At the dawn of the twentieth century, typewriters were given a key that would move the carriage that held the paper to a predetermined location. Those positions, called tab stops, could be adjusted with some fiddling at the back of the machine. Today, when we press the Tab key in InDesign, a tab character is produced in the text. The position to which any text after a tab character is aligned is also set by a tab stop. So unlike a space, which is relative to the current point size, tabs move text to a fixed position. The default position (the nearest half inch) is rarely useful, however, so we set our own.
We will set tab stops in this paragraph first, and then get that info to the other paragraphs. Since a paragraph style controls the formatting of the paragraph to which we’re adding tab stops, we will afterward redefine the style so it has this new tab information. The other paragraphs using this paragraph style will then literally fall in line.
If the Tabs panel gets away from the text you’re editing, click the small magnet icon on the right side of the Tabs panel to have it jump atop the text frame.
This position can be fine-tuned with the field labeled X: (the tab stop position field).
Immediately, any of InDesign’s default (and always invisible) stops to the left of that new stop are eliminated, and the text after the tab character is aligned to the custom tab stop.
The first time you ever do this, it’s likely that the text will left align on that stop, as the default type is a Left-justified stop. However, we want the text following that first tab character to center around the position of its stop.
Now the text between the two tab characters is centered around your first tab stop. We want the last bit of text (after the second tab character) to be right-aligned at the 7-inch position.
Only that one paragraph, which uses a paragraph style called product list, is affected by our labor. Setting those stops has triggered an override condition on that style, too. But it’s an override we like!
The other paragraphs should line up with the one we edited, including the top one whose style is based on the one we redefined.