Right Alignment Tab

[Peter Werner]

This is a really handy special space character that exists in InDesign. It's a great way for instance to place "End of Story" characters or generally align things to the left and right in the same line of text really quickly without messing with tab stops. Unlike tab stops, it also adapts to the width of the text frame and can thus be used regardless of the column width without having to maintain a whole set of paragraph styles.

[Seneca]

3 hours ago, Peter Werner said:

This is a really handy special space character that exists in InDesign.

I also think that it's much simpler to add the right tab inDesign than it is in Publisher.

However, there is a right tab in Design also. You need to set it up first though. You might as well set it up with the Paragraph Styles.
Once you do that then it behaves like the inDesign right tab.

EDIT: Having said that, the Publisher offers more control over the right tab and it might prove to more useful in the long run.

[fde101]

2 hours ago, Seneca said:

You need to set it up first though

Actually, you can do this using the text ruler:

 

 

[Peter Werner]

Oh, I see – my apologies, I must have somehow missed that post earlier when I did a forum search on the topic.

For quick sketches or design mockups, a simple Shift+Tab is still much faster, but I can live with that in exchange for being able to right-anchor tab stops.

The only real issue I see is that once an Adobe InCopy/Quark CopyDesk type editorial workflow is implemented, this is something that will have to be done on the design side, rather than being available to the copy editor by default.

Also, a unique right alignment tab character is useful for use in a "nested styles" scenario where everything after such a character can be assigned a specific character style automatically (like in the aforementioned end-of-story marker example where the character can then automatically be formatted with a special font or color).

[Seneca]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

Actually, you can do this using the text ruler:

Very true.

 

7 minutes ago, Peter Werner said:

Also, a unique right alignment tab character is useful for use in a "nested styles"

That scenario was also raised by me and others. We'll see how that plays out once we have nested styles.