Change alignment per clause

Clause9 Styling
1

How to change alignment per clause? The first clause aligned left and the second clause right. Can do it for the entire document, but can’t find it for a specific clause.

2

Hi Sarah,

  • You can change the alignment of all the paragraphs in a clause file by adding custom styling to the clause file (set the “alignment of each paragraph” to “centered”).
  • If you want to change the alignment of a single paragraph, you can insert the special code % align ... % at the very beginning of the paragraph (right after the optional number).

For more information, see https://help.clausebase.com/kb/special-codes/

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3

Addendum: in case you were wondering why we do not provide a simple toolbar with left/center/right alignment.

This is a feature, not a bug, because you should sparingly use these style deviations. Please do not go overboard with them, because they hinder the reusability of a clause.

(After all, you force a certain paragraph to always be formatted in a certain way, while it may very well be the case that some colleague of yours likes the legal contents of your clause, but happens to set different standard layout settings for the entire document. In fact, using local formatting deviations all the time is the reason why reusing content in MS Word is often so difficult — you will spend quite some time undoing the formatting of the author from whom you borrowed some textual content.)

4

Hi Maarten,

if I understand correctly, the clause itself can be aligned a certain way, when you edit the clause itself. Then this clause will always have this alignment when you want to use it in a document.

And the same happens when you change alignement styles in assemble a document, the general document will be aligned a certain way overall.

But now, like in your last paragraph, that’s also a bit the issue I have: I want all my seperate clauses to have a justified alignment, just because everybody would be able to use them in all contexes. And all documents also have a standard justified allignment. But for certain documents a certain clause fits better alligned on the right. And in other documents that same clause fits better alligned on the left. How can I do that?

5

So to rephrase: you would like a certain library clause A to be left-aligned in document X, but right-aligned in document Y.

This is indeed possible:

  • Choose the standard setting for clause A — do you want it to be left-aligned, right-aligned or aligned in whatever way some higher source (the document, the user, the user’s group or the user’s customer) happens to align its clause?
    • if you want clause A’s standard alignment to be left-aligned, then add a custom styling to the file, by editing the clause, going to “custom styling”, and choosing left-alignment
    • similar procedure for right-alignment
    • if instead you want the clause to follow the alignment imposed by the source above it (e.g., the document’s default settings), then do nothing — i.e., add no custom styling at all.
      • For example, if the document happens to impose central alignment on its clauses, then all clauses that have no custom styling of their own, will get central alignment.
      • Similarly, if the document would not happen to impose any alignment, but the customer’s default layout settings would do so, then this source would dictate the alignment, which would then ultimately trickle down to the individual clause.
  • Next, insert clause A in some document X. If you are happy with the way clause A aligns, then nothing needs to be done. (E.g., if document X happens to impose left-alignment on its clauses, and clause A happens to have a standard setting of left-alignment, then nothing needs to be done.)
  • Now insert clause A in some document Y, and assume you are not happy with the way it aligns. You can then deviate for this specific instance of A by selecting clause A in Assemble Document, clicking on advanced at the right side, and then below layout adding custom styling.
    • It is crucial to understand that in this you are not changing the library clause itself , but only the specific instance of that library clause in the current document. (Each library clause can have thousands of instances, in many different documents.) The way you format this specific instance of the library clause, will in no way affect how all the other instances of that same clause will look.

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6

thank you!!!