It is normal for there to be indents everywhere while writing. You’d have to go out of your way to do that by hand, and there typically isn’t a good reason to since the compile Format you use can make those adjustments on the fly.
You do need to be using a format that does that though, not all do. Modern for example uses paragraph spacing instead of indents. Default will just use your editor formatting (so that’s what you would want if you did want to spend manual labour doing this). The “Manuscript (Times)” format is set up to do exactly what you want, while conversely, “Manuscript (Courier)” will not change indents, as typically is desired for this older submission format.
To see how Manuscript (Times) does so, double-click on it to duplicate and edit a copy (you can cancel after you take a look). In the Section Layouts tab, scroll down to “Text Section”, and then flip to the Settings tab. This radio option it uses is what you want to apply to your own setup, for any layouts that print text.
Hi Amber, many thanks for you quick reply. I am trying to follow along with your explanation, but I get stuck. I don’t have “Text Section” in the layouts tab, but I do have “Section Text”, is that the samen thing? I don’t see a settings tab I can flip to (and thus, no radio button). Can you help further?
Oh yeah, that’s correct, I flipped the words in my head, it is “Section Text”. But really the important things to note (as the names are arbitrary) are these factors:
Does it have a checkbox in the Text column? This means it is responsible for printing text content from the main editor. So any layout that does this would want to have its settings checked.
Is it highlighted in bold? This means your project is actively using the layout. If nothing is bold, then back in the main compile overview, you probably have a yellow warning in the middle preview column about nothing being set up yet. This will print the text “as-is”, or exactly how you see it in the editor, and you won’t benefit from much of what the format is intended to do.
In that case, make sure to click the Assign Section Layouts... button below this preview column, and select the types in the left, choosing how you want them to look on the right.
That might be all you need to do, if you are indeed using a Format that handles indents.
I don’t see a settings tab I can flip to (and thus, no radio button). Can you help further?
It might help to know what kind of file you are attempting to create (what appears in the dropdown at the very top of the compile overview). The setup I referred to is applicable to any of the word processor oriented file types, like RTF, DOCX and so on.