Pages 5: Using Borders and Rules

If you’re composing a document in Pages and you need to call out some text, there are many ways you could go about it. Of course, you could enlarge the font (or give it the ol’ italic or bold treatment), but a professional-looking way to do that is to instead use what are called borders and rules. Well, at least YOU could make them professional-looking. My examples below sort of look like a fifth grader made them, but I’m telling myself that’s part of their unique charm. 

So here’s what I mean. If you place your cursor within any paragraph, make sure “Format” in the upper-right of your window is selected, and then click on the “Layout” tab, you’ll see the “Borders & Rules” section.

Those settings will allow you to do all sorts of neat stuff, like putting a box around your selected paragraph…

…adding lines below or above your text…

…or even formatting a box with a background color!

On second thought, don’t do that last one. That’s pretty ugly.

The “Position” setting is key; after you’ve chosen which type of line (solid or dotted) you’d like in the first drop-down within the “Borders & Rules” section, this’ll let you pick whether to have it above, below, or all around your paragraph.

The part that’s best about using this feature is that you don’t have to worry about reformatting if your text moves around—your borders will move with the text they’re attached to and will expand and contract to fit the paragraph if you change it. I’ve seen folks try to create these same effects using shapes and lines, and those aren’t as easy to control when text is flowing every which way. I mean, if what you need to do is add text within a star for some reason, go right ahead and use shapes. But if you just need lines and boxes, this is a much better, faster way to go.