line of dots separated by more space.

Multiple leaders on one line

More than one leader can be used on one line to control the spacing between different blocks of text on the line. Nota Bene will divide the remaining amount of space on the line into equal segments, one for each leader. For example, text followed by a leader, text, leader, text, leader, text will result in four blocks of text separated by leaders with an equal amount of space between each of the blocks of text. The leaders can use any leader character, including a space.