I have several poems, each of which has a quotation mark at the beginning and the end. For example:

“तृणादपि सुनीचेन तरोरिव सहिष्णुना ।
अमानिनां मानदेयं, कीर्तनीयः सदा हरिः ॥“
Tròádapi suniicena taroriva sahiïòuná;
amánináî mánadeyaî, kiirtaniiyah sadá Harih.

The formatting I wish to achieve is as follows: First line central aligned. The first letter of Lines 2, 3, 4 should match up with the location of the first letter of line one -- not the quote mark, but the first letter. So the four lines will appear to be left aligned i.e. the left edge of the group of four lines will be the same, but with all four located in the middle of the page.

What I usually do is:


1. Central align the first line
2. Highlight lines 2-4 and drag them over to the right using the ruler tool at the top of the page, until their first letter lines up with the first letter of the first line.

The problem I encounter is that, due to the quotation mark at the beginning of the first line, I am often unable to get the first letter of lines 2-4 to match exactly with the first letter of line 1. Because of the quotation mark, the first letter of lines 2-4 ends up slight ahead of or slightly behind the first letter of line one. If I remove the quotation mark from the beginning of line one, then they can be made to line up perfectly. But as soon as I add the quotation mark, it makes it impossible to line up the first letters.

There is no simple way to do this. Nothing is built into Word.

Workaround:

1. Center your first line.
2. Type your second line left-justified.
3. Set a tab setting at the start of the first line. (or) set a Left Indent for that line at that point.
4. Press the tab key at the beginning of the line. (not needed with the Indent)
5. Pressing Enter at the end of your line will give you the same formatting for the next line.

Easier workaround but not as precise:

• Set a left indent that approximates what you want for all poems and use a style formatted with that indent for all lines.
• The first line will not be exactly centered many times, but should still be close enough. If it is not, move the indent for the poem to the point where the first line is centered.

You may want to look at kerning of the first characters on that first line.
This is referred to as Spacing in Word. Select the characters and then go the font detail settings, advanced tab.

Have you tried a macro to do this (after selecting all the paragraphs you want to align)?
You can change the .Characters(2) to specify which character in the first paragraph you want to align with.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Very nice work Andrew.
Instructions for Installing Macros from Forums or Websites by Graham Mayor, MVP

Many thanks to all of you for replying; usually the forum sends me an email to notify me that someone has replied, but for some reason this time I don't seem to have received the email so I didn't realize anyone had replied. I shall study what you have given and try it out.

Yes. I'll have to put that in my NORMAL.