7 Ways To Add Spacer Lines Between Paragraphs In Pages

There are many ways to add a line between paragraphs in Pages. You can use a shape, paragraph borders, images and more.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at different ways that you can add visible divider lines between paragraphs in Pages. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 2000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/Patreon. There you could read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. 
Now sometimes you want to have more than just some extra space between paragraphs. You want to have an actual visible line that divides up, say, sections of text in something that you're writing. There are several different ways you can do  this in Pages. 
Let's start by the most obvious one, the one you may go for right away. That's to simply add a line. You click on Shape at the top of Pages you can add a simple line like this. It starts off diagonal but you could drag the points at either end from one side of the document to the other and it snaps to being a horizontal line. You can then position this where you want. So if you want it to be between two paragraphs, like right here, and it looks like you've got a nice divider line between these two paragraphs. In fact by default it will actually move with the paragraphs. So if I insert some spaces here you can see how it moves up and down very easily. If we select the line and then go to Format, Arrange we can see here it is set to Move With Text and text wrapping is automatic. You probably want to change that to Above and Below. Why? Well let's say you want to have a smaller line and then have that line simply in the center. If the line is too small the text is actually going to wrap around to the left and right. But by selecting the Above and Below option it will always push the text below it no matter how short the line is. 
Now also notice here you've got a Spacing option. You can decrease that and you could see you've got less spacing above and below. Also, if you go to Format, Style you can change the style. So, for instance, I can change the line type. I can make it, say, a dotted line, little circles, I can make it look like a brush stroke like that, I can change the size really easily. So you can adjust it for a variety of things including changing the color. Now you can actually save the Style really easily. If you are in Format, Style you see different styles here at the top. Use the right arrow here, go to a New Page of these and click the Plus Button and you'll see that Style added. So now when you want to add a new one you can add a new line and place it where you want and then you can go to Format, Style and select that style and it will change to that style. Or you can simply duplicate the line that was there before. So I can select this. I can Copy it with Command C and Command V to Paste or I can select it and then go to Edit, Duplicate Selection or Command D, or I can simply select it and then use the Option Key and drag. It will drag out a duplicate of the item.
Now the great thing about using a custom style is, if you've got not just say two but maybe a hundred of these, you can change them all at once.  Let's say I want to change from blue to green and make it a solid line. I can select just one of these. So I'll change it here to a solid line and I'll change it to green. Let's make it 1pt. So I changed that. Now if I go over to the style here that I know is applied to all of these lines I can Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, and I can say Redefine Style From Selection. Then I'm going to get told that another object uses this style which is fine. I want to update all the objects. Look what happens to second line here when I do. That changes as well. If I had a hundred of them all one hundred would change. So it is easy to change all of the lines at once. 
Now another option is not to use a line but a rectangle. Using a rectangle, like this, you can place it there just like a line. I'm going to stretch it out so it is basically a thick line like this. The rest of it I can do just like a line. If I go to Format and then Arrange you'll see I've got Spacing as before. I've got the text wrap or I can set to Above and Below. I can also go to Style here and change the color if I like and even set a Style to match that. So now I can duplicate this. I'll Option Drag and add it right here and then I can change that color. Then Control Click here and then Redefine Style From Selection. Okay. You can see it has changed them all. So whether you use rectangle or line just depends, kind of, on what you want. It is really easy to make something nice and thick with a rectangle. 
But you could also use another shape. For instance a rounded rectangle could make an interesting divider line because of how these little rounded ends, like that. 
Now whatever shape you're using, I'm going back to a line here, you can set it in Format, Arrange to instead of automatic text wrap or Above and Below you can set it to In Line With Text. When you do so it actually works like a character in text. So let me go to View and then Show Invisibles. You can see here that I've got a paragraph mark at the end of this line. This line is actually sitting in the text right at the end of this line here. Let me add another paragraph here and you can see now it's actually its own character on its own paragraph. It doesn't sit as nice and centered here but you could easily change that by selecting the whole paragraph and then going under Format, Style you've got your Before and After paragraph spacing. So you can set that and you can even create a new paragraph style if you like. Call this Line and then I could Copy the paragraph here. So I'm selecting it with the image as a character inside of it. I could add it to a new spot right there. It is just a slightly different way to go. If inline with text is something you're more used to then you may want to do this. It makes it really clear where the line comes in the text because it's actually part of the text. Of course you can do this with any shape. 
Now you can also do this with any image. I've got an image file here that's a piece of ClipArt that looks like the type of line you would have between paragraphs. I can just drag that in and add it here to my document. In this case I probably want to shrink it down. It is probably meant to be something that is kind of in the center like that. This works just like a shape does. So in this case I've got it under Format, Arrange, set to Move with Text. I want to set it to Above and Below and let's decrease the spacing a little bit, like that. Now it will move just fine with the text just like a line would. I could also, of course, change it to be Inline With Text and then it will be like a character. I'll put it in its own paragraph there and I'll center that paragraph like that. It makes it really easy to grab that whole paragraph text and then go and add it really easily here or anywhere else I want it. So this means you don't have to stick with basic lines. You can create something on your own or use a piece of ClipArt to divide paragraphs.
There's also another thing that you could do that is fairly new in Pages. Note where your cursor is located, in this case in this paragraph. Under Format and then Layout you've got Paragraph Borders. So you can set a Paragraph Border. Let's choose this kind of line and you can choose, if it's Above, Below, or Left, or Right of the paragraph. I'm going to turn Off Above and turn On Below. So now it appears as a line below the paragraph. You can change the line style, the color, you can make it a little thicker. You can also change the Offset between the line and the paragraph it is attached to. If you want to change the Offset below the line you want to go to Format, Style, and then Alter After Paragraph, like this, to increase the amount there. Now the interesting thing about this is it's part of this paragraph. So, I can go and create a new paragraph style that is, let's see, End Paragraph, like that. Now any time I want to have a line below a paragraph to change its style to End Paragraph. You can see how it added it there. Of course if I were to update this End Paragraph, let's change the line color for instance, then I could update the style and you can see how it updates it in other paragraphs that are the same style as well. 
Now a variation on this is to have a paragraph all to itself that has the line. Let's go to View and Show Invisibles again. We can see I've added an extra paragraph here. Let's go to Format, Layout and I'm going to create a paragraph border below this one, like that and make it pretty thick. I'm going to change the border offset so it is actually negative. So it is making it a little smaller there. As a matter of fact I can go to Format and then Style to adjust the line spacing. Let's put some after the paragraph. So when it feels kind of like it is centered like that I've now got this special paragraph that is nothing but a line. I can Copy it and I can Paste it somewhere else. Or better yet, I can go ahead and create a new style with this and I'll call this a Divider and then I can add a new paragraph wherever I want, like right here, change it to a Divider paragraph and it adds that line. I can update this Divider paragraph. Let's go here and change the color and then Update and it updates all of them. I like this because it doesn't force you to use a particular style for the last paragraph. The last paragraph could be styled just like everything else. You just have these special styles for these blank divider paragraphs. 
Of course I want to point out the simplest one but it is the leasts versatile of them all but it has one advantage I'll show you. That is to simply add a bunch of dashes. Now, if you had normal dashes, like this, it's going to try to combine them to make it a straight across dash. But that is going to depend on your font. So what I encourage you to do is to use Option and then the Dash Key on your keyboard. Add a bunch of these dashes. However many you think is needed. Then go to Format, Style and center it. Then you can adjust the paragraph spacing and everything as you like. It's really basic but it has one advantage and that is if you plan on distributing this text as plain text later on then those images won't work. So you maybe just using Pages as a writing tool and then you want to Paste this into something else. So if I select All and Copy you can see I can Paste into a Rich Text email and I get that line there just fine. But even if I'm using Plain Text and I paste it in you can still see it doesn't center because plain text doesn't. But at least I do get the divider line there. The same thing in TextEdit or any other text editor. I paste it in there at least I do get these long dashes here together as a divider in this case where of course the image wouldn't show up in a plain text format. 
So there are a whole bunch of different ideas for putting a divider between paragraphs. Hopefully you found one that you like and maybe also learned something about adding shapes, images, and using paragraph styling in Pages as well. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “7 Ways To Add Spacer Lines Between Paragraphs In Pages”

Sheldon

11 months ago

Thanks bunches

Art Brown

Lots of ways of presenting a line like object here. I first thought you were describing a spacer line as wanting to insert a blank line to provide space - which of course you do with the paragraph layout and 'space after' setting.

I'd like to remind folks that simple is efficient, and something like, say, an article or book for publication needs to be clean and clear of 'weird' stuff like a box being a line. Your professional editor person will thank you.