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# Drawing Lines in Text

You can incorporate lines into your text with custom angles, thickness, color, and other attributes.

To define the line attributes and direction, use the Line drawing object as follows:

1. On the Standard bar, click the Show Draw Functions icon to open the Drawing toolbar

2. Click the Line icon. The mouse pointer changes to a cross-hair symbol with a line beside it.

   In your document, click where the line should begin. Hold down the mouse button and drag to the point where you want the line to end. If you also hold down the Shift key, you can draw only horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines.

3. Release the mouse button once the line has the desired direction and length. You can then draw more lines. End this function by pressing the Esc key or by clicking the Select icon from the Drawing bar.

After clicking the Select icon, you can select all of the lines at the same time by clicking each line while holding down the Shift key. This multiple selection enables you to assign all of them a common color, thickness or other attribute.

1. Create a horizontal line by applying the preset Paragraph Style Horizontal Line. Click into an empty paragraph, and double-click the Horizontal Line Style in the Styles window. If the entry for horizontal lines is not visible in the list of Paragraph Styles, select "All Styles" in the lower listbox.

2. You can draw a line above, beside or below a paragraph in a Writer text document by choosing Format - Paragraph - Borders.

## Automatic lines in Writer

1. If you start a new line in a Writer text document by typing three or more hyphen characters and press the Enter key, the characters are removed and the previous paragraph gets a line as a bottom border.

   To create a single line, type three or more hyphens (-), or underscores (_), and then press Enter. To create a double line, type three or more equal signs (=), asterisks (*), tildes (~), or hash marks (#), and then press Enter.

2. To remove an automatically drawn border, choose Format - Paragraph - Borders and select no border.

3. To undo an automatic border replacement once, choose Edit - Undo.

4. To disable the automatic borders, choose Tools - AutoCorrect - AutoCorrect Options - Options and clear Apply border.

The lines and other drawing objects that you insert in text are not defined in HTML, and are therefore not exported directly into HTML format. Instead, they are exported as graphics.

When you enter a line thickness, you can append a measurement unit. A zero line thickness results in a hairline with a thickness of one pixel of the output medium.

Related Topics

Format - Paragraph - Borders

Applying Line Styles Using the Toolbar