A tab stop on a typewriter is a location where the carriage movement is halted by mechanical gears. Tab stops are set manually, and pressing the tab key causes the carriage to go to the next tab stop. In text editors on a computer, the same concept is implemented simplistically with automatic, fixed tab stops.
Modern word processors generalize this concept by offering tab stops that have an alignment attribute and cause the text to be automatically aligned at left, at right or center of the tab stop itself. Such tab stops are paragraph-specific properties and can be moved to a different location in any moment, or even removed.
Read more about Tab Stop: Types of Tab Stops, Elastic Tabstops
Famous quotes containing the word stop:
“Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?—Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)